Page 12 of From the Ashes (Redwood Bay Fire #2)

CHAPTER 12

Zahir

This feels like an alternate reality. Or perhaps some kind of surrealist painting.

Colton Ross does not belong in my home.

Yet here he is.

The walk from the beach was mostly quiet but surprisingly not awkward. However, now he’s standing in the middle of my living room, and neither of us seem sure what to do. I’m fully aware that the onus is on me to break the tension as this is my place. But my voice is caught in my throat as a debate rages inside me whether or not this was a terrible idea.

Because I know he shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t have opened my mouth and extended the invite. But now he is…it feels so right. So natural. Like we’ve traveled back in time to senior year.

“Uh, do you want something to drink?” I finally offer, remembering my manners. My teta would be ashamed of me for my rudeness. Well, she’ll be horrified if she ever finds out I let Colt in my home voluntarily. With any luck, she’ll never have to know.

Colt blinks, like he’s not sure if I’m talking to him or not. “Oh, um, sure. What have you got?”

“Water, juice, tea, iced tea, coffee,” I rattle off. Then, before I can stop myself, “And beer.”

Immediately, I know that’s setting a certain kind of vibe. But I can’t stop the thrill I feel when he grins in surprise. “I’ll take a beer.”

Nodding, my feet take me into the kitchen without much input from my brain. Which is lucky, because my thoughts are hurtling around my head like a tornado.

This just isn’t what I expected. Where’s the hotshot asshole lawyer that up and left overnight to move to the other side of the country to start a dazzling career? The man beside me as I pull two bottles from the fridge is almost…shy. Eager. Uncertain.

Humble.

He’s that sweet boy I’m sure I was the only one he let see back in school. Everyone else saw the captain of the debate team, a star athlete, a guy that could have been prom king if he hadn’t been too cool to run for it.

I’m the one who helped him with his chemistry homework. Who ran lines with him the single time he was brave enough to be in the school play, even just as a side character. Who held him when he had his one and only meltdown in our final year of school, sobbing in my bedroom, but refusing to tell me why. It’s pretty obvious what that was about in retrospect.

And I’m the one who looked into his eyes as we leaned in for that first kiss. Fuck, I haven’t allowed myself to think of that moment in so many years. Before it can overwhelm me, I busy myself finding the bottle opener and handing Colt his beer.

“The bathroom is just on the left, there,” I say in a somewhat stilted fashion. My messed up brain translates those words as I speak them to, ‘Here’s where I’d like you to get naked in my house.’

Unhelpful.

“There are spare towels in the closet,” I continue. “Help yourself to any products you need. I’ll pull out some sweats and a T-shirt to get you home. You can give them back when we next see Nevaeh.”

There. The implication is clear that we’re being friendly, but I’m not inviting him to stay all evening or offering to make him dinner or anything like that.

I’m also trying not to show the near aneurysm I’m having working out if I should offer him any underwear with the sweatpants. Saying that outright seems too personal, but I’ve realized that either way his junk will be rubbing all over something of mine.

Whatever. That’s what laundry detergent is for. I just need to not dwell on it, starting with not mentioning it in the first place.

“All good?” I ask.

“Thanks, man,” he says, pausing outside the bathroom. “I really appreciate this. I feel so stupid thinking I could go to the beach and not get messy.”

Oh, this is messy, all right. And I don’t just mean the sand and saltwater.

“Don’t mention it,” I say, trying not to look like I’m backing away when I am, in fact, backing away. “I’ll just get the, um, your clothes. My clothes. Uh…”

“Thanks,” he says again.

He leans on the doorframe, the beer bottle dangling from his thick, strong fingers as he smiles at me. I see that dopey teenager I used to think of as being mine again, and I have to spin onto my heels and head into the bedroom before I do something truly regrettable.

For a few seconds, I just grip the side of my dresser and take a few deep breaths to center myself. It would be pointless to deny that my body is insanely attracted to Colt, possibly even more than when we were younger. Sure, we were both riddled with hormones back then and made out every second we could. But there’s no beating the allure of maturity and wisdom.

And washboard abs and bulging biceps and…

“Yeah, yeah,” I grumble quietly to my dick that’s twitching in my shorts. “I got the memo. He’s hawt.”

Rolling my eyes as I mimic Yara’s silly pronunciation, I put my beer down and start rummaging for clothes that I think will fit him but also that don’t have any sentimental value.

Part of me wants to give him my vintage pattern Honolulu tee. We used to always talk about taking a trip and going surfing somewhere exotic after we graduated, but obviously we never got the chance. I have to be in the right mood to wear that shirt, because for better or worse, it never fails to remind me of our time together.

I decide that’s probably not the one to lend him.

Pausing in front of my dresser, my hand drifts upward to gently press my fingers against my lips, chasing the ghost of that first kiss. Senior year had been almost over, and the whole summer seemed to stretch out infinitely before us. I remember how terrified I’d been of losing Colt, but it never felt like a possibility I could tell him how I really felt. I’d been brave enough to come out to him after an obscene amount of rum one night several weeks previously. When he hadn’t immediately dumped me as his best friend, that seemed like the greatest possible outcome I could hope for.

Except in my dreams, he was secretly gay, too. I’d had countless fantasies of him leaning in to kiss me like a prince in a fairy tale. But I knew better than to think that could ever be real.

And then one magical night after graduation, when we’d been surfing all day then taken pizzas and a six-pack to a secluded spot on the beach, we’d been lying in the sand next to one another, he’d turned his head to look at me and…

It was as if time stopped. My heart certainly did when he’d gotten just a fraction closer. Then he’d whispered my name like a prayer, then…

I close my eyes in the here and now, a lump rising in my throat and goose bumps shivering across my skin. No fireworks display could ever match the explosion I felt the moment his lips touched mine. Like he’d been waiting longer than I had for just the right opportunity to make his move. He’d seemed so confident, although afterward he confessed he’d been scared shitless that he was about to ruin everything between us.

I’d assured him there hadn’t been anything I wanted more in the entire world than to be with him. We’d made love clumsily on that beach in the dark, then spent the next several weeks exploring each other in every single way we could think of. He already had my heart and soul as my best friend for nearly four years. In those short couple of months, I gave him my body unconditionally, and he had worshiped me as I did him.

Then he was gone. Just like that.

I inhale sharply and blink my eyes back open. My pulse is racing and my cock is throbbing, recalling all those beautiful, joyful, sensual firsts we’d shared together.

“Get it together,” I tell myself firmly.

I was fully aware that inviting him into my home was always going to make things complicated and stir up old feelings. There’s no need to make this fragile détente of ours unstable because I tripped and fell down memory lane.

After a couple of deep breaths, I feel like I’m on solid ground once more. “You’re okay,” I mutter to myself. “He’s not going to hurt you like that again. He can’t.”

Not if I don’t let him.

If we’re going to be civil and exist in the same town, possibly even be friends, I cannot let the past keep dragging me backward. But perhaps now I’ve had this first serious wobble after letting him into my home, my body won’t get so confused by all those memories so easily next time.

He doesn’t have that power over me anymore. I refuse to allow it.

This is my life. He only gets to come back into it if I say so.

Before I can tie myself up in knots any further, I pick out plain gray sweats and a faded red tee without any logos on it. They’re just basic things I wear around the house or sometimes working out, so they have no sentimental value. There. Nothing to stress over. I throw them over my shoulder, grab my beer, spin around to leave my bedroom?—

And crash straight into Colt, who’s only wearing a towel slung around his hips.

“Fuck!” we both yelp as I drop my bottle and jump backward. Luckily, I have a thick rug on the tiled floor in here, so at least the glass doesn’t smash. But that now means beer is glugging out all over the shag pile.

“Shit, sorry!” Colt cries, diving to snatch it back up. In the process, the towel slips, and he only just catches it with his other hand, not so successfully covering his dick.

Of course I’ve seen it before all those years ago.

But it goes without saying that this is entirely different circumstance.

It’s like I’ve forgotten how to breathe. He stands there, the towel barely covering his modesty in one hand, a dripping beer bottle in the other. The clothes I picked out for him have fallen off my shoulder onto the floor and might very well have beer on them as well.

I don’t care.

We just stare, eyes locked together. Colt is frightened, crushed. He licks his lips then bites the lower one, his gaze dropping in shame. “Zahir,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

He’s said that to me at least a dozen times now. But in that moment…it’s like I finally hear him. He’s not apologizing for the spilled beer or almost flashing me or not packing swim shorts in the first place. He’s saying the same thing he’s been telling me since he showed back up in this little town of ours.

He’s sorry that I trusted him with my heart, and in return he broke it into a million pieces and abandoned me for fifteen years.

This time, though…I believe him. I can see how leaving devastated him as well. He’s been suffering just as much as I have, only in different ways. It doesn’t matter that we’ve been apart for so long. He was my best friend, and I know him better than I’ve known anyone in my life. He’s hurting and I want to make the pain go away. He’s diminished by remorse, but I want to see him shine again. There’s no one as brilliant as Colton Ross to me.

And he promised that for him, there’s never been anyone else but me.

He’s still mine.

And I want him.

I’m done hiding from the world, too afraid to live for fear of getting burned. Time to stick my hand in the fire and deal with the consequences, come what may.

Before the logical side of my brain can kick in, I throw cation to the wind and myself at Colt, grabbing either side of his face and crashing my mouth against his.

The towel doesn’t last very long after that.