“Molly…”
“Don’t.” Her voice cracks on the single syllable. “Just…don’t.”
I just nod, because I owe her that much. Then I turn and walk away and don’t look back, because looking back would be for me and not for her and I’ve already taken enough.
My cheek throbs. Good. The physical feeling is the only thing I can process right now as I push into the woods, toward where Dawson parked.
As I make my way past the tree line, Colt steps out of the dark between two trees like he’s been leaning there for a while. Like he knew exactly which direction I’d come from. He’s got a bottleloose in one hand, his eyes on me, and that expression on his face—that still, knowing expression that I’ve wanted to wipe off since the first night at the bonfire.
I stop.
“There he is. I was wondering if you’d show up, Golden Boy. You look a little rough around the edges.”
“You sent that photo.”
He tips his head. Doesn’t confirm, doesn’t deny, just watches me with those blue-green eyes that catch the faint light and I hate him. I genuinely hate him. My hands are shaking, which makes me fucking hate him more.
“You used her. You put your hands on her to get to me. Youknowthat’s what you did.”
“Did it work?”
The words hit like a lit match. “She’s a person, Colt?—”
“You’re right. Sheisa person. She’s also the girl you’ve been stringing along for months because you don’t have the guts to admit what you actually want.” He pushes off the tree, taking one step toward me, unhurried. “I did her a favor. You did too, just now. I saw.”
“Stay out of my life.”
“You don’t want me to stay out of your life.” Another step. “You want me so deep in it you can’t think straight and that’s exactly what’s killing you right now.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I felt your hard dick in that hallway, Rhett. I’ve been thinking about that every night this week. Thinking about wrapping my hand around you. Thinking about dropping to my knees right here in the dark and putting my mouth on you until you stop lying to yourself and start making sounds I know you’ve got locked up somewhere behind all that control.”
My breath leaves my body entirely.
“I want to taste you. I want to take you apart so slowly you forget every single thing you think you’re supposed to be. And the only thing standing between you and that right now is four inches of air and your own stubborn bullshit.”
“Shut up.” My voice comes out wrecked and we both know it.
“Make me, Rhett.” His eyes drop to my mouth and stay there, dark and patient and absolutely certain. “Or better yet, put that pretty mouth on me, Cowboy, and make us both stop talking.”
He’s so close I can smell the whisky on his breath. A single curl falls across his forehead as the corner of his mouth curls into a smile, and my walls crumble.
I grab him by the front of his shirt and kiss him.
It’s not tender. It’s hard, immediate, and furious—my fist in his shirt, my mouth on his, shutting him up the only way I can think of. Proving something I can’t articulate, disproving something else entirely. I feel him go still for one split second—just one—and then he kisses me back and it’s nothing like any kiss I’ve ever had in my life.
It’s like being leveled.
The kiss breaks something open in me that I didn't know was closed. His hand comes up to the back of my neck, angling me exactly where he wants me, and I let him, because all logic has completely vacated the building and left someone else in charge, someone who has been waiting a very long time for exactly this.
I pull back first, breathing hard.
“There,” I say, my voice wrecked. “That what you wanted? That prove anything to you?”
Colt looks at me. His mouth is slightly bruised, his eyes are dark, and he looks like a man who just won something and knows it. “Yeah,” he says. “It does.”
I release his shirt and step back, turn to head deeper into the woods, toward the truck, toward anything that is away from him.
