His mouth curved faintly as if he found that amusing.
“You usually don’t cut me off completely unless something’s distracting you,” he said, and his eyes flicked straight to Wyatt again.
“Or someone,” he added.
Wyatt’s voice dropped lower, and the warning in it wasn’t subtle anymore. “She told you to leave.”
“I’m talking to her,” Colin snapped, and irritation bled through the calm he was trying to hold.
“Not you,” he added, like that settled something.
Then his gaze sharpened on my face as he lined up his next strike.
“So it’s true,” he said, and his voice turned too sharp to ignore. “You really did sleep with him.” The words tore the air right out of my lungs.
My breath hitched despite trying to stop it, and silence stretched tight between the three of us until it’d felt like it might snap.
Wyatt shifted, not forward and not back, but just enough that his presence felt heavier and more deliberate as though he claimed space without claiming me.
“That’s none of your business,” Wyatt said immediately, and the force behind the words was undeniable.
Colin’s smile turned brittle as his eyes flicked between us.
“It became my business the second I saw you two together in that fucking barn,” he said, and the venom behind the confession made my stomach drop. “I didn’t imagine thathand on his chest, and I didn’t imagine the way you were looking at him like you’d already chosen. ” My skin flushed hot with exposure.
“You don’t own me,” I snapped. My voice was louder than expected.
“I never said I did,” Colin replied smoothly, “but you don’t disappear unless you’re tangled up in something you know you shouldn’t be.”
Wyatt’s jaw flexed hard enough that I saw the muscle jump, and the air between them felt charged and dangerous in a way that scared me.
“She told you to go,” Wyatt said again, his tone colder than I’d ever heard it.
“I’m speaking to her,” Colin replied, and I hated how he pretended he had a right to my answers.
“And I think she has clearly told you she doesn’t want to listen,” Wyatt told him, and the warning wasn’t subtle anymore.
Colin smiled again, and this time it was almost indulgent.
“I’ll forgive you,” he said to me, “I’ve had slip-ups.” The casual cruelty and the way he shrugged made it even uglier.
“People make mistakes when they’re grieving,” he said, and the way he framed my body and my choice as weakness made my hands shake.
“You don’t get to forgive me for anything.” My voice was raw and shaking with fury.
Wyatt moved then in a way that told his restraint shattered.
He took a full step into Colin’s space, and his hands came up and fisted into the front of Colin’s shirt.
The sound Colin made when Wyatt yanked him forward was sharp and startled, and it sliced through the yard like the crack of a whip.
My heart slammed against my ribs because I’d never seenWyatt like that, never known what he was capable of once he stopped holding himself back.
“You don’t get to talk about her like that,” Wyatt said, his voice low and shaking with contained violence.
“You’ll leave now,” Wyatt said, and there hadn’t been a single ounce of bluff in him this time.
I stepped forward without thinking, and my hand closed around Wyatt’s forearm like I could ground him back into control.
