“All the emotions … everything that was happening … trying to process it all felt like taking a sip of water from a fucking fire hose.” He exhales another breath, closing his eyes momentarily as he becomes overwhelmed with the memory and how to best explain it. “And I still don’t know if I’ll ever be able to process it, Ry. But the one thing I do know,” he says, his fingertips tightening on my cheeks to reinforce the certainty of his words, “is that when I sat in that waiting room and the doctor told me … about the baby … feelings I never thought possible filled me,” he says, eyes unflinching and complete reverence in his voice that causes my heart to swell with hope for things I never thought I could imagine.
His thumb wipes away a tear that runs down my cheek I didn’t even know I’d shed and he continues on. “And sitting there in that damn hospital room, waiting for you to wake up … I realized what you meant to me, what we had created together—the best parts of us combined. And then it hit me,” he says with so much tenderness in his eyes that when I go to open my mouth to say something nothing comes out. He smiles softly at me, darting his tongue out to wet his bottom lip. “I realized that what she did to me doesn’t have to happen again. That I can give someone the life I never had, Rylee. The life you showed me is a possibility.”
I bite back the comments that rush into my head as Colton’s words break down every last form of protection I’ve ever woven around my heart. My fingers tense on his biceps and my chin quivers from the emotions coursing through me.
“No, don’t cry, Ry,” he murmurs as he leans in and kisses the tracks of tears coursing down my cheeks. “You’ve cried enough already. I just want to make you happy because fuck, baby, it’s you that’s the difference. It’s you that allowed me to see that my biggest fear—darkest goddamn poison—wasn’t really a fear at all. It was an excuse for me to not open myself up by saying all I could do was bring pain and pass my demons on. But I know—I know—that I could never hurt a child—a baby that is my own flesh and blood. And I sure as fuck know you could never hurt one just to spite me.”
Tears well in his eyes as he lowers them for a moment and shakes his head, the confession and cleansing of his soul finally taking its toll. But when he looks up at me, despite the tears swimming in his eyes I see such clarity, such reverence, that my breath is stolen. My heart that was robbed long ago is undeniably his. “It’s like out of the horrible darkness I’ve had to live with my whole life came this incredible ray of light.”
His voice breaks and a tear drops as we sit in this beast of a bed, bodies bare, pasts no longer hidden, hearts naked and completely vulnerable, and yet I have never felt more certain about any other person in my life.
He tilts my head back up to look at him. “So are you okay with this?”
I look at him not sure what he’s asking, but hoping my assumptions are true.
“God, I need to know you’re okay with this, Ry?” I search her face for any indication that she’s along for the ride, because right now, my fucking heart’s pounding and my chest is constricting with each damn breath.
Those violet eyes of hers—the only ones that have ever been able to see straight into my soul and see everything I’ve hidden—blink back tears and try to process what I’ve been telling her I’ve never wanted, I now want with her.
Tomorrows.
Possibilities.
A fucking future.
The ultimate motherfucking checkered flag.
And deep in my heart I know with absolute certainty how I feel about this woman who crashed into my damn life, grabbed me by the balls—and apparently my heart—and never let go. I can’t resist one brief taste to calm the apprehension coursing through me, to ease the upheaval of a soul I always thought was doomed to Hell. I lean in and press my mouth to hers using her soft lips as a silent reassurance she doesn’t even know she’s giving me.
I look at my hands trembling on her cheeks, and I know this tremor has nothing to do with the fucking accident and everything to do with the healing of wounds so old and scarred I never thought they could be mended. I lift my eyes to meet hers again because when I tell her, I need her to know that there may have been many before her, but she is the only fucking one who will ever hear this.
“I told you in Florida that I’ve always used adrenaline—the blur, women—to fill the void I’ve always felt. And now …” I shake my head, not sure how I’m going to get the words racing laps around my fucking head to sound coherent. I take a deep breath because these words are the most important ones I’ve ever spoken. “Now, Ry, none of that matters. All I need is you. Just. You. And the boys. And whatever it is we create together.”
Chills dance on my skin and I’m so overwhelmed with everything—the moment, the feeling, the fucking vulnerability—that I have to force a swallow as I close my eyes momentarily. And when I open them, the compassion and love in hers—and the simple notion that I see her love, accept it— has my pulse racing from the euphoria it brings, and it breaks the final barrier of my past.
“I love you, Rylee.” I whisper the words. The weight in my chest fractures, splinters into a million fucking pieces freeing my soul like a 747 taking flight.
He loves me.
The thought races around my mind, over and over as adrenaline surges through me.
He just told me he loves me.
Words escape me as a swell of love and pride for this man engulfs me, wraps me in its cocoon of possibilities, and quiets any remaining doubt I might have had. “Colton …” I’m so overcome with emotion I can’t even find the words to tell him what I’ve waited so long to say.