Page 113 of Colt

Sipping his whiskey, he sets down the glass. “Speaking of, is your mom doing any better?”

“Yes and no. I’m not sure she’s any happier, but I think she’s gotten to a level of acceptance that makes her life tolerable.”

Colton looks away. “Is loving your life a ridiculous ask of the universe, though? Like, is it even possible? I like your idea of saying yes to more shit, but…”

I love how open he is tonight. So easy to talk to. Not about bullshit but about real things. Things I think about often but never really talk through.

“I hope it’s not a ridiculous ask,” I reply. “Did you love your life? Before⁠—”

“My wife died?” He runs a hand over his face. “I thought I did. I wanted to. But in retrospect, I’m not so sure.”

“Oh. Wow. Interesting.”

He pulls his brows together. “This is not exactly scintillating first-date material, this story.”

“Who cares? You already know you’re getting laid.”

“I am?”

I elbow him. “Tell me. Only if you want to, of course. But I’m down to listen.”

“All right.” He falls back against the booth, taking another sip of whiskey. “Abby and I met freshman year of high school. We dated for a while. She was my first everything, you know? We were crazy about each other. Or I was crazy about her at least. I asked her to marry me the day we graduated.”

I nod. “Y’all started young.”

“Too young. But we didn’t know any better, because that’s what our parents did, and their parents before them. We waited awhile to have Dean, though. She wasn’t sure she was ready to have a baby.”

“But you were?”

He lifts a massive shoulder. “I always knew I wanted to be a daddy. I was head over heels in love with Abby, and I’d just been promoted to foreman. Figured there was no better time to start a family.”

My heart squeezes. A literal squeeze that has me feeling short of breath. The more I hang out with Colton, the more I realize that his grumpy asshole exterior is exactly that—an exterior, a protective shell.

He’s actually, shockingly, a bit of a teddy bear inside.

I keep my hand on his knee. “That’s sweet. I admire you for knowing what you wanted so early. I still don’t know if I want kids.”

“I won’t try to sway you one way or the other. Yes, Dean is absolutely the best thing I ever did, but he’s also the hardest thing.”

“I like that you can be real about parenting. It looks incredibly tough, but there’s all this messaging about how magical it is and how my life will be pointless if I don’t have kids.”

Colton cuts me a look. “You’re too smart to believe that bullshit.”

“And you’re too smart to think a ‘tolerable’ life is all you deserve.”

“We’re getting deep tonight, aren’t we?” His gaze glimmers with mischief.

I roll my eyes. “I’m not even going to acknowledge that with a joke.”

“Anyway, Abby and I started growing apart even before Dean was born. I think she wanted to want to be a wife and live on a ranch and, you know, be Paige Wallace two-point-oh. But I was so busy, and she was bored. So she ended up getting a job at the high school here in town.”

“Did she teach?”

“She was a history teacher, yes. She started spending more time there, and I was spending, God, all my time on the ranch. My siblings were all still so young, and I felt like I needed to start carrying my weight and maybe theirs too. I didn’t want to be pushy with Abby about having kids, but I started to wonder if she and I just wanted different things. I finally convinced her to try. It was the first time we…yeah, in a long time. Once Dean came along, we were pretty much roommates from that point on.” He swallows the rest of his whiskey. “A year later, I find out she was having an affair with one of the football coaches. We were going to separate, but then she got diagnosed with stage four cancer.”

I cover my mouth with my hand. “Oh my God.” Oh my God.

My pulse pounds in my ears. What a tragedy.