I choke on the simple breath of air I’m drawing in. I should be used to her by now, I really should, but she continually surprises me and makes me love her that much more. When I stop laughing I look up at her. “One for luck …”
“And one for courage,” she finishes as we toss the alcohol back.
I welcome the burn, welcome the here and now with my best friend, and when I wrap my head around what the hell she’s just said, I look over at her out of the corner of my eye. “Unless he’s between your legs, huh? Is that an old family adage? One passed down from generation to generation?”
“Yep,” she says, twisting her lips, fighting the smile I know that’s coming. “Never disturb a man when he’s eating at the Y.”
“Haddie,” I laugh. “Seriously?”
“I can keep going all night long, sister!” She clinks her glass with mine again, my cheeks hurting from smiling so hard. “And here’s another one. When your best friend is sad? It’s your job to get her shitfaced and go dancing.”
“Well,” I say, sliding off of the barstool and taking a minute to let the room stop spinning, “I think that’s a fucking perfect idea!”
Haddie squares up our tab and calls for a cab as we clumsily walk to the front door. And I talk myself out of making her take me to Colton’s house because right now, I just really want Colton—in the best way, in the worst way—in all ways.
“C’mon, we’re good to go. Three hours in a bar is way too long,” she says as she puts her arm around me and helps me walk respectably to the exit.
And as we clear the bar’s door, the darkened night sky explodes into an electrifying barrage of blinding camera flashes and shouts.
“How does it feel being known as the home wrecker?”
“Don’t you have any remorse coming between Colton and Tawny?”
“Isn’t it hypocritical that you tried to make Colton abandon his baby when that’s what you do for a living?”
And they keep coming at me. One after another after another. I feel trapped as Haddie tries to guide me through the congestion of cameras and microphones and flashes and contempt.
I guess the press has found me.
“You’re fucking kidding me, right?” I fight the urge to smash something. That urge driving my every fucking emotion, the one that makes me crave the sound of destruction. The sound of my fucking life imploding.
My mind pushes out the images flashing through it from the past couple of days.
Blood draws and DNA markers and goddamn paternity tests.
Tawny and her bullshit lies and crocodile tears the fucking vultures are eating up like fresh meat.
Visiting with Jack and Jim and getting so sick of looking at my life through the bottom of an empty glass, I just choose to drink straight from the goddamn bottle.
And then there is Rylee.
Motherfucking Rylee.
Little pieces of her everywhere. Sheets that still smell like her. A ponytail holder on the bathroom counter. The cans of her beloved Diet Coke lined perfectly in the refrigerator. Her Kindle on the nightstand. The strands of her hair on my shirt. Evidence that her perfection exists. Evidence that something so good—so pure—actually can want someone like me—tainted and fucked up with a capital F.
I want, need, hate that I want, hate that I need her so fucking bad, but I can’t do it. I can’t pull her into this fucking rainstorm of bullshit surrounding me, don’t want her to deal with the fucked up me that even I hate until I can wrap my head around everything. Until I can control the emotions that are ruling my actions.
Until I get a negative on the DNA match.
My mom was fucking right. Fucking right and she only knew me for eight of my thirty two years … if that doesn’t say something, I’m not sure what else does. I can’t be loved. If someone loves me—if I let someone in too much—my own demons will start in on them too. Work their way through the cracks in me and find a way to ruin them.
“Colton, are you there?”
I pull myself from my thoughts—the same goddamn ones that have been running like a hamster on the wheel through the shit in my head over the past week. “Yeah,” I reply to my publicist. “I’m here, Chase.” I push the rags on the table in front of me away, but it doesn’t matter if I throw them in the trash or set a match to the fuckers because the image of Rylee coming out of that bar is still burned in my brain. Shocked eyes, parted lips, and an all-around look of being overwhelmed from the maelstrom that hit her when she left.
And it fucking kills me! Rips me apart that my bullshit—being with me—caused that look on her face. The fear in her eyes. All I want to do is be the one with her, my arm around her, but I’m not. I can’t because I don’t have the words or actions to make it better. To make it go away. To protect her.
“This is fucking bullshit and you know it.”
I hear my publicist sigh on the other end of the line. She knows I’m pissed, knows no matter what she says I’m not going to be happy unless she tells me to find the bastards that are harassing Ry, and let loose my need to destroy. “Colton, in light of Tawny’s accusations, it’s best that you do nothing. If you react, your public image—”
“I don’t give two fucks about my public image!”
“Oh believe me, I know,” she sighs. “But if you react the press eats it up and then the longer they hang around to see you screw up or lose it. That means the longer they hang around Rylee …”
Fuck all if she’s not right. But shit, what I wouldn’t give to walk outside the gates and give them my two cents worth. “One of these days, Chase,” I tell her.