AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But before I can turn, he grabs my hand.
“What do you want me to say?” he asks, his voice tight. “That I got one beer with August then decided to sit out here for hours?”
“If that’s the truth then yeah, that’s what I want you to say.”
Colton scoffs. “You don’t want the truth.”
“This isn’t A Few Good Men, Colton. I don’t need a ‘You can’t handle the truth’ moment.”
“Fine. You want the full truth? I’m sitting out here because it’s easier than being in there. Next to you.”
My shoulders slump and I bite the inside of my lips to keep them from quivering, because he’s right—maybe I can’t handle the truth.
“I didn’t realize being around me was so hard.”
“Of course it’s hard,” he tells me, digging the knife even deeper. “It’s the most difficult thing in the world to be around you, and the fact you have no idea is mind-blowing.”
I’m on the verge of tears listening to him, but I hold them back because the last thing I will allow myself to do is cry in front of a man who so clearly can’t stand me.
“Well I’m sorry to have made your life so much more difficult,” I tell him, wanting nothing more than to run inside and get away from this horrible conversation. “So difficult that you’d rather sleep in your car than be around me.”
But he shakes his head. “Are you kidding me? Keeping myself in this car every fucking Friday night is driving me insane.”
I blink, suddenly feeling confused.
The ocean breeze picks up, whipping across my face and sending goose bumps all over my body, but I don’t move. There isn’t anything in the world that could make me move right now.
“I’ve been trying to keep myself away from you for you, not for me.”
I blink a few times.
“What are you…”
I feel so confused, but I don’t know what to ask to get clarification.
“Something has felt different between us for the past two weeks. You’ve been giving me a cold shoulder that I don’t understand. But at the same time, you have every right to do that, and I don’t want to be that guy at the store,” Colton says. “The one who makes you feel like you have to be careful at work. My home is your job, Emily, and I don’t ever want you to feel uncomfortable.”
I shake my head, the files in my mind that have catalogued our every interaction and every look and word exchanged suddenly beginning a violent reshuffle.
“I don’t want you to feel obligated to me in any way other than taking care of Teddy,” he adds. “And I thought…when you suddenly started avoiding me…I thought that was you trying to put things back in place.”
And just like that, everything clicks. Every miscommunication, every misunderstood expression, every withheld word…it all clicks into place.
“You were trying to leave me alone so I didn’t feel pressured,” I say, wanting to take everything he has told me and condense it into something small and manageable. “So when I thought you were out hooking up two weeks ago, you were actually out here sleeping.”
Colton clears his throat and looks off down the street, licks his lips. “Yeah, that pretty much…sums it up,” he says, looking embarrassed and a bit flustered.
“I wasn’t avoiding you,” I tell him, wanting to be as honest with him as he’s being with me. “I mean, maybe I was, a little bit. But it’s only because I was worried I was sucking up too much of your time. That I was…I don’t know…reading something into the way we were being together.”
“And how were we being together?” he asks me.
I shake my head. “I don’t know, but it was more, and I miss it and I want it back.”
Colton pauses, staring at me for a long moment.
“And what if I want more than what it was before?” he asks me, his tone low, sending shivers racing through my body.
I reach into my soul, scoop up every ounce of my confidence, and then reach forward to slip my arms around his middle, tucking myself against him in a way I’ve wanted to do for so long.
