Page 28 of Colt (The Bull Riders #2)

Chapter Thirteen

Colt

I can’t stop thinking about how distant Allison seemed after the lake yesterday.

I also don’t like how empty my bed was last night, I don’t like how empty it was this morning, and I don’t like drinking coffee by myself.

I know she has a shift at the store today, but I still think she should’ve stayed with me.

She’s done it other nights when she had work.

I hear myself in my own head. I’m whiny, and I’m pouting. I haven’t been this bad since… Well, I was going to say early on in the injury, but really, it’s just been since I’ve been sharing space with her. Everything has felt more doable. Everything has felt easier.

Going out tonight doesn’t feel easy. For a number of reasons.

One of them being that Allison and I have to pretend that nothing is happening.

Because I can’t even imagine the trauma if our small town found out what we were doing.

Much less the issues that it would create in the family.

It’s not even fun to imagine as a bit. It’s just a horror.

But I’m also not looking forward to tonight because this is me, stepping out as healed as I am, as healed as I’m not, I’m so used to just being…

The version of myself that I was. I guess I’m still him in a lot of ways.

I still feel ambition. The desire to go back to the rodeo, to ride.

Though there is a dark cloud over that. The anxiety that I feel when I think about the accident.

Yeah. I need to deal with that. I need to see a therapist, probably.

Weird realization to have as I’m getting ready to go out to a bar.

Or maybe it’s not. I don’t want to be my dad.

I don’t know my dad’s life story, honestly.

I don’t know that I need to. He definitely doesn’t seem like a man who has ever healed from a single thing.

Maybe he’s just a narcissist. Maybe he just runs around hurting people because.

Or maybe it’s because there were things that were done to him that were wrong too.

And he’s just paying it forward. I feel like you actually have to do some work to not pay your hurt forward.

As epiphanies go, I don’t necessarily find this to be a welcome one.

But it makes me feel like this pursuit of not being my father might be winnable in ways I hadn’t realized.

Because I can make a choice. Because I can take steps, action toward not being him.

Maybe I should talk to Allison about that. About the fact that I need to see a therapist.

I look at myself in the mirror. Me from a couple of months ago would’ve thought that this was weak. Admitting that I need some help. I don’t see it that way now. It’s like something has shifted inside of me.

It’s not weak to ask for help.

Strong people do it.

I saw my injured body as something weak, something wrong, but my body is strong.

It survived. It’s like this, in a way that I would describe as being not perfect, but it’s mine.

Maybe I’ll never be able to do everything that I could before.

I can have sex with Allison. Give her pleasure.

I can go to the lake. I can go out to a bar.

I’m alive.

And that’s something to be grateful for. Bodies are difficult. They can turn on you. Disease can eat them from the inside.

But mine saved me. I swallow hard, and walk out of the bathroom, head into the living room. I put on one boot. I get up on my crutches. I text Allison.

You almost ready?

Yes.

She comes to the door two minutes later, wearing a white sundress that makes me want to thump my foot and howl like a cartoon wolf.

I’m never going to be able to be normal about her again.

She’s so sexy. I’ve always thought so. But I could put that away.

I could minimize it. I can’t now. Now every time I look at her, I’m going to be looking right through whatever she’s wearing.

I’m going to have a detailed impression of her gorgeous body burned into my mind. I am so, so profoundly screwed.

“You look great,” I say, my voice sounding rougher than I intended it to.

“So do you,” she says.

I think I look ridiculous. With my cut-up jeans and my giant brace. My black T-shirt and my black cowboy hat, like I’m still some kind of bad son of a bitch.

But it’s nice of her to say.

I’ve never had a fragile ego. It’s always been very, very healthy. But it’s taken a little bit of a beating the last month and a half.

And anyway, it means something different to hear it from her.

“Let’s go,” she says.

We get into the car and she drives us the short distance to the saloon. We have to park around the corner, all the way up the curb, and she looks at me apologetically.

“Sorry. Kind of a long walk.”

“No longer than the walk to the lake.” I look at her. “You okay?”

She looks away. “Yeah.”

I reach out and grip her chin, turning her face toward me. “Something’s bothering you.”

“It’s not. It’s really not.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Allison. You’ve never been especially good at it, and now I know you way too well.”

“It’s… It’s just that yesterday was really intense. I’m afraid that I don’t know quite what to do with it. I don’t really know how to handle it.”

“You don’t have to do anything. It’s just us.”

“But not tonight. Tonight it’s not just us. Tonight we have to go in there and… Pretend nothing’s happening.”

“It’s fine,” I say. “Listen, we’re friends.

” I hear the words come out of my mouth, and I don’t like them.

I don’t feel like they’re exactly right.

And yet, I say them anyway. “We’re always going to be friends after this.

And we’re going to have nights like this.

This thing between you and me, we’ll always have that.

But it shouldn’t hurt. Or be hard or scary.

We’ll just lean into the friendship part in there. It’ll be fine.”

I can’t say for sure that I believe all that.

She looked so sad, and I don’t know what else to do.

I want to talk to her about therapy. I want to have her to myself tonight, but I can’t.

Everything’s going to be okay. Something about the intensity of the lake bothered her.

It was intense. It was amazing. I’ve never been with anybody without a condom, and it was…

I push the thought away. We have to go be in public now.

I get out of the car, and begin my trudge up the sidewalk.

At our home – my house. Weird that I’m thinking of it that way in context with her – we hold hands a lot.

But that’s not going to happen here. I walk into the bar, with her behind me.

And I don’t think I was adequately prepared for the force of everyone looking at me when I walk in.

I feel a little bit less like a narcissist when I feel the wave of reaction that goes through the room.

I’m not making it up. People around here definitely have opinions about me.

“Colt!” Laz throws his hands up from behind the bar, a wide smile on his face. “Your drinks are on me tonight.”

“You have to do that,” I say.

“If they’re not on him, they’re on me,” says an older, grizzled rancher, who I think is named Mark, sitting at the end of the bar.

“No, drinks are definitely on me.”

I blink hard when I see Dane Parker getting up and walking toward me. He has a slight limp. From the exact same sort of accident that I was in. “From one busted-up bull rider to another, please let me get drinks for you and your whole party.”

“That’s… That’s too kind of you.” Dane was one of the men who taught me to ride. Him and Dallas’s dad Bennett. I haven’t seen Dane in a long time.

“I’d get a drink with you, but my wife is antsy to leave.”

His wife, Beatrix, smiles a few tables away. I’ve always thought she was really pretty. A redhead. Maybe I have a thing for redheads.

“We have to get home to the kids,” she says. “And Evan.”

“Evan is still alive?” Evan is a rescue raccoon that Beatrix has had for years, and he’s mildly famous around town.

“Yes,” she says. “A raccoon’s life expectancy is pretty short when they’re in the wild left to their own devices, but since Evan domesticated himself, he’s living fat and happy in the house.”

“In the house ,” Dane says. “This is my life.” But he looks happy. “Women will do that to you. Love does that to you.”

He found love after his accident.

He also never went back to the rodeo. For some reason, I think maybe I can be okay with that. I think I have to be. Whatever the outcome is, I think I have to be okay with the possibility that I might not go back. I might not be able to. I might not want to.

“Thanks again,” I say.

He tips his hat, smiles and walks out with his wife.

“A pet raccoon,” I say as Allison approaches me. “That’s the weirdest thing.”

“That was nice of him,” she says.

“Yeah. Really nice.”

The door opens again, and Dallas, Sarah, Lily and Gentry walk into the bar. “This is like that scene in The Lord of the Rings when Frodo wakes up in the house of Elrond and is reunited with everyone,” Sarah says after we greet each other enthusiastically.

Dallas looks at her. “I don’t think anyone else knows what that is.”

“I do,” Gentry says.

We stop cluttering up the front of the bar, and head back to the back of the bar.

We had Sarah’s birthday party here last year.

It’s funny how much things can change. I was on top of my game.

Hitting on her with actually no insight into her relationship with Dallas.

Dancing like nothing on my body could ever hurt ever.

It’s funny, though. Because I’ve always felt untouchable.

But that means more than one thing. I always felt like there was a certain amount of security in my position. But I’ve also always felt distant. From a lot of people in my life. Like there’s some deep part of me that nobody really touches. Everybody gets the performance. Nobody gets me.

That feels safest. It feels like the right thing. The only thing.