Page 128 of One Little Kiss

COLTON

“Open the door, Winnie. I know you’re in there. I can hear Weston.”

Her front door snaps open with such force it bounces off the wall. I catch it before it swings back and knocks her to the ground. Winnie stands before me, all red-eyed and rage-filled to her tipping point with pain.

I step forward, and she stubbornly stands her ground, so I keep walking until she’s forced to step back and let me in. “I can’t do this with you right now, Colton. I’m trying to get Wes settled, and it hasn’t been easy.” Her chin trembles even as she juts it out in defiance.

“Bring him home, Winnie.” I keep my voice calm, even though I want to scream at her for not trusting me.

“We are home. You need to leave. I left everything you’ll need on your island.” Winnie turns away from me, but I follow.

“I got it.”

“Then what are you doing here? You can’t seriously expect me to go back to your house? Sleep in your bed after … after what you did.”

Peering over my shoulder, I see Wes playing with his trains. It’s a small space, but he hasn’t noticed me yet, so I crowd Winnie into the small bathroom, positioning us so she can still see our little boy.

“Please don’t do this, Colton. I need you to leave.”

“When I found you again, Winnie, I asked you to do one thing for me. One. Thing. What did I ask you to do?” My voice is gravelly. It belays my fear, anger, and anxiety that this will be the one thing I can’t fix.

“Trust you,” she spits, vitriol coating every word.

“The one person in this world I needed to trust me, to believe in me, couldn’t do it.”

“I did trust you, Colton. And look what you did? H-How could you do that? Why would you do it?” Her shoulders sag and shake with silent sobs. “Why are you here, Colton? Was it a game to you? Find out if you can get the broken girl with trust issues to fall in love with you?”

“You know me better than that,” I grind out through clenched teeth.

“Do I? Because I thought I did, but looking at you now, all I see is a stranger. I need you to leave. If you cared about me at all, you’d leave me alone.”

“I’m not leaving until I get what I came for,” I say evenly. Even though there’s barely a foot of space between us, I haven’t touched her yet.

“What, Colton? What did you come for? Why are you here?” Her face drops to her hands, and tears spill out through the cracks in her fingers.

“CC. I promised you if you trusted me, I would never leave you. I’m here because I keep my promises.”

She shakes her head and won’t look at me. “I saw the pictures. I saw them, and I know I’ll never be able to trust you again. You said it yourself a relationship can’t work without trust.”

“I have enough trust for the both of us.”

“Are you insane?” She’s openly sobbing now. “Is this fun for you? Do you like seeing me cry? How badly you hurt me?”

Wes lifts his head at her raised voice. He squeals when he sees me and runs toward us. I back out of the bathroom to give us more space, scoop down to pick him up, and breathe him in deeply when he buries his little face in my neck.

I hold up the folder again, and she flinches like I hit her. “Look at these again, Winnie. Really look at them, and then tell me if you trust me.”

“I’ve seen enough—”

“Look. At. Them. Winnie. Look at them and count my hands in the top one. The second one looks bad, but that’s because Claire pretended to be my realtor and set me up. With your father’s help. Unfortunately, the bottom picture is of me from over a year ago, but Ash proved those women drugged me. Someone just did a bad job photoshopping Claire’s face onto all of them.”

I see the fear in her eyes, but I’ll never leave her.

“Are you hyperventilating? I don’t know what to do about that. I’ll call Em—”

She holds up a finger to silence me and sinks to the hard floor. I can only watch on in horror. The scene before me is too reminiscent of the first time I stepped foot in this place.

“I hate this, CC. I hate seeing you like this.” I slowly, cautiously, lower myself to the floor beside her. I’m trying to position Wes on my side, but he seems to be part monkey as he wraps his little body around me like a vice. “Open the folder, CC.”