Page 74 of Colt
“It wasn’t your fault. None of it was your fault.” Colt reached out, hesitating just before his fingers touched my face. “Can I…?”
I nodded.
He brushed a tear from my cheek, his touch feather-light and impossibly gentle.
Something passed through me when his hand touched my face—not quite memory, not quite recognition. Something. I covered his hand with mine before I could think better of it. Held it there.
Colt went very still.
“I need to tell you something,” I said. “About this morning.”
He waited.
“I was looking at the wedding photo. The one you left on the counter. And I remembered it. Not the photo—I remembered being there. You saying your vows. Your hands were shaking so badly when you put the ring on that you almost dropped it—” My voice broke. “You were crying. I was crying. You kissed me.”
Colt didn’t move.
“That was real,” I said. “I remember being there.”
For a long moment he didn’t move at all. Then he was pulling me into his arms, so tight I could barely breathe, his face buried in my hair.
“You remember.” His voice was wrecked against the side of my head. “Lilac.”
“I remember loving you.” I held on just as hard. “I remember being so sure.”
He held me like he was afraid to let go.
“I should have told you this morning,” I said into his shoulder. “I needed to sit with it first. I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. Just kept holding on.
After a while I eased back enough to look at him. His eyes were red. He didn’t try to hide it.
“I want to try,” I said. “That’s all I know right now.”
He pulled me back in without a word, his arms around me, his face against the side of my head. Not desperate this time.Quieter. Like a man setting something down he’d been carrying for a long time.
I let him hold me.
Chapter 29
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— Colt —
She wanted to try. After everything—after the cruelty of that first week, after weeks of cautious distance, after proving myself day after day, she wanted to try.
I should have been elated. And part of me was. But another part, the part that had spent seven years learning not to trust good things, whispered warnings in my ear.
What if it was too much? What if the pressure of trying to rebuild something only I could remember destroyed any chance we had? What if I pushed too hard and she retreated?
I spent a sleepless night wrestling with those fears. By morning, I’d made a decision.
I found Lilac in Betty’s garden, pulling weeds while the boys were at school. She looked up when I approached, a tentative smile on her face.
“Hey.” She wiped dirt on her jeans. “I was just thinking about you.”
“Good thoughts, I hope.”
