You have issues, man.
Yeah, I do. I’m well aware. At twenty-seven, I shouldn’t be this set on starting a family. I shouldn’t feel like my life won’t properly start until I have the same thing my brothers do.
Their happiness messed me up. Which is why I need to be careful. I’m stepping on thin ice, one false move and everything falls apart.
I was mostly okay before the accident, bitter about mysinglestatus, but fine compared to now.
Things changed the night Otis clipped the back of my Challenger. I bet things always change when you’re on the brink of death. When youdiebecause, technically, I was dead for over four minutes.
To this day, I sometimes wake up drenched in sweat. Not because of the trauma. Not because I barely made it out alive, but because I remember heading straight for the cars parked on the sidelines and feeling fucking empty. Empty and disappointed with what flashed before my eyes.
You haven’t lived yet, but it’s time to die.
When I woke up at the hospital, alive, with the valve in my heart replaced, multiple broken bones, and a total of one hundred and thirty-nine stitches, I re-evaluated my priorities. Wife, kids, memories: that’s what I put on a pedestal.
But the longer I searched for my happily ever after, the worse I felt when nothingclickedthe way my brothers described it. Now, I’m scared of thatclick.
I’m tired of the disappointments. Tired of getting my hopes up and then crashing with a sad, aimless reality like I crashed with the Dodge RAM.
A knock on the door snaps me back into the here and now. Back to getting ready for a movie night on the pool deck of a luxurious yacht. Back to fun-filled days with Addie. Tomorrow won’t be as much fun. We lost the tug of war, which means I’ll be paired with someone other than Addie.
And she’ll probably end up with Grant.
I can smell a fistfight in the air already.
“Give me ten minutes,” I shout at the closed door.
“Are you decent?”
“Kind of, why?”
She barges in like a woman on a mission. “Okay, I need to ask you something because I’m driving myself crazy, and if I don’t ask, I’ll keep wondering and—”
“You’re rambling. Next time you want to ask me something,ask. Don’t spend the day lying to my face that you’re fine when you’re clearly not. What is it?”
She stops pacing. Nervously smooths out her long hair, leans against the doorframe, and crosses her arms over her chest.
“We’ve been here for three days acting like a couple, but you haven’t kissed me. Not once, and when I...” She halts, balls her hands into small fists, and shoots the next words out like a machine gun. “When I wanted to kiss you last night, you pushed me away. You basically told me to chill the fuck out, Colt. Why?”
I look up, catching a blush on her cheeks. The tightness in my chest enough to choke me. She stands in the doorway like every good dream I ever had, dressed in a flowy white dress, the epitome of elegance, class, and innocence.
Beautiful. So fucking beautiful. Smart, fun.
Her dark hair cascades down her back, frames her face, and flirts with her arms. She stands there, the pink of her lips my new favorite color, the scent of her skin like a soothing blanket, and she askswhyI haven’t kissed her.
“I can’t,” I say truthfully, looking back at my reflection. I already feel like I’m in a dryer on its highest spin setting whenever she’s close.
Too bad she doesn’t let it drop. Of course she doesn’t. It’s not in her nature. She’s been working herself up since last night. There’s no turning back now.
In the mirror, I see her coming closer, the delicate fabric of her dress caressing her thigh as it peeks from the long slit. She stops close enough for me to smell her perfume, and she stares, beckoning me to look at her.
“Youcan’t? What does that mean?”
“Drop it, Addie.”
She hops onto the cabinet by the sink, her bare knee escaping from the slit of her dress. I drop the towel over my head, drying my hair to stop myself staring.
“Is my breath smelly?” she asks.
