Текст книги "Crashed"

Автор книги: K. Bromberg

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 31 страниц)

CHAPTER 16

Colton

“Motherfucker!”

Where the fuck am I? I jerk awake and sit up. My heart’s racing, head’s pounding, and I’m out of fucking breath. Sweat beads on my skin as I try to wrap my head around the jumbled images floating, then crashing through my dreams. Memories that vanish like fucking ghosts the minute I wake up and leave nothing but an acrid taste in my mouth.

Yeah, the two us—nightmares and me—we’re tight. Thick as motherfucking thieves.

I glance at the clock. It’s only seven-thirty in the morning, and I need a drink already—screw that—a whole fucking fifth to deal with these goddamn dreams that are going to be the death of me. Talk about motherfucking irony. Memories of a crash I can’t fucking remember are going to kill me trying to remember them.

Can you say fucked up with a capital F?

I laugh out loud only to be answered by the thumping of Baxter’s tail against his cushion on the floor beside me. I pat the bed for him to jump up on it, and after a bit of petting, I wrestle him to lie down, laughing at his wildly licking tongue.

I lie back on my pillow and close my eyes trying to remember what the fuck I was dreaming about, what empty spaces in my mind I can try and fill. Absolutely fucking nothing.

Sweet Jesus! Throw me a goddamn bone here.

Baxter groans beside me. I open my eyes and look over at him, expecting puppy dog eyes begging for attention. Nope. Not in the slightest. I can’t help but laugh.

Fucking Baxter. Man’s best friend and shit and also comedic relief when needed most.

“Seriously, dude? If I could lick myself like that, I wouldn’t need a woman.” My words don’t even make him hesitate as he finishes cleaning himself. After a beat Baxter stops and looks at me, head angled, handy tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. “Don’t give me that smug look, you bastard. You might think you’re top dog now with all that flexibility and shit, but, dude, you’d hold out too for Ry’s pussy. Fucking grade A voodoo, Bax.” I reach out and scratch the top of his head and laugh again with a shake of my head.

Am I that fucking desperate that I’m talking to my dog about sex? And the doc says my head’s not fucked up? Shit, I think he’s taken one too many right turns on an oval track.

Baxter stands and jumps off the bed. “I get it, use me and then leave me,” I say to him, and Rylee’s words to me the first night we met resurface. Fuck ’em and chuck ’em. Fucking Rylee. Pure class, gorgeous as fuck with a defiant mouth and feisty attitude. How the fuck did we get from there to here?

I swear to God life is a fucking series of moments. Some unexpected. Most not. And very few inconsequential. Fuck if I would have ever expected a stolen kiss to lead to this. Rylee and me.

Motherfucking checkered flags and shit.

Blowing out a breath as the headache starts, I roll over on the bed to grab my pain meds from the nightstand. It feels like my head explodes with a bright burst of white—a flash of memories from the drivers’ meeting hits me like a fucking sledgehammer—and then disappears before I can hold on to more than a tenth of what flickered.

“Goddammit!” I shove up and out of the bed, the dizziness not as bad as yesterday. As the day before yesterday. I feel restless as I try to force myself to remember, to make my fucked up head recall all that I’d just glimpsed. I pace, my mind drawing nothing but fucking blanks. I’m frustrated, feeling fucking confined, unsettled.

More fucked up than not.

I don’t feel like me anymore. And I need that right now more than fucking anything. To be me. To be in control. To be on top of my fucking game.

To still be Colton fucking Donavan.

“Aaarrrrggghh!” I shout because fucking is most definitely what I need right now. What will help me find the fucking me I need to be again. I may be pacing in front of my bedroom window, but my dick is hard as a rock and my balls are so fucking blue I’m gonna turn into goddamn Papa Smurf if the doc doesn’t clear me soon.

Pleasure to bury the pain, my ass. When you can’t have the pleasure, what the fuck do you do with the pain?

And fuck me if it’s not the worst—sweetest—fucking torture sleeping next to the only woman I’ve ever ached for. I can’t take another damn day of this. Even though it aches like a bitch, just the thought of her has me reaching down to palm my dick, make sure it didn’t shrivel up and fall off from lack of fucking use.

Yep, still there.

And then my hand trembles. Shakes so that my fingers can’t even hold my own dick anymore.

Motherfuck, cocksuck! I’m fucking shaking with frustration right now. At me, at fucking Jameson for crashing into me, at the fucking world in general! This confinement is suffocating me. Making me lose my shit! I’m going fucking crazy!

I pick up the pillow next to me on the couch and chuck it at the wall of glass in front of me before flopping down into a chair. “Fuck!” Squeezing my eyes shut, I suddenly feel like images zoom and collide at a rapid pace slamming against the front of my mind. The bright flash of white returns with a vengeance, crippling and freezing me at the same fucking time.

Go, go, go. C’mon, one-three. C’mon, baby. Go, go, go.

Too fast.

Fuck!

Spiderman. Batman. Superman. Ironman.

I jolt my eyes open as memories lost to me rush back in high definition color.

My stomach tumbles to my feet as the forgotten feelings hit me. Fear strangles me as I try to piece the crash together from the Swiss-cheese sized holes still in my memory.

The anxiety attack hits me at full force and I can’t shake it. Dizziness. Vertigo. Nausea. Fear. All four mix like a Long Island Iced Tea I’d kill to fucking gulp down right now as my body trembles with the tiny bits of knowledge my memory has chosen to return.

I feel like I’m on a roller coaster, mid free fall as I struggle to draw in a fucking breath.

Suck it up, Donavan. Quit being such a pussy! Fuck me because all I want right now is Rylee. And I can’t have her. So I rock myself back and forth like a goddamn puss to prevent myself from calling her on her first full day back with the boys.

But fuck if I don’t need her, especially because I get it now … get her now. Understand the claustrophobia that cripples her, because right now I can’t even function. All I can fucking do is lie flat on the floor with the edges of my vision blurring, the room spinning, and my head pounding.

And in a moment of lucidity amidst the strangling panic, my mind acknowledges that if I didn’t feel like myself before, then I most definitely hate this fucked-up pussified version of myself—falling to pieces, lying on the floor like a little bitch because of a few memories.

I close my eyes as my mind swims in a fucking fog.

… If it’s in the cards …

More memories graze my mind, but I can’t reach them or see them long enough to hold on to the fuckers.

… Your superheroes finally came …

I push the memories back, push them down into the blackness. I’m so fucking useless right now. As much as I need to remember, I’m not sure if I can handle them. I’ve always been a balls-to-the-wall kind of guy, but right now I need motherfucking baby steps. Crawl before you walk and all that shit.

I close my eyes to try and make the room stop the fucking Tilt-A-Whirl it’s become.

Thwack!

And another flash of a memory hits me. Five minutes ago I couldn’t remember shit and now I can’t fucking forget. Fuck being broken or bent, I’m a motherfucking scrap yard of parts right now.

Breathe, Donavan. Fucking breathe.

Thwack!

I’m alive. Whole. Present.

Thwack!

I take in a couple of deep breaths, sweat staining the carpet as it pours off of me. I struggle to sit up, to piece together the parts of me scattered all over the fucking place to no avail, because it’s gonna take a whole hell of a lot more than a torch to weld me back the fuck together.

And it hits me like a motherfucking freight train what I need to do right now. I’m on the move. If I were more coherent, I’d laugh at my naked ass crawling across the floor to reach the television’s remote, at how fucking low I’ve stooped.

But I don’t give a flying fuck because I’m so goddamn desperate.

To find myself again.

To control the one fear I can control.

To confront the memories and take their power away.

To not be a fucking victim.

Ever.

Again.

I reach the remote with more effort than it usually takes me to run my typical five miles, and I’ve only crawled ten fucking feet. I’m weak as fuck right now in so many ways I can’t even count them. I’m out of fucking breath and the jackhammer is back to work in my head. I finally reach my bed and I push myself on my ass so I can prop my back against the footboard.

Because it’s time I face one of the two fears that dominate my dreams.

I aim the remote at the television, push the button, and it sparks to life. It takes me a minute to focus, my eyes have trouble making my double vision merge. My fucking fingers are like Jell-O, and it takes me a few tries to hit the right buttons, to find the recording on the DVR.

It takes every fucking ounce of everything I have to watch my car slingshot into the smoke.

To not look away as Jameson’s car slams into mine. Lighting the short fuse on a fireworks display.

To remember to fucking breathe as it—the car, me—flies through the smoke-filled air.

To not cringe at the sickening sound and sight of me hitting the catch fence.

To watch the car shred to pieces.

Disintegrate around me.

Barrel roll like throwing a fucking Hot Wheels down the stairs.

And the only time I allow myself to look away is when I throw up.

CHAPTER 17

Expectation vibrates and contentment flows through me as I drive the sun drenched highway back to Colton’s house, back to what I’ve been calling home for the past week. A silent tiptoe within a monumental step of our relationship.

It’s just out of necessity. Not because he wants me to stay with him for an unspecified period of time. Right?

My heart is lighter after spending my first twenty-four hour shift in over three weeks with the boys. I can’t help but smile, recalling Colton’s self-sacrifice to get me out of the house and to the boys without a paparazzi entourage. As I was behind the wheel of the Range Rover and its heavily tinted windows, Colton opened the gate on his driveway and walked right out into the media frenzy, drawing all of the attention on himself. And as the vultures descended, I drove out the other side and left without anybody tailing me.

Anticipation is not inconsequential. The phrase dances through my mind, a parade of possibilities rain from the four words Colton texted me earlier. And when I tried to call him to ask what he meant, the phone went to voicemail and another text was sent in response. No questions. I’m in control now. See you after work.

And the simple notion that after being with him basically non-stop for three weeks and now I’m not allowed to talk to him—that in itself has created serious anticipation. But the question stands, what exactly am I supposed to be anticipating? As much as my body has already decided, vibrating at what it knows to be the answer, my mind is trying to prepare me for something else. I’m afraid that if I think he’s really been cleared by the doctor, and he hasn’t, I’ll be so frenzied with need and overwhelmed with desire that I’ll take what I want—am desperate to have—even though it’s not safe for him.

I can’t help but smile in satisfaction as I think of what tonight just might bring, on the heels of a great shift with the other men in my life. I felt like a rock star walking into The House from the warm and loving reception I received from the boys. I missed them so much and it was such a comforting sound to hear Ricky and Kyle bickering over who is the best baseball player, to hear the sweet sound of Zander’s voice in its sporadic but steady bouts, to listen to Shane rattle on about Sophia and Colton getting better so he can teach him how to drive. There were hugs and affirmations that Colton really is okay and all of the headlines in the papers saying otherwise were not true.

I turn up the radio when What I Needed comes on and start singing aloud, the lyrics bolstering my good mood, if that’s even possible. I look over my shoulder and change lanes, noticing the dark blue sedan for the third time. Maybe I didn’t escape the paparazzi after all. Or maybe it’s one of Sammy’s guys just making sure I get home okay. Regardless, I have a slightly unnerving feeling.

I start to get paranoid and reach for my phone to call Colton and ask him if he had Sammy put a security detail on me. I reach across to the passenger seat and my hand hits all of the homemade gifts the boys made for Colton. It’s then I realize that when I loaded my stuff into the back of the car, I set my phone down, and forgot to pick it back up.

I glance in my mirror again and try to shake the feeling away that eats at me, that makes me worry when I see the car still a few lengths back, and force myself to concentrate on the road. I tell myself it’s just a desperate photographer. Not a big deal. This is Colton’s territory, something he’s completely used to but not me. I blow out an audible breath as I make my way through the beachside community and onto Broadbeach Road.

I shouldn’t be surprised that the paparazzi still obstruct the street outside of Colton’s gates. I shouldn’t cringe at having to navigate the street as they descend upon me when they notice I’m driving his car. I shouldn’t check my rearview mirror again as I push the button for the gates to open and see the sedan park itself against the curb. I should notice that the person in the car never gets out—never claims his camera to take the shot he’s been following me for—but driving with camera flashes exploding around me, it’s hard to concentrate on anything else.

I breathe out a shaky breath as the gates shut behind me and park the Rover. I exit the car, my hands a little jittery and my head wondering how anyone gets used to the absolute chaos from the frenzied media as I hear them still calling my name from over the wall. I look up to where Sammy stands just inside the gate and accept the nod he gives me. I start to ask if he’s added a man on me but I suddenly remember Colton’s text.

Anticipation is not inconsequential.

Everything in my body clenches and coils, my nerves are already frenzied and aching for the man inside the house in front of me. I open the back of the car and grab my purse, figuring I’ll leave everything else and get it later. I move quickly to the front door, have the key in the lock, and the door open in seconds. When I close the door the cacophony outside is silenced, and I lean back against the wood, my shoulders sagging at the literal and figurative notion that I’ve just shut out the world and am now in my little slice of Heaven.

I’m now with Colton.

“Tough day?”

I almost jump out of my skin. Colton steps out of the shadowed alcove, and it takes everything I have to remember to breathe as he leans against the wall behind him. My eyes greedily scrape over every defined edge—every inch of pure maleness—of his body, covered only in a pair of red board shorts hanging low on his hips. My gaze roams up his chest and over inked reminders to take in the lopsided ghost of a smile, but it’s when our eyes lock that I catch the spark right before the dynamite detonates.

And from one breath to the next, predicated by a carnal groan, he is on me—body crashing into mine, pressing me against the door, mouth doing so much more than kissing. He’s taking, claiming, branding me with unfettered need and reckless abandon. I immediately reach up and fist the hair at the back of his neck while one of his hands does the same to me, the other is on my hip, his desperate fingers digging into my willing flesh. My breasts pillow and pebble against the firmness of his chest, the warmth of his skin adding heat to the blaze building inside of me.

An inferno of need rises inside me that I don’t think will ever be sated.

We move in a series of fervent reactions, his hand holds my curls hostage so my mouth is at the mercy of his dexterous lips. So his tongue may delve and tantalize and taste like a man savoring his last meal, like a man saying fuck off to his restraint and accepting gluttony as a welcome sin.

My hands graze down the blades of his shoulders as he gasps—so grateful to have the chance to feel again—before he hikes my leg up and over his hip. I moan, the change in position allowing his rock hard erection to be perfectly placed against my aching core. I throw my head back against the door as the muted friction swamps me, and Colton takes advantage of my newly exposed neck. His mouth is on the tender flesh in the beat of a heart, his tongue sliding against nerves, bringing them to life and then simultaneously singeing them with desire.

My fingers grab onto flexing biceps as his hands make quick work of the button on my jeans. I wiggle my hips when his hands slide between the fabric and my anticipatory flesh. I step out of them as his fingers roam, feathering over my swollen folds to tempt but not take. His other hand palms my backside, a barrier between me and the door, and presses me further into him.

Need swells to unfathomable heights as the parasitic strains of desperation consume every part of my body.

“Colton,” I groan, wanting—no needing—him to complete our connection. My hands grope his torso and tear apart the Velcro on his board shorts. I hear the hiss of his breath as my hands find and encircle his tortured length. His whole body tenses at the feel of my skin on his.

“Ry …” He pants my name as I slide my hand up and down him. His hands find their way beneath my top, stripping it off me and making fast work of my bra clasp. “Rylee,” he says between gritted teeth. He’s so overwhelmed with the sensations ricocheting through him that he stops kissing me, stops moving his hands over my flesh, and braces them against the door on either side of my head. He presses his forehead against mine as he vibrates with the need coursing through him, his breath coming out in short, sharp breaths against my lips.

He says something so quietly I can’t hear it underneath the heavy breathing filling the otherwise silent room. I move my hands again, enjoying the feeling of him trembling against me. “Stop,” he says quietly against my lips, and this time I hear him. I instantly stop and move back to look at him, fearing that his head is hurting. And I am immediately unnerved by the sight of his eyes squeezed shut.

He draws in a pained breath and opens his eyes slowly to meet mine, as his fingers gently knead my ass. “I’m fucking desperate to bury myself—feel, lose, find myself—in you, Ry …” he says, the strain in his neck visible and his desperation audible. “You deserve soft and slow, baby, but all I’m going to be able to give you is hard and fast because it’s been so fucking long since I’ve had you.”

My God the man is so damn sexy, his admission such a turn on, that I don’t think he realizes I don’t care about soft and slow. My body is strung so tight—emotions, nerves, willpower—that a single touch from him will undoubtedly break me, shatter me into a million fucking pieces of pleasure that oddly will make me whole again.

I angle my head up to him, lean in, and brush my lips to his. I hear his pained intake of breath, feel the tension in his lips as I pull gently on his bottom one from between my teeth. When I pull back, I meet his lust-laden eyes.

“I want you,” I whisper to him, one hand wrapped around his iron length and the other fisted tight in the hair at his nape, so he can feel the intensity of my desire. “Any way I can have you. Hard, fast, soft, slow, standing, sitting—it doesn’t matter so long as you’re the one buried in me.”

He stares at me for a beat, disbelief warring with the need raging in his eyes. I can see him try to rein it in, can feel him tremble with need, and know the instant his resolve crumbles. His mouth meets mine—bruising lips and melding tongues—as he takes, tastes, and tempts as only he can. Strong hands map the lines of my torso, thumbs brushing the underside of my breasts already heavy with need, before descending back down the curve of my hips.

If I thought the seeds of desire planted before had bloomed, I have never been more wrong because right now—right now—I’m a garden of need.

He grows even harder in my hand as I rub my thumb over the moisture at his crest and am rewarded with a groan from deep in his throat. My other hand scratches up the skin of his back as my lips brand his with just as much fervor. In an instant, Colton has his hands on my hips, lifting me up and pressing my back against the door. My legs try to wrap around his waist but he holds me up, suspended so the one connection I want the most isn’t made, so the steeled length of him against my thighs is a torturous tease to my begging apex.

He sucks in a breath as I reach between my legs and grip him, wanting to control the man who is uncontrollable. Needing him in the worst way. The best way. In any way.

His eyes flicker with some undecipherable emotion, but I’m so pent up, so preoccupied with what’s going to happen in the next few moments I don’t even give a second thought to what it is.

I release him momentarily and reach between my legs to wet my fingers with the pool of moisture within before encircling his crest and coating it, preparing him physically and showing him figuratively what he does to me, and what exactly I want from him. And my little demonstration weakens all of his restraint.

His fingers dig into my hips and lift me up a little higher as I line him up before he pulls me back down and onto him. We both cry out as our connection is made. As my wet heat stretches past its limits to accommodate his invasion.

And it feels like it’s been so long since he’s filled me, my body has forgotten the pleasurable burn his presence can evoke. “My God,” I breathe as my body takes him in. “I’m so tight,” I tell him, chalking it up to the fact that it’s been over three weeks since we’ve been intimate.

“No, baby,” Colton says, mirth dancing in his eyes as he stills his hips so I can adjust. “I’m just that big.”

The laughter fills my mind but never makes it to my lips before I see a flash of his cocky grin and then his mouth is on mine again. But this time as his kiss claims mine, his hips begin to move, hands begin to guide, and his cock begins to stroke over every attuned inch within my nerve-laden walls. He is in complete control of our movements, our motions, our escalation of sensations.

I lift my head up from its leaning position against the door and take in the sight of him. His own eyes are closed, lips slightly parted, hair mussed from my hands, and shoulder muscles rippling as he moves us in rhythmic motion.

My broken man is now in pure dominant mode, and every nerve in my body screams to be taken. To be made his. To be the one he proves his virility to.

“Fuuuccckkk you feel good,” he tells me as he pushes me up and then plunges back into me as my muscles clench and nerves are paid the attention they most definitely have been craving.

“Colton,” I pant, my fingers digging into the tops of his shoulders as he drives me higher and higher. Sensation spirals—little shock waves of pleasure preparing me for him to shake the earth beneath my feet—and warmth starts to spread like a wildfire through my core. He drives back in again as my thighs tighten around him, my fingernails score lines, and my mouth seeks his with a frenzied need.

It only takes a few more seconds before the pleasure ratchets into an explosion of white in the abyss of darkness that has consumed me. And I am instantly lost to a world beyond our connection. It’s just him and me—sensation overwhelming and breath robbed– as I drown in the liquid heat and lose myself to the feeling, his name a repeated pant from my lips.

Within moments, Colton’s cry breaks through my pleasure induced coma at the same time his hips convulse wildly beneath mine, finding his own release. He rocks back and forth in me a few times trying to draw out the moment, his breath ragged and chest gleaming with our combined sweat.

His body sags against mine as he buries his face into the crook of my neck. My arms wrap around him from my position atop his pelvis and pressed against the door. I absorb the moment—the rapid rise and fall of his chest, the warmth of his breath against my neck, the unmistakable scent of sex—and understand without a doubt that I’d move Heaven and earth for this man without a second thought.

Colton adjusts his grip on my hips, and I slowly lower my feet to the ground; although my head is still figuratively in the clouds. He slips out of me and yet our connection is not lost because he gathers me in his arms, skin to skin, as if he doesn’t want to let me go just yet.

And I’m okay with that because I don’t think I’ll ever be able to let him go either.

“Fuck, I needed that,” he sighs with a slight chuckle and all I can give him is a noncommittal answer because frankly I’m still riding my own high.

We fall silent for a few moments, lost in the moment, enjoying the comforting feel of just being together.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” he says, breaking the silence and shakes his head back and forth before pulling back so he can look at the questioning look on my face.

“Tell you?” I’m confused.

A ghost of a smirk graces his mouth as he brings one hand up to cup the side of my face, his thumb brushing ever so softly over my lips still swollen from his kisses. “What I said to you before I got in the car ...”

My inhaling breath dies and my heart skips a beat, lodging itself in my throat from the words on his lips and the emotion in his eyes. I want to ask him to say it, to tell me the words himself, because hell yes I know what he said, but I want to hear that he remembers those words and still feels the meaning behind them.

I try to control the hitch in my breath and wavering in my voice but I have to ask. “What do you mean?” I’m a horrible liar and I know he can see right through my feigned confusion.

He chuckles a quiet laugh and leans in to brush a tender kiss against my lips and then the tip of my nose before leaning back so he can look into my eyes. He darts his tongue out to wet his lips and says, “I race you, Ryles.”

My heart melts and my soul sighs at hearing him repeat those words I’ve used like glue to bind the broken pieces the crash created. Even though the words bring me peace, I can hear nerves shake his voice, can sense the anxiety in the bottom lip he worries between his teeth. And now I’m starting to get nervous. Did he say the words and now doesn’t feel the same way he did then? I know it’s a ridiculous thought, considering what happened between us moments ago, but the one thing I’ve learned about Colton is that he is anything but predictable.

“Yeah,” I sigh, meeting the temerity in his eyes. “Those words … are you saying them now because you’ve reclaimed the memory or because you still mean them?” There. I’ve laid it out on the table, given him the option to say it’s the former and not the latter—an out in case he no longer races me. In case the accident has changed how he feels and this—us, me and him—have reverted back to a just casual status.

Colton angles his head and studies me a moment, eyes beseeching but lips motionless. The silence stretches as I wait for the answer, as I wait to see if he’ll rip me apart or be the soothing balm to my healing heart.

“Ry … don’t you know I never forget a single moment when I race … on or off the track?” It takes a moment for the words to register, for the words and what they mean to sink in. That he remembers and that he still feels the same way. And the funny thing is now that I know—now that all of this worry can go away and we can move forward—I’m frozen in place.

We’re naked, leaning against a door that a hundred or so reporters are on the other side of, the man I race has just told me that he races me back, and yet all I can do is stare at him as my soul realizes the hope filling it, is finding its permanent home.

Colton leans in so his mouth is a whisper from mine, hands framing my face as he looks into the depths of my soul. “I race you, Rylee,” he says to me, mistaking my silence as not understanding his prior statement. Little does he realize I’m so head over heels in love with him, right here, right now—body naked and heart bared—that I’m robbed of the ability to speak. So instead I accept the brush of his lips over mine in a kiss that’s soft and reverent before he rests his forehead against mine. “Don’t you know?” he asks. “You’re my motherfucking checkered flag.”

I can feel his lips curve up in a smile as they brush against mine, and I let the laughter that bubbles up fall free. It feels so good to suddenly have that thorn removed from my side.

To know the man I love, loves me in return.

To know he’s caught my free-falling heart.

Colton’s hands start the descent back down the line of my spine—the tremor of his right hand so slight now I barely notice it—and then back up as I feel him start to harden again against my lower belly.

“I take it you’ve been cleared from the doc?” I ask, my sated body already thrumming with newfound desire.

“Yeah I did, but after my day,” he says, kissing my forehead and pulling me back into the comfort of his arms, “it didn’t fucking matter if I got the okay or not, I was taking what was mine.”

“What was yours, huh?” I tease him despite the words warming my heart.

“Yep.”

And then the words he said before register and have me pulling back to search for an answer. “What was wrong with your day?”

I see something cloud his eyes momentarily before he pushes it away. “Don’t worry about me,” he says, and I’m immediately concerned.

“What else happened, Colton? Was there something you remembered—something that—”

“No,” he says, quieting me with a press of his lips against mine. “I only remembered what was important. Some voids are still there.” Ever the master of deflection, he continues, “It seems I’ve been neglecting you as of late.”