I open the door to the bathroom and peek out, relieved and saddened that Colton is not sitting there waiting for me. Then again, what did I expect after how he just acted? For him to be sitting on the bed waiting to profess his undying love for me? “Fuck ’em and chuck ’em,” I mutter under my breath as I walk out of the bedroom door to the main room of the suite.
Colton is standing in the suite’s kitchenette, his hands pressed against the counter, his head hanging down. I stand for a moment and watch him, admire the lines of his body, and wish for so much more than he can give. Colton shifts and takes a long draw on the amber liquid in his glass. He sets it down harshly, the ice clinking loudly before he turns. His step falters as he sees me standing dressed and ready to go.
“What are—”
“Look, Colton,” I begin, trying to control the situation before I can be humiliated further. “I’m a smart girl. I get it now.” I shrug, trying to prevent my voice from breaking. He looks at me and I can see the cogs in his head turning as he tries to figure out why I appear to be leaving. “Let’s face it, you’re not a spend the night kind of guy, and I’m not a one-night stand kind of girl.”
“Rylee,” he objects, but says nothing more as he takes one step toward me until I hold my hand up to halt him. He stares at me, subtly shaking his head, trying to wrap his mind around my words.
“C’mon, that’s probably what this is to you—what you’re used to.” I take a couple steps toward him, proud of myself for my false bravado, “So I’ll just save myself the embarrassment of you asking me to leave and do the walk of shame now instead of in the morning.”
Colton stares at me, struggling with some unseen emotion, his jaw clenching tightly. He closes his eyes for a beat before looking back at me. “Rylee, please just listen to me. Don’t go,” he utters. “It’s just that …” He pulls a hand up to grip the back of his neck, confusion and uncertainty etching his remarkable face as he is either unable to find his words or finish his lie.
My heart wants to believe him when he tells me not to go, but my head knows differently. My dignity is all I have left, seeing as my wits have been thoroughly destroyed, scattered, and left on the bed. “Look, Colton.” I exhale. “We both know you don’t mean that. You don’t want me to stay. You got a room here tonight hoping you’d get laid. You just probably thought it would be with Raquel. A nice little suite where there would be no drama and no complications—a place you could leave in the morning without a backward glance at who’s still asleep in the bed. Well, I walked into it willingly,” I admit, stepping up to him, his eyes never leaving mine as I place a hand on his bare chest. “It was great, Ace, but this girl,” I say, motioning toward me and then the bedroom, “this isn’t me.”
He stares at me, his eyes piercing mine with such intensity that I avert my gaze momentarily. “You’re right, this isn’t you,” he grates out, guarded, as I flick my eyes back to his. He lifts his glass and empties the rest of the glass’ contents, pools of emerald continuing to watch my eyes from over the rim of the glass. When he finishes, he runs his tongue over his lips, angling his head as he thinks something through in his head. “Let me get my keys and drive you home.”
“Don’t bother,” I shake my head, shifting my weight as I figure out how to save face as humiliation seeps through me. “I’ll take a cab—it’ll make this mistake easier on both of us.” It takes everything I have to lean up on my toes and brush a casual, chaste kiss on his cheek. I meet his eyes again and try to feign indifference. “Don’t worry, Colton, you crossed the finish line and took the checkered flag,” I say over my shoulder as I start to walk toward the door, chin held high despite the trembling of my bottom lip. “I’m just throwing the caution out there before I can be black flagged.”
I step through the door and into the elevator. When I turn to push the first floor, I notice Colton standing in the doorway of the penthouse. His mouth twists as he watches me with aloof eyes and a hardened expression.
I continue to stare at him as the doors start to close, a single tear falling down my cheek—the only betrayal my body displays of my sadness and humiliation. I am finally alone. I sag against the wall, allowing the emotions to overcome me, yet fighting the tears swimming in my eyes. I still have to find a way home.
The cab ride is quick but painful. My quiet sobs in the backseat do nothing to alleviate the brutal reality of what just happened. When we pull up to the house a little after three in the morning, I’m glad to see that Haddie is home but asleep because I can’t handle her questions right now.
I slip into my room and flip on my IPOD speakers to a barely audible volume, scroll for Unwell, and push repeat. As I hear Rob Thomas’ familiar words, I shed my clothes and step into the shower. I smell of Colton and of sex, and I scrub obsessively to get his scent off of me. It doesn’t matter though. No matter what I do, I can still smell him. I can still taste him. I can still feel him. I allow the water to wash away my torrent of tears, hiding my sobs in its rush.
When I’m waterlogged and the tears have subsided, I pick myself up off the shower floor and make my way into my bedroom. I throw on a camisole and a pair of panties before collapsing into the comforting warmth of my bed and succumb to sleep.
I CAN SMELL FUEL AND dirt and something pungently metallic. It fills my nostrils, seeps into my head before I feel the pain. In that quiet moment before my other senses are assaulted with the destruction around me, I feel at peace. I feel still and whole. For some reason my consciousness knows I’ll look back on this and wish I had this moment back. Wish I could remember what it was like before.
The pain comes first. Even before my head can clear the fog away enough so that I can open my eyes, the pain comes. There are no words to describe the agony of feeling like you have a million knives entering you and ripping you apart, just to withdraw and start all over again. And again. Endlessly.
In that second between unconscious and conscious, I feel a jagged pain. My eyes fly open, frantic breaths gulp for air. Each breath hurting, burning, laboring. My eyes see the devastation around me, but my brain doesn’t register the shattered glass, smoking engine, and crushed metal. My mind doesn’t understand why my arm, bent at so many odd angles, won’t move to undo my seatbelt. Why it can’t release me.
I feel as if everything is in slow motion. I can see dust particles drift silently through the air. I can feel the trickle of blood run ever so slowly down my neck. I can feel the incremental inching of numbness taking over my legs. I can feel the hopelessness seep into my psyche, take hold of my soul, and dig its malicious fingers into my every fiber.
I can hear him. Can hear Max’s gurgled breathing, and even in my shock-induced haze I’m mad at myself for not looking for him more quickly. I turn my head to my left and there he sits. His beautiful wavy blonde hair is tinged red, the gaping gash in his head looks odd. I want to ask him what happened but my mouth isn’t working. It can’t form the words. Panic and fear fills his eyes, and pain creases his tanned, flawless face. A small trickle of blood is coming from his ear and I think this is a bad thing but I’m not sure why. He coughs. It sounds funny, and little specks of red appear on the shattered window in front of us. I see his hand travel across the car, fumbling over every item between him and me as if he needs touch to guide him, until he finds my hand. I can’t feel his fingers grip mine.
“Ry,” he gasps. “Ry, look at me.” I have to concentrate really hard to raise my head and eyes to meet Max’s. I feel the warmth of a tear fall on my cheek, the salt of it on my lips, but I don’t remember crying. “Ry, I’m not doing too good here.” I watch as he unsuccessfully attempts to take a deep breath, but my attention is drawn elsewhere when I think I hear a baby crying. I swivel my head to look—nothing but pine trees. The sudden movement makes me dizzy.
“Rylee! I need you to concentrate. To look at me,” he pants in short bursts of breaths. I swing my head back at him. It’s Colton. What’s he doing here? Why is he covered in blood? Why is he in Max’s seat
? In Max’s clothes? In Max’s place?
“Rylee,” he begs, “Please help me. Please save me.” He sucks in a labored, ragged breath, his fingers relaxing in mine. His voice is barely a whisper. “Rylee, only you can save me. I’m dying. I need you to save me.” His head lolls to the side slowly, his mouth parting as the blood at the corner of it thickens, his beautiful emerald eyes expressionless.
I can hear the screaming. It is loud and piercing and heart wrenching. It continues over and over.
“Rylee! Rylee!” I fight off the hands grabbing me. Shaking me. Pulling me away from Colton when he needs me so desperately. “Damn it, Rylee, wake up!”
I hear Haddie’s voice. How did she get down this ravine? Has she come to save us?
“Rylee!” I’m jolted back and forth violently. “Rylee, wake up!”
I bolt up in bed, Haddie’s arms wrapping around my shoulders. My throat is dry, pained from screaming, and my hair is plastered to my sweat drenched neck. I heave for breath, strangled gasps mingle with Haddie’s pants of exertion. My hands are wrapped protectively around my torso, my arms are tired from straining so hard.
Haddie runs her hands down the sides of my cheeks, her face inches from mine. “You okay, Ry? Breathe deep, sweetie. Just breathe,” she soothes, her hands running continuously over me, reassuring me, letting me know I’m in the here and now.
I sigh shakily and put my head in my hands for a moment before scrubbing them over my face. Haddie sits down next to me and wraps her arm around me. “Was it the same one?” she asks, referring to the recurring nightmare that stuck with me for well over a year after the accident.
“Yes and no ...” I shake my head. She doesn’t ask for more details. Instead she gives me time to push the nightmare back into hiding. “It was all the same except for when I look back after I hear the baby crying. It’s Colton, not Max, who dies.”
She startles at my comment, her brow furrowing. “You haven’t had a nightmare in forever. Are you okay, Ry? You want to talk about it?” she asks, straining her neck to hear the muted music on the speakers I’d forgotten to turn off before falling asleep. Her eyes narrow as she recognizes the song.
“What did he do to you?” she demands, pulling back so that she can sit cross-legged in front of me. Anger burns her eyes.
“I’m just a mess,” I confess, shaking my head. “It’s just that it’s been so long. I feel like I’ve forgotten what Max’s face looks like, and then I see him so clearly in my dream … and then the suffocating panic hits from being trapped in the car. Maybe I’m just overwhelmed by the emotion of everything.” I pick at my comforter, avoiding her questioning gaze. “Maybe it’s been so long since I have really felt anything that tonight just pushed me over the edge … just overwhelmed me with …”
“With what Rylee?” she prompts when I remain silent.
“Guilt.” I say the word quietly and let it hang between us. Haddie reaches out and grabs my hand, squeezing it softly to reassure me. “I feel so guilty and hurt and used and so everything,” I gush.
“Used? What the hell happened, Rylee? Do I need to go kick the arrogant bastard’s ass right now?” she threatens. “Because I’ll switch my tune. I mean, I was impressed when he called earlier to make sure that you’d gotten home all right and that—”
“He what?”
“He called at like 3:30 … somewhere around there. I answered the phone. Didn’t even know you were home. Anyway I came in here to check and told him you were home and asleep. He asked me to have you call him. That he needed to explain—that you took something the wrong way.”
“Hmmph,” is all I can say, mulling over her words. He actually called?
“What happened, Rylee?” she asks yet again, but this time I know she won’t be ignored easily.
I relay the entire evening to her, from the point I left her, until she woke me up screaming. I include my feelings about comparing “the after” to Max and how hurt and rejected I felt. “I guess I feel guilty because of the whole Max thing. I loved Max. I loved him with every fiber of my being. But sex with him—making love with him—came nowhere near what it felt like with Colton. I mean, I hardly even know Colton and he just turned on every switch and pushed every button from physical to emotional that …” I search for words, overwhelmed by everything. “I don’t know. I guess I feel like sex should have been like that with the guy I loved so much I was going to marry rather than someone that couldn’t care less about me.” I shrug. “Someone who just thinks of me as another notch on his bedpost.”
“Well, I can’t tell you that you’re wrong to feel, Rylee. If Colton made you feel alive after years of being dead, then I don’t see what’s wrong with it.” She squeezes my hand again, sincerity deepening the blue in her eyes. “Max is never coming back, Rylee. Do you think he’d want you be numb forever?”
“No.” I shake my head, wiping away a silent tear. “I know that. Really, I do. But it doesn’t make the guilt go away that I’m here and he’s not.”
“I know, Ry. I know.” We sit in silence for a few moments before she continues, “I know I wasn’t there, but maybe you misread Colton. I mean some of the things he said to you …”
“How is that possible, Had? He was swearing under his breath like he’d just made the biggest mistake. One minute he was kissing me so tenderly and looking into my eyes and the next minute he was swearing and walking away from me.”
“Maybe he got scared.”
“What?” I look at her like she’s crazy. “Mr. I-Don’t-Do-Girlfriends gets scared of what? That he thinks I’ll become attached to him after one night of sex?”
“One night of mind-blowing sex!” Haddie corrects, making me giggle and blush at the memory. “Well, you do wear your emotions on your sleeve. It seems you don’t do casual sex well.”
“Oh, like it’s a class I can take over at the Y? I mean, I may be easy to read emotionally, but I’m not in love with him or anything,” I defend myself whole-heartedly, despite knowing full well that what I felt between us tonight was more than just full-blown lust. Maybe I did scare him. That final moment between us in the bed, when he held me and stared into my eyes, really got to me. Made me feel hope. Maybe he saw that and had to squelch it before it went any further.
“Of course you’re not,” Haddie says with a knowing smile, “but that’s not what I was talking about. Maybe, just maybe, Mr. I-Don’t-Do-Girlfriends … maybe you got to him. Maybe he got scared of what he felt when he was with you?”
“Yeah, right! This isn’t a Hollywood romance movie, Haddie. The good girl doesn’t get the bad boy to change his ways and fall madly in love with her,” I say, sarcasm rich in my voice, as I fall back on my pillow, sighing loudly.
A small part of me relives Colton’s words from the night before. I am his. I could never be inconsequential. He can’t control himself around me. That small part knows that maybe Haddie is right. Maybe I scare him on some level. Maybe it’s because I am the marrying kind, as I’ve been told, and he’s just not looking for that.
“You’re right,” Haddie admits. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t have one hell of a time losing yourself in hours of mindless sex with him.” She plops back on the pillow next to me, both of us laughing at the idea. “It could have its merits,” she continues. “There’s nothing like a good bad boy to make you let go. Remember Dylan?”
“How can I forget?” I reply, remembering the quick fling she had last summer with the gruff and gorgeous Dylan after ending her year-and-a-half-long relationship. “Yum.”
“Yum is right!” We both fall silent.
“Maybe Colton is your Dylan. The one to get you over everything that happened with Max.”
“Maybe …” I think. “Oh God,” I groan, “What am I supposed to do now?”
“Well, seeing as it’s...” she lifts her head to look at my clock “...five in the morning, you should go back to sleep. Maybe give it a day, then call him back. See what he has to say and go from there. Remember our m
otto. Embrace your inner slut—be reckless with him and try not to think about tomorrow. Just think about the here and now with him. ”
“Yeah, maybe.” We sit in silence for a few moments. Am I just being an overdramatic female reading into things? I don’t think so, but deep down I try to justify his actions to myself. I know that I’ll do it again if given the chance, and for my sanity I need to rationalize everything to right the world back on its axis. The feelings and sensations he evoked in me were way too intense. Way too everything. Maybe it was just the fall from my alcohol buzz that made everything seem so off. Made him seem so detached. I scold myself. I know this isn’t the case, but I’m trying desperately to address my inner slut.
I’m way out of my league here. I just hope I can figure out how to play the game without getting burned in the end.
“Do you want me to stay in here tonight?” Haddie asks, breaking the silence. She used to sleep in my bed on the really rough nights to help me get through them nightmare-free.
“Nah. I think I’m okay. Thanks, though. For everything.”
She leans over and kisses the top of my head, “What are friends for?” she says as she heads for the door. “Sleep tight, Ry.”
“’Night, Had.”
She closes the door and I sigh deeply, staring at the ceiling, thoughts running through my mind until sleep pulls me under.
I’M SO EXHAUSTED FROM EVERYTHING that I’m able to sleep past my usual six-thirty wake up time. It’s nine when I get into my exercise gear and head downstairs.
Haddie is sitting at the little table in the kitchen, bare feet with bright pink painted toes propped on the empty chair across from her. She eyes me cautiously from behind her cup of coffee. “Good morning.”