Page 22 of Colt (The Bull Riders #2)

Chapter Eleven

Colt

I’m still not sure if I just had a fever dream or if all that really happened. Not even as I pull the condom off and throw it into the trash can do I really feel certain that it’s reality.

Except my brain is buzzing, and my body feels more satisfied than it has in a hell of a long time, so it has to be real.

Yeah. It has to be real.

I just fucked my stepsister.

I look up, and I see my reflection in the mirror. I half expect to see a monster staring back at me. Because who does that? Who puts his entire family dynamic in jeopardy to get laid? I brace my hands on the counter.

“You do,” I say to my reflection. “You do. You’re your fucking dad.”

Ouch. That actually hurts. Even though it came from me.

I feel gross. That comparison makes me feel gross.

The sex with Allison made me feel great.

It’s more that I wish I could regret it.

That’s the problem. I know that I should.

I know the comparison to my dad is apt. Because he was definitely the kind of man who took his pleasure into consideration far above what anyone in the situation needed.

I let her smooth-talk the consequences away. I didn’t have to do that. I knew exactly what I was doing. And part of me relished it.

Because my attraction to her has been the one taboo thing that I’ve avoided all this time. My attraction to her has been something that I’ve suppressed.

So when she came in, looking so cute in that sweatsuit, wearing nothing underneath it – I just had a feeling, given that she was obviously right out of the shower – I thought…

Why not? Why shouldn’t I have her? I’m being denied the rodeo.

I’m being denied my physical fitness. My good health.

Denying myself Allison feels like one thing too many. Once she kissed me… It was over.

“Scumbag,” I say to my reflection. I wait to be bothered by it.

I’m just not.

I take a deep breath and pause in my bedroom. I decide that I need to get dressed before going out there. Walking on crutches naked is kind of absurd. I don’t need any visible bouncing happening in front of her.

I scowl as I dress. I’m not entirely steady after what just happened.

I come out into the living room, and she’s also dressed. Her hair is still wet, and she’s sitting there on the couch cross-legged, looking small and vulnerable, and making me feel just awful.

“Are you okay?”

“Oh, I’m good,” she says. She looks up at me, her expression dreamy. “I’m literally just zoning out because I’m having an orgasm high.”

My ego jumps up inside me and requests a high five. I don’t honor that. But it feels good. It really does feel good. And I feel like maybe I’m not entirely broken.

So. That’s exactly what she wanted. For me to feel better about myself. She wanted to know that sex can be great. I provided it.

“Did I exceed expectations?”

“Yes,” she says. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “That was amazing.”

Silence stretches between us. We never had the closest relationship.

I don’t always know what to say to her. We’re better when we’re sniping at each other than when we’re trying to make serious conversation.

Whenever we try, it usually ends badly. Sincerity would be great right now.

It would be the right thing. But I don’t especially know how to wield it.

“I’m probably going to move,” she says.

“What?”

“When my rotations start? I think I am going to move. I think I’ll even look for an apartment. Something small, something I don’t have to really keep up. Because I’m going to have so much work to do.”

“Okay.” I’m not sure where this is going.

“It’ll be about a week into the new term. After the break. I have a feeling you’ll be in a way better position and…”

“Are you… About to suggest that we keep doing this until you leave?”

She looks away from me, and not slowly. “Yes. I am about to suggest that. Because I think… I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the two of us are going to be around each other and not want to do this. You’re stuck in the house…”

“Are you suggesting sex as a boredom buster?”

“Kind of,” she says. “But is it a bad suggestion?”

“No,” I say. I’m definitely not bored. I don’t feel hopeless. I don’t have images of my near-death dancing in my head, so I guess sex is the therapy that I’ve been waiting for all this time, even if I didn’t really know it.

“So you just want to keep doing this.”

“Yes. I do. Because we already did. And you can’t put the horse back in the barn once it’s bolted.”

“I’ve heard that.”

“We already have to keep it a secret.”

“Yeah. Definitely.”

“So it just seems reasonable that we might keep going with it. Because we’ve already earned whatever the consequences are.”

I don’t even want to argue with that. That, I think, is probably sex logic.

But I don’t really care. I also don’t really know what to do.

I’ve never been in a relationship; that’s not what this is.

But she’s somebody that I know better than the average bed partner, and I feel like I should sit with her.

Touch her. But also, I’m not sure romance feels exactly like the right thing.

Especially given the fact that we’ve both firmly established this is just physical, and things are going to go back to normal when we put an end to it.

Actually, I think she’s smart. My healing, her moving, it’ll be an easy line to draw under it.

And that’s the thing. We need clear lines, clear boundaries. An endpoint.

We have the endpoint.

“Do you want me to hold you?”

She lifts her head. “I… Yes.”

There. That’s what she wants. I maneuver myself down on the couch next to her, and I pull her into my arms. She takes a deep breath and rests her head on my chest. We sit for a moment like that. And I don’t question the contentedness coursing through my veins. It was good sex.

Great sex.

It fixed something inside of me. I’m sure of that much, even if I’m not sure of anything else.

So I sit with her like that, and I honestly can’t remember the last time my soul felt that quiet. Because there’s always something. The next ride, the next high.

But for some reason right now, I’m not worried about the future. I’m just feeling. We don’t have the TV on. She’s just resting her head against my chest. I look at her hair. That beautiful, red hair. Drying now, post-shower. It’s a little curlier than usual.

I push my fingers through the silky strands.

She’s beautiful. And I can finally let myself feel that. Know it. Fully engage with it. I can finally feel it.

“What are your plans today?” I ask.

She huffs. “I don’t have any. I mean, I don’t work today, and the term ended so…

“Well, I don’t have any plans. Because I’m a shut-in now.”

“Do you want to try to not be a shut-in?”

“I…” I think about going out in town. With my body the way that it is. All my injuries.

“What if we drove to a different town?” she says. Like she can read my mind.

“Oh. Yeah. I would be interested in that.”

The pressure of being me, in this town… that sounds so egotistical. I don’t like it. But it’s true. There are expectations of me. And anything short of a faith healing in public feels like I’m letting people down.

I know that’s not true. I know it’s not fair. But it is what it feels like.

“We can go to the grocery store, grab some lunch.”

“Yeah. I… I’d like that. Especially since I went to all the trouble to get dressed up.”

“So dressed up,” she says, poking me in the ribs.

There is such a casual intimacy to the touch. Before this, there hasn’t been any casual intimacy between us. There’s barely been casual friendliness.

There’s no real tension in our family. Except between us. We’re the tension. We’re the problem. We’re the two who have the power to break everything apart.

The power to take something great and easy and beautiful and turn it into something fraught and awful.

So we have to not do that.

But the truth is, whether we’d actually had sex or not, things had shifted between us, and the change was made.

She’s right about that.

Right about bolting horses, and how you can’t put them back into the barn.

My hand is on her hip. Just like the other day when she almost fell. I look at it. She’s not moving away from me now.

“When do you want to go?”

“Well,” I say slowly, my eye still trained on where my hand meets her hip. “I’d like to have some coffee. Get my head on straight. And then we can drive over to Tolowa. Do a little grocery shopping. Get some hamburgers.”

She squints at me. “I didn’t agree to hamburgers.”

“But I want one.”

“You can get that here. We should get Thai food. Because we can’t get that here.”

“I don’t want that. And I’m injured.”

“You’re starting to push it,” she says.

“Hey. How is asking to be babied pushing it? I was told yesterday, quite forcefully, that I need to lean into my infirmity.”

“I don’t think I ever said that.”

She gets up and walks into the kitchen. I watch her for a moment, my eyes trained on her backside. Now I know what it looks like completely naked. I look up at the ceiling and try to keep myself from getting another erection. How funny. I didn’t have a single one for ages. And now here we are.

I stand up slowly, and make my way in after her.

“I’m going to have to go home and get dressed at some point,” she says.

“Really? I like this.”

“That’s nice,” she says. “But I don’t think it’s appropriate for grocery shopping.”

“Not true. Plenty of people wear their pajamas grocery shopping. Hell, the toughest girls you know wear their cookie monster pajamas out to the grocery store.”

She frowns. “True. But those girls always have your back.”

“It’s true. Unlike the girl in the Tweety Bird pajamas. They’re just mean for no reason.”

She laughs. And I have this strange sense that I’ve missed an awful lot not having a real relationship with her over these last few years. We could have had this. Could’ve talked and joked. Sex aside, things have been difficult between us. They always have.