Page 8 of Colt (The Bull Riders #2)

He’s just not the kind of guy who’s going to ever want to sit and let grass grow beneath his feet, and he has to for a little while.

And I’m going to be his babysitter.

“So, you’re about halfway through school?”

I almost have whiplash from the switch in conversation. Now he wants to make small talk?

“Yes,” I say.

“That’s great.”

“Thanks.”

I tighten my hands on the steering wheel and stare straight ahead.

I’m so rarely alone with Colt. It’s not really by design.

I haven’t thought this much about my relationship with him in a really long time.

About all the stages that we’ve gone through.

About all the feelings. It’s just the near-death experience that brought it all up.

“This is weird,” he says.

“What is?”

“I’m used to…” He looks out the window, and we pass a sign that says Welcome to Gold Valley. And I can fill in the blanks. He’s used to a hero’s welcome. A triumphant return. He’s used to being Colt Campbell, the Golden Boy of Gold Valley.

It isn’t that he’s not , but I can understand why he feels like things are different now.

I can’t imagine Colt sitting still. He’s active.

He always has been. I have a hard time imagining him resting.

He’s not the kind of guy who would ever do an office job.

Not of his own accord. So, he isn’t going to be working during this time.

He likes to be outside. He works with the animals, with the land. But depending on how he heals, he’s going to have to rethink. I suspect he hasn’t gone that far yet. I doubt he let himself.

I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to have that ugly truth sitting inside of me. That his life probably changed forever that day, and there’s nothing he can do about it. There’s no overachieving, no being blessed or golden or lucky that’s going to change it.

It’ll just be what it is. And only time will tell.

Both of us fall silent as we drive into town. Our houses are just a block away from Main Street. From all the little boutique shops that tourists love in Gold Valley.

It’s such a great town to walk in and walking down the street is going to be difficult for him now.

My stomach clenches. I know what it’s like to have your life change when you don’t want it to.

But my mom had cancer for a long time. I could see the change coming toward me for a long time.

I didn’t want to believe it, of course. Nobody wants to believe that a diagnosis like that is final – regardless of what you’re told.

We hoped, until the end. And then we did our very best to make that last bit of time as wonderful as possible.

But God, we all wanted more.

I know what it’s like to have everything changed. But change came for Colt like a freight train, and I’m sure that can’t be easy.

One thing I really know, though, is how you can’t negotiate with things like that. They come for you. Vicious and horrible, a rabid dog going straight for your throat, whether you’re ready or not.

But Colt isn’t one of those people who accepts. Not easily. It’s one of the things that drew me to him back when we were younger and not related by marriage. Now, I can see where it might benefit him, but it’s also going to be difficult.

We drive down the side street that leads to our houses. Mine is white, with flower boxes underneath the windows filled with red geraniums, matching red shutters providing a punctuation mark to the crisp paint.

Colt’s is also pretty, though I know it’s not because he likes it that way. It’s because he keeps it up for his mom and does improvements whenever she asks him to in exchange for living there when he’s in town.

It’s white with black trim, and a lovely potted palm on the front porch, and looks like a far more mature person lives in it.

I don’t say that, though, as I steer his truck into the empty driveway.

“Do you think you can manage to get out of this beast on your crutches? Because if you flatten me, I’m not going to be able to help either of us.”

He looks at me, a scowl twisting his handsome face.

“I’m fine.”

I scrunch my nose. “Are you, though?”

I’m choosing violence, apparently. It’s all I seem to know how to do with him. Even when I don’t really mean to. It’s a learned reaction at this point. A choreographed dance. Pirouette, insult, plié, snarky comment, spin, keep him five steps away at all times, pas de bourrée and jazz hands!

“I swear to God, Allison.”

He begins to open the passenger door, and I quickly turn off the truck engine.

“What are you doing?” I unbuckle as quickly as possible, prepared to dive out of the truck. “Chill the fuck out, dude. Let me help you.”

“You just said you didn’t want me to flatten you.”

“I don’t . Which is why we’re going to do it slowly, and carefully.”

“Title of your sex tape?”

Those words send a broad sweep of heat over my body, and he looks at me, our eyes meeting.

I feel my face getting hot, getting red, I resent that.

I resent that his stupid universal punchline joke has the power to make me turn red like it’s a personal thing.

Like it’s something I should give even one thought to.

It affects me, though, and I can’t deny it.

And then I see something in his blue eyes.

A glint of something that surprises me. But just as I begin to identify it, it’s gone.

I take a sharp breath.

“It’s the title of your sex tape,” I mutter as I get out of the driver’s seat.

As comebacks go, it’s not a great one. But whatever, I’m working with what I’ve got.

I straighten my shoulders and head around to his side of the vehicle. I open up the door, and he looks down at me.

“Very chivalrous,” he says.

“I’m helping you in a medical capacity,” I say as I stare at him.

The corner of his mouth tips up just slightly, and even though I can tell he’s uncomfortable, angry, and using poking at me to disguise it, he appreciates me saying that.

I have a feeling the medical capacity part makes it feel a little bit more bearable.

Versus feeling like I’m a big, strong prospector lifting him out of the carriage. Which is kind of funny.

He hands me his crutch, and then a second one.

“You know,” I say. “If your truck wasn’t a giant monument to masculine insecurity, this wouldn’t be quite so difficult.”

He’s too close to me all of a sudden. Leaning over, his face only a few inches from mine. “Insecurity? Is that what you got from this?”

“Conventional wisdom says that the bigger a man’s truck is, the smaller his –”

He doesn’t cut me off, and it annoys me, because I don’t want to say the word penis, and I think he knows that. I break off, as if I got the interruption that I was hoping for.

“My dick is fine,” he says.

“Great. Thanks for that.”

“I’m not breaking any records. But you know, I don’t give it much thought.”

“ Thank you .”

And somehow, I know that the way he doesn’t protest too much or even a little, even at all, is an indicator that, in fact, he’s well above average. Because any man with an insecurity would overcompensate in this moment, and he just looks wryly amused.

I don’t want to think about that. I’ve never found the size of a man’s penis to matter, anyway.

In fact, I’ve never given it much thought.

The first time I did, because it was uncomfortable, and it did hurt.

But I couldn’t say that the men I’ve slept with were appreciably different in size from one another.

Not that there’s been a pack of them, but I’m not a prude.

I’ve had relationships with a few different guys, and mainly, sex feels like the thing that happens after we have dinner, that makes us a couple and not friends.

Sometimes it’s more fun than others, but then, sometimes I can actually get there fast enough to have an orgasm when they do. Otherwise, it’s fine to just be close.

I haven’t had sex in a couple of months, but it’s fine, and I don’t need to be thinking about it right now. I think about Brady for a moment, though, and his penis. Because it would be nice to picture a penis that isn’t Colt’s, which I’ve never seen, and I don’t want to see it.

Oh God.

I need to stop thinking about this.

I can’t even picture Brady’s penis, and I last saw it three months ago. So really, size doesn’t matter, and penises are kind of a non-event, and yet, I have been standing here staring at my stepbrother thinking about them for forty-five whole seconds.

It has to stop.

“Just let me help you down.” I plant his crutch firmly in front of him, then the other one. “If you can sort of brace yourself on that, and my shoulder, and use both to get down.”

“Okay. I’m taking this as medical advice, which means I’m going to sue you for malpractice if I get hurt.”

“I mean, good luck with that, Colt. It would take you about two minutes to drain my bank account and spend everything I have.”

He leans in and, without sufficient warning, begins to lower himself down. I brace myself and stand firm as he manages to bring himself down to the ground with what seems like relative ease to me.

“And suddenly, I’m grateful that I’ve spent the past ten years lifting weights,” he says. “Though, I don’t love having that validated. I’d like to let myself go to seed at some point.”

“Yeah. I’m sure the upper body strength helps,” I say.

And then I look up, and we’re not even multiple inches apart.

We are a breath away from one another. He’s looking at me.

Gazing into my soul, I swear to God. My heart is beating so hard I feel like I might choke on it.

I look up, above his eyes, at that mean scar, and without thinking, I begin to lift my hand and let it hover there, right over it.

Then I catch myself and jerk it back down to my side on an indrawn breath.

I can’t just touch him. I know better than that.

“It looks better,” I say. “The cut on your head. Than it did , I mean.”

“It’s my understanding that’s how healing works.” His voice sounds rough.

“Yeah,” I say. “It just takes time.”

“I’m fine,” he says.

“Okay.”

I move away from him, and with his keys in my pocket, lead the way to the door, where I unlock it and open it up for him. I gaze around the small, crowded living room, which was entirely furnished by Cindy, or it wouldn’t be this well coordinated.

I’m rarely at Colt’s house when he’s there.

I’ve been before to check the mail, bring it in, and put it on the table when he’s traveling, and I’ve been to check on things when Cindy has concerns about the rental.

But that’s it. Now I’m looking at it, and critically.

The walkways are distressingly narrow for somebody trying to navigate on crutches, and I worry that he might fall.

“We need to get you a life alert,” I say.

He turns and shoots me a deadly glare.

“Hey. When you’ve fallen and you can’t get up, don’t complain at me because you chose to ignore my very sterling medical advice.”

“Get wrecked, Allison.”

“You already did.”

I walk into the kitchen, ignoring him now, and I open up the fridge. He’s got nothing in there except a bottle of beer and an onion.

“This is pathetic.”

“I haven’t been home for months,” he says.

“I know. Still, I… I’ll do a grocery delivery order for you, but until then, can I just bring you dinner tonight?”

“Sure,” he says.

“I’ll probably make something like spaghetti. I’m not a gourmand.”

“I appreciate it,” he says.

The sincerity weirds me out. Normally, he would fire back a quip of some kind about my cooking, or how he already had one near-death experience this month and doesn’t need to add another with my culinary skills.

The simple thank you is extremely weird.

I hear him walking away, and I decide to follow to see exactly where he’s headed.

He takes the short trek to the living room, then turns away from the couch, standing in front of it, bracing on his crutches, his leg in a brace that makes it so stiff and straight that maneuvering is a challenge.

I can see him doing the mental gymnastics on how exactly he’s supposed to sit down without falling down.

“I can help you,” I say.

He snorts, then lowers himself slowly, until the very end, where he loses some of his control and drops. “Fuck!”

“Well, I would’ve helped you,” I say.

“If I hadn’t torn open my fucking midsection on top of everything else, I would’ve been able to do it. It’s harder to control your body when you don’t have core muscles left intact.”

“Sorry.”

“Did you tear me open with your horns?”

“I don’t think so,” I say.

“Then I don’t need you to apologize to me. So stop. And don’t look at me like you feel bad for me. You don’t even like me.”

“I don’t…dislike you.”

“You’d rather cut your finger and rub a lemon on it than hang out with me, and we both know it. So don’t go making sad puppy eyes at me now.”

I know it’s pain and frustration making him grumpy, but it galls me a little bit. I have been helping him. I’m not his enemy.

I’m also aware that he’s reacting from a place of raw emotion right now, so I can be sanguine about it if I choose to be. And I should choose to be.

It’s nearly three o’clock, and I should go home and cook.

But the idea of leaving him even for a little bit gives me anxiety.

I just don’t know if he’s going to fall somewhere weird and not be able to get up, or…

Honestly, he quit taking his pain pills, and the pain of what he’s going through is severe enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if he moved the wrong way and lost consciousness.

Yes, he’s healed up quite a bit since the incident first happened, but that’s not the same as being healed. Genuinely not.

“I’m just going to go get some things and cook over here.”

“Why?”

I grit my teeth. “So, you don’t die. Like you, dislike you or extreme indifference you, Colt, I don’t want you to die.”

“They discharged me from the hospital, so I don’t think I’m on death’s door.”

“I know, but it was also on the understanding that someone would be taking care of you, and I don’t feel good dumping you off and running. Usually I do a portion of spaghetti and then I freeze the rest, but I’ll just make a whole batch tonight and leave you with the leftovers.”

“A lot of times I just get takeout,” he says.

“You can have takeout if you want,” I say, looking at him closely.

“You can cook.”

I wonder if he’s scared at all. If anywhere inside of himself, he’s had the realization that it is possible for him to hurt himself worse.

That he might not be able to just navigate things the way that he wants to.

Or if he’s just being Colt about it. Hardheaded, stubborn, and completely sure that, for him, everything will work out just fine.

“I’ll be right back.”

When I go outside, close the door behind me, and start the short walk over to my place, I burst into tears. I don’t even try to question it.