This was my chance, and I blew it. I let him run. I should have stopped him, even if I had to hold him down and force him to listen to my explanation. I should have had the words alreadyprepared, the ones that could make him stay. I had everything else prepared. But when the time came, and he was right here in my arms, I choked.
I let him slip through my hands, and instead of catching him, I let him go.
And now he’s gone.
I’m about to do something completely reckless and crazy when two things happen at once. A text buzzes on my phone, and three guys run out the doors of the airport to a car waiting at the curb. They’re shoving to get past each other to meet the woman standing outside the car, arms outstretched. One of them reaches her first, wrapping her in a bear hug and lifting her off her feet.
“Merry Christmas, son,” says a man coming around from the driver’s side with a Santa hat on. He hugs another one of the guys, clapping him on the back, while the last guy throws his arms around the mom and brother at once. They’re all laughing, talking over each other, loud as people get with their families.
I swallow and pull out my phone, the desperation of the past hours melting away. What am I doing? I have a dozen texts from my brothers, asking where I am, why I’m not at Ma’s yet.
Five years ago—hell, maybe even two years ago—nothing would have stopped me from going after Colt. I would have gotten on a plane and gone after him. I wouldn’t have stopped until he forced me to, ran so far I couldn’t catch him, or beat me into the ground until I couldn’t get back up. Not physically, the way I did him, but in other ways, ways that let me atone in some small way for all the damage I’d done.
I don’t blame him for hurting me. I would have done the same, taken revenge in whatever way I could.
But I’m not that guy anymore.
I’ve atoned.
Now I’m a guy who knows what’s under his control, and what isn’t. Maybe I haven’t done enough for him, but I can’t control that. I can only control myself, and I’ve done enough for me. I can’t change Colt’s mind. I can only change mine. I’ve been doing it since he left the last time, and it doesn’t stop just because he left again. In fact, it only becomes more important. It’s time to stay the course, focus on the future and let the past go. To focus on myself and what I need now.
I didn’t come all this way, do all this work, for Colt fucking Darling to ruin all my progress in one night.
But fuck, it was a good night.
I push the thought away, text Baron back, and look up the towing company. By the time I make the calls and get my car back, snow has started to fall in hard streaks, cold and bitter, and my brothers are texting me again, asking where I am, when I’m coming over. They miss me, their kids miss me, our mother misses me. I have all this love here, people who want me there. I’d be a fool to leave it behind.
In a few hours, we’ll go to Christmas Eve mass together, like we always do. We’ll go home and sit around the fireplace looking at the tree, talking, listening to the Frank Sinatra Christmas album our mom always insists upon playing on the old record player. We’ll help the kids hang their stockings, and we’ll hang ours too, because it makes our mother happy, and that’s what we’ve always done.
I’ll be happy for them—genuinely happy. My oldest brother deserves the family he always wanted. My other older brother definitely deserves happiness after all the shit he’s gone through with his fiancé and even before her. My sister and her husband deserve a fucking medal for being such good parents to their hoard of children. My twin and his fiancé, Colt’s sister… I can’t want anything but the best for them, having to deal with each other, and having let me go, so I no longer have to.
But despite all that happiness, a selfish little part of me wishes I had someone too. That I wasn’t the one person alone again this year. Even Ma has some new guy.
Here I am, though, single as usual, ready to go play with the kids so the couples can sneak off for some alone time, ready to smile and be part of the family, to tell them I’m living it up in the city, having fun, going out to clubs every night. Later, I might sneak off to one of them for a few hours, come home before dawn smelling like another man’s cologne. And they’ll all be a little jealous because when they imagine living my life, it’s with their partner at their side. They’ve forgotten what it’s like to be lonely, forgotten loneliness exists, because in their world, it doesn’t.
They’ve all found their person. They can no longer imagine life without them.
They didn’t scare their person away by being too thirsty, too eager, too much.
I asked for Colt’s whole life when all he signed up for was one night. He just wanted to fuck, and I might as well have pulled out a ring. I’m the fucking idiot.
Of course he ran. I knew he was a flight risk, and I still tried to bully him into a commitment on the spot, just like I always bullied him into giving me what I wanted, regardless of what he wanted. He never wanted me.
There’s no use chasing someone who doesn’t want to be caught. That’s the difference between us. Colt doesn’t want to be caught. I do. And somewhere out there is a man who won’t just want to fuck me. He’ll want to keep me.
But he has to catch me first.
nine
Colt Darling
Christmas Eve day is boring and quiet. Mom sits under her blanket, staring out the window at nothing. Dad is several gin and tonics deep already when I get home. He doesn’t drink in front of me, but I can smell it on him, can see it in the slight softness in his eyes, how relaxed he is. For the first time in a while, I want to be that way too—a little less me, a little less aware of the stagnation of my life here.
I silently curse Duke for that. I was fine before I saw him. Maybe not totally happy, like he is, but content. My life didn’t look quite so small until I saw how big his life is. How perfect for him. A big fucking man with a big fucking dick and a big fucking life. No wonder he never fit in this small town. It wasn’t ready for a guy like that, with all that fury and pain, couldn’t contain him, like trying to hold a wildfire on the head of a match.
After lunch, I sit out on the back deck with Dad. He lights his cigar, and I light my cigarette, and we smoke in silence. It’s damp and still out, sixty degrees, grey as every Arkansas winter. There’s no chance of snow. No chance of things being different this year.
“How is everyone?” I ask after a minute. “They all coming tomorrow?”
