“What is it, Rylee?” What? How does he know? “I just felt your entire body tense up? What’s going on in that beautiful and intriguing head of yours?”
I shake my head feeling silly for my thoughts and yet afraid of the answers. When I try to pull away from him, his arms tighten around me. “It’s nothing, Colton,” I sigh.
“Tell me.”
I take a deep breath and steel myself to ask the two simple words swimming around in my head. “Why me?”
“Why you what?” he asks, confusion in his voice as he releases his hold on me.
Despite being let go, I take a step away and keep my back to Colton, lacking the courage to ask him to his face. “Why me, Colton? Why am I here?” I can hear him take a deep breath behind me. “Why not one of the score of women before me? There are so many others that are so much prettier, sexier, skinner … why am I here and not one of them?”
“For someone so sure of yourself, your question astonishes me.” His voice is closer than I had expected. We stand in silence and when I do not turn around to face him, he puts his hands on my arms and does it for me.
“Look at me,” he commands, squeezing my biceps until I comply. He shakes his head at me, disbelief and, I think, a little bit of surprise etched in his features. “First of all, Rylee, you are an extremely beautiful, tremendously sensual woman. And that ass of yours,” he pauses, the guttural sound in the back of his throat is one of pure appreciation, “is something men fantasize about.” He snorts, “I could sit and admire you all day.”
His eyes lock on mine and I can see the honesty in his eyes. A part of me wants to believe him. Wants to accept that I am enough for him. He moves his hands from my arms to the sides of my ribcage and then slowly runs them down to my hips and back up. “As for these, I have to admit sweetheart that I’ve dated mostly waifs in my years, but damn, Rylee, your curves are so incredibly sexy. They turn me on like you wouldn’t believe. I get hard just watching you walk in front of me.” He leans into me, the evidence of his arousal pushing against me, and kisses me softly on my parted lips. He rests his forehead against mine, his fingers playing idly with the tie at my neck. “As to why they are no longer here?” he murmurs, the words fanning over my face before pulling back so that his green eyes burn into mine. “It’s simple. Our arrangement was over.”
I pull back from him, trying to wrap my head around that last part. “They just up and left?” I try to hide the desperation in my voice, as I suddenly need to know what I’m in for. “I mean, why was it over?”
He looks at me momentarily before answering. “Some found others that could give them more, some caused too much drama for my liking, and some wanted the white picket fence and two point five kids,” he answers indifferently.
“And–and I assume that you ended things with them then?” He nods cautiously, the cogs in his head turning as he tries to figure out why I want to know. “Did you love any of them?”
“Jesus, Rylee!” he barks, running his hand through his hair, “What the fuck is this, fifty questions?” He walks a couple of feet away from me, exasperation emanating off of him, but I’ve asked this much, I might as well finish it off.
I sit down in the sand, aware that Baxter is a ways down the beach, and hug my knees to my chest, twisting my ring around and around on my finger. “No, I need to know what I’m getting myself into.” Colton’s eyes snap up to mine, an indiscernible look on his face. “What I’m already in to,” I sigh more to myself than him, but I know he hears because I see the muscle in his jaw tic at the words. “You told me that you sabotage anything good. I need to know if you loved any of them?”
He steps next to me and runs a hand through his hair. I have to crane my head up to meet his eyes. “I’m not capable of love, Rylee,” he deadpans, his voice a haunted whisper, before staring out to sea and shoving his hands in his pockets. “I learned a long time ago that the more you want someone, the more you covet them, and need and love them … it doesn’t matter. In the end they’re going to leave you anyway.” He picks up a shell and tosses it. “Besides, someone can tell you they love you, but words can lie and actions can be improvised to fake something that’s not.”
A shudder runs through me at his words. What a sad, horrible way to go through life. To always want but to never have because you think it will be taken away without notice. To be so hurt that you think it’s the words and actions that hurt rather than the person behind them. My heart is wrenched for the poor little boy who lived a life empty of unconditional love. It aches for the man before me. A man so full of passion and life and possibility but denying himself the one piece that can help make him whole.
Oblivious to my line of thinking and my overwhelming pity for the lonely boy within him, Colton continues. “Did I think I might have loved any of them? I’m not sure, Rylee. I know how they wanted me to feel. How they wanted me to demonstrate and reciprocate, but I told you, I’m just not capable of it.” He shrugs his shoulders as if this is just a simple fact of life. He turns and looks at me, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “What about you, Rylee?” he asks playfully. “Have you ever been in love?”
I look at him for a beat and then back out to the waves, searching for the memories that are there but slowly fading. A wistful smile plays on my lips as they come back to me. “Yes. I have.”