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“I’m not a monster. I mean, I can be, but not how you think.” He takes a deep breath in and his chest slowly lowers as he lets it out. “My little sister saw this guy when she was sixteen. A guy she shouldn’t have been seeing, and she knew it. She hid it from everyone, including me. We were really close, told each other everything, but she went behind my back and dated some thirty-five-year-old man.” His face hardens. “They shouldn’t have been together in the first place, but he had this hold on her. It completely stripped her of who she was. She lost her spunk, her love for life. I noticed something had changed in her, and asked her about it, but she lied to me. Told me her classes were too hard, and that she was going through drama with her friends.
“It wasn’t until she came home crying one night that I realized she had been lying. It was four in the morning and she was supposed to have been at her friend's house. She had her phone, so if she wanted to come home, she could have called me for a ride. But she didn’t. I knew there was something else going on and begged her to tell me what it was, but she wouldn’t talk to me. She just kept crying and shaking. She wouldn’t even look at me.”
My heart sinks as I recognize the similarity.
“I felt awful. I didn’t know what was going on or how to help Savannah. So I went through her phone to see if I could find anything, but the only thing I found were texts and calls from Michael. I didn’t know anyone named Michael, and she had never mentioned him. I kept scrolling through and saw that the friend she was supposed to have been staying the night with hadn’t texted in the last two months. She was a teenage girl. They don’t just not text their friends.”
Colt’s arms are resting on his knees, but his knuckles are white, clearly struggling with the memories, but he keeps going.
“I called Michael from her phone, hoping to get some answers. But when he picked up, he didn’t even say hello. He went right into spewing all these vile, disgusting things at what he assumed was my sister.” His eyes are still on me, but they’re empty for the first time. “I just hung up the phone. I was confused. All I could think to do was put Savannah to bed and stay with her until she was calm. When she finally was, she told me everything. How the guy was thirty-five, they’d been dating for three months, they’d gotten into a fight and he had said some pretty shitty things to her. But she made me promise not to tell our parents, and that she was going to handle it. I didn’t want her to not come to me in the future, so I agreed.
“A week later, she came home from school with a black eye. She didn’t want to tell me, but I threatened to tell our parents if she didn’t tell me what the hell happened. When she did, I fucking lost it. That grown ass man had punched my sister in her face for trying to break it off with him. He picked her up from school to ‘work things out’, but when she didn’t want to, he punished her. Nothing from that point forward mattered to me. My whole mind went blank and all I saw was red. I don’t even remember how I found out where he lived, but I showed up at his house. When he answered the door, I snapped.”
Colt’s eyes come back into focus. He knows what he’s about to tell me could change things.
“I beat the shit out of him, Libs. Within an inch of his life. I didn’t stop until his roommates were pulling me off of him. I’d never laid my hands on anyone. I prided myself on being this cool, calm, collected guy. But in an instant, I lost sight of who I was and didn’t even care.”
Colt stops talking, but I wait; there’s more to the story, he just needs time.
“He didn’t press charges. He probably figured if he did, the cops would know he had been with a minor, and that wouldn’t do him any good. I didn’t tell anyone what happened, though. Not my parents, the cops, or Savannah. For all she knew, the fucker just stopped talking to her. She was upset for a while, which pissed me off, but eventually, life went back to normal. There are still times that I get so mad I start to see red again.”
Shadows fading, his face softens.
“I keep a tight leash on my anger. I haven’t let it slip since that day, but there are things that push me beyond my limit, test my control. It scares the shit out of me that I could lose it again. Because I’m older now, stronger, and I don’t know that it could be stopped before it’s too late.” Pain is written all over his face and I just want to make it better for him. I never would have known he carried around such heavy stuff.
I get up on my knees and crawl over to him, swinging a leg over to straddle his lap. It's a dangerous position to be in, but my body calls to him, and I'm tired of fighting it. I grab his face so we are looking directly at each other, and his hands slide onto the tops of my thighs. Anyone seeing us like this would think it’s sexual, but there’s nothing sexual about this moment. Just pure intimacy.
Making sure our eyes are locked, I speak clearly, needing him to feel exactly what I’m saying. “You are a good man, Colt.”
His face turns rosy under his sun kissed skin and I want to kiss it away. “That’s the first time you’ve called me by my name to my face.” His head tilts to the side. “I think I'm addicted.” I can’t help but smile. Even after such a serious conversation, Colt has the ability to keep things light and happy.
18
Libby and I stayed up most of the night talking. She told me more about her father; some of the challenging times she went through, but also the really good times she had with him. I found out that her mom, Tiffany, all but abandoned her when he left. She kept a roof over her head, but that was about it. Libby has taken care of herself and her mother since she was seventeen. It’s no wonder she’s had a tough time letting people in. The two people that were supposed to be there for her the most in the world had done the exact opposite.
I also told her more about Savannah. I wasn’t kidding when I said she was my best friend. After everything that went down that summer, we came out the other side with an even stronger bond.
We ended up making our way over to the couch at some point and talked until Libby couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer, and fell asleep with her feet in my lap. I watched her features as they softened. In her sleep, she looked as if she didn’t have a care in the world, all traces of anxiety and worry gone. I wish she could look like that all the time.
I don’t know when I fell asleep, but I wake up to a pounding on the front door. Wiping the sleep from my eyes, I look over to Libby and she’s still asleep. The knocking continues, so I carefully slide her legs off my lap and lay them on the couch as I get up. This isn’t my place, but I don’t want the incessant knocking to wake her up after such a late night. Her body still looks so ran down and she needs all the sleep she can get.
I make my way over to the door and open it right as a hand comes back in to land on it. Freezing mid-movement, the guy’s eyes damn near pop out of his head when he sees me. He looks familiar, but I can’t place him.
“Who the fuck are you?” He says, sizing me up.
You’ve got to be kidding me. The guy’s voice brings back a very vivid memory, reminding me exactly where I know him from, thanks to the pictures and videos Tyson used to fill me in on him.
“Colt. You?” I know who he is, but I want him to tell me.
“Jett,” he snarls. “Where’s Elizabeth?”
I walk forward, causing him to back up and shut the door behind me.
“She’s asleep. Did you need something?”
“I need to talk to Liza, so if you don’t mind,” He tries to push past me, but I don’t budge.
“Actually, I do.” Jett’s eyes shoot daggers. “Like I said, Libby is asleep. But if you want to give me a message, I’ll be sure to let her know.”
