Page 15 of Colt (The Bull Riders #2)

I’m not the kind of dark, tortured motherfucker who’s just going to sit around thinking about how he wants his stepsister in a biblical fashion. It’s just not my style. I don’t do longing. I simply don’t.

As soon as I started feeling that, I just cut it off. I’m good at that.

I take a deep breath. And I marvel at how many stupid things have happened in the last hour. It’s kind of impressive.

I let out a breath, and I head into the house, because if there’s one thing I’m not, it’s a coward.

“Allison?”

“I’m here,” she says. She pops out of the kitchen and stands there staring at me. “I’m not going to leave you here to die just because I’m mad at you.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. About us. About the fact that it’s not right. Because of our relationship. But I don’t want you to think that the only reason it happened is because I feel bad about myself.”

“Then why did it happen?”

“Because I’ve actually been in close proximity with you for too long. Because I… You’re hot. That’s just true. And I don’t sit around dwelling on that. Okay?”

“Oh.”

“I’m not so small that I have to try to make myself feel better by giving myself a pity fuck, okay?”

“That’s… I believe you.” She looks bothered by that.

But hell, I’m bothered by it. It also galls me a little bit that there’s an element of…

It’s not that. It’s not. But I do feel a little bit small, and I can’t say that I’ve ever felt that before in my life.

I feel helpless. I don’t want to be in my body, so I don’t understand why anybody would want my body in them.

Jesus. I hate all this.

Above all else, I’m in a really bad place right now. And one thing I can’t be doing is dragging Allison down here with me. There would be real consequences to that. There’s a reason she’s forbidden.

I wish that word didn’t make my blood feel hotter. I wish my cock wasn’t hard for the first time in fucking weeks.

“We can just forget it happened,” she says. “I want to forget it happened.”

“Yeah. We’ll forget it.”

“We have dinner at Cindy and Dad’s tonight.”

“Yeah. I know.” Her voice is flat.

“So, we can’t go… At each other’s throats.”

Well, that has a different connotation now.

This feels bad. Like the air around us has changed.

And our mouths didn’t even touch. What the hell would’ve happened if they had?

We might’ve torn the space-time continuum.

Might have caused the big one that Oregon’s been waiting for all this time, the kind of cataclysmic earthquake that brings down everything around it, knocks out the power grid, and flattens whole buildings.

All because I lost my grip on who I am and what matters.

I want to keep reassuring her. I want to make her feel better.

I’m not in the business of hurting women’s feelings.

When I sleep with somebody, I want them to feel better about themselves when all is said and done.

But I can’t keep reassuring her, because there are bone fragments of lies in all the reassurance I want to give.

The truth is, things have changed.

I’ve changed.

My whole situation is upside down, and I can’t guarantee that those slivers of bone aren’t an even bigger deal than I think.

That they aren’t more of a damaging half-truth that I’d like to believe.

How much of it is about me?

The truth is, I’m kind of selfish. I cover all that up by being nice to everybody. Smiling at everybody. I make that selfishness palatable. I’m going to try not to do that here.

“I need a shower.”

“What if you pass out?”

“I’m not going to pass out.”

“You hurt yourself. I really do think we should maybe go get your leg looked at.”

“It doesn’t hurt anymore. I swear, if I have any kind of lingering pain, I’ll go get it looked at.”

“Drink a glass of water.”

There’s a wall up between us, and that’s fair.

I drink a glass of water, and then I go to the shower.

I know she’s still not happy about it, but I have the bench, and I don’t feel at all lightheaded.

But the problem is, now I feel aware of better feelings in my body.

More than just pain. As the water sluices over my skin, I think about her.

About her lips. They’re plump, the color of raspberries, and I can’t recall ever wanting to taste something quite so much.

Am I that basic? So basic that something being out of reach grabs hold of me now because I’m bored? No. I don’t think that’s the case.

That’s really shitty, if so.

But I’m getting hard thinking about her, and that makes me really mad, because I decided that I didn’t want to feel it, so it should just be over.

I lost control of everything. Every aspect of my body seems to belong to some outside entity now. It’s infuriating.

Absolutely infuriating.

I switch the water to cold, and grit my teeth together, my hands braced on my thighs as it pounds down on my back. Penance. I’m not a big fan of penance. I’m not a martyr. Not at all. I don’t like to be uncomfortable. I don’t do resistance.

Maybe that’s why I don’t like forbidden. Normally.

If I were bigger into baseball, I could recite some stats. I start thinking about the NFL playoffs. And then I start thinking about my accident. That does it. Everything inside me shuts off quickly.

Unsurprisingly.

I get dressed in another pair of ruined Wranglers, and I think about how fucking absurd it would look if I didn’t have the brace on.

It’s almost enough to make me laugh. But nothing much is funny right now.

Still, the image of me with my whole leg out in a pair of jeans with a slit up the side is pretty funny.

I’d look like a regular saloon girl at a much more progressive establishment than usually found in the wild west.

Hell. Maybe that’ll be how I make my money after this. Some cowboy OnlyFans where I give people a good taste of hairy thigh.

That’s a problem. I just can’t figure out how much my life is actually going to change.

I don’t want to. Today was a sharp reminder that it has, though.

I push it all away. Push it to the side.

I need to put on a smile for dinner. I don’t want my mom to be worried. I don’t need Gentry to be worried.

Hell, I don’t even want Lily to be worried.

My stepdad… He’s always been proud of me. Of what I accomplished in the rodeo. It’s gone a long way in healing some of the shit with my dad. What if I can’t do anything anymore?

This is depressing.

I grab my black cowboy hat and put it on my head. Then I take hold of my crutches and walk out of the room.

Allison is sitting in that same chair she was in the other night. She’s dressed in a white summer dress today. It’s so strange, because I was a scant inch from her mouth, and I didn’t notice what she was wearing, maybe because I was still dizzy from fainting. Fainting.

Damn.

Or maybe it’s because I was dizzy from the violets.

“Ready?”

“You know,” I say. “It’s not my driving leg. I could probably drive.”

“Yeah. The man who lost consciousness a few hours ago should drive.”

“I’m fine now.”

“Yeah. You’re totally fine. You’re doing great.”

“Nobody asked for sarcasm, Allison.”

“But you’re gonna get it.”

“I’m driving.”

The thing is, she’s not wrong, and I know that. I just don’t want her to be right. But I get into the passenger seat of her car, which is in my driveway. When we get in, I realize I didn’t ask her about her test.

“How did things go today?”

“Oh. Good. I mean, I don’t know yet if I passed, but I’ve been doing okay with all of it.”

“You want to be a nurse because of your mom, don’t you?”

I knew her mom. I remember her, just vaguely.

Often, she didn’t feel very well when I would come over and hang out with Gentry.

But she was nice, even while she was going through her treatments.

She would have good days sometimes, and then she would make us snacks.

She wore different wigs all the time, because she used to say that everyone knew her hair was gone anyway, so she wasn’t trying to fool anyone, but she also didn’t like going out bald either.

“Yeah,” she says. She starts the car and pulls it out of the driveway. I guess I haven’t earned any elaboration today. Fair enough. I wasn’t my best self. I’m not my best self. Do I have a best self?

I’m usually a winner. Then I find my true North from that position. I figure out where I’m headed, what I want, and what other people think of me based on that. Now that I don’t have it, I just kind of feel like a jackass.

It makes me question what I’ve ever done for anyone. Other than impress them. And what is that? What is it really? And what does it matter?

Nothing. Not a god damn thing.

Our parents’ place is out of town, nestled near the base of the mountains. They’ve got a great spread. My stepdad’s ranch is smaller than some around the area. There are some huge spreads in Gold Valley, including Dallas’s family ranch, Get Out of Dodge.

He has certified organic grass-fed beef.

He does good business selling to restaurants as far north as Seattle.

There’s a slightly different pace to this ranch than to a large operation, and I like it.

Once he retires, I’d like to take over the family business.

On my own property, of course. Of course, he’s only just now fifty, so it’ll be a while before he retires, but ideally, it’ll be a while before I settle down after the rodeo.

Suddenly, the timeline all feels like a blur. And the future that I’ve always imagined for myself isn’t stretching out in front of me like a wide flat road.

It’s blank.

We don’t talk for the entire car ride. But I’m pretty satisfied that we don’t look like we want to tear each other apart. Or tear each other’s clothes off.

I grit my teeth. That’s a dumb thing to think about. It’s a really dumb thing to think about.

Yes. She’s beautiful. I noticed that a long time ago. But I don’t need to let it fill me up now just because there’s a void inside of me where the rodeo should be.