Consolation Prize (Forbidden Men #9)(20)

I watched them until she caught sight of me. Her welcoming smile glinted from the streetlamps overhead and immediately made me feel comforted. But then, Felicity Parker always had that effect on me; it’s probably why I’d been in love with her since I was ten.

“Colton! What’re you doing out here?” Smile dying, she furrowed her brow as she took in my tattered state of dress. “Is everything okay?”

I ignored the unspoken question of why my shirt was gaping open and my bare chest was on display for all the world to see. I merely said, “Noel needs me home, but…” I glanced at my truck, not really wanting to admit how much I’d had to drink.

Felicity’s face softened with sympathy. “Too much champagne?”

I nodded regretfully.

She sighed. “I saw them leave earlier. Aspen looked pretty pale.”

Glancing up, I felt the instinctive need to defend my sister-in-law and report that Aspen was doing fine. Just fine. But Felicity was her best friend. She knew the truth. All of us closest to her knew.

Shaking her head, Felicity looked up to her husband with pleading eyes. He let out a breath before saying, “Yeah, yeah. I’ll get these two home. You take care of the Gambles.”

Face brightening with pleasure, she pushed up onto her toes to kiss his cheek. “Thank you. You’re the best husband ever.” Then she glanced my way. “Give me a second to help Knox get our crew loaded in the car, and then I’ll drive you home in your truck, okay?”

I had no reason to argue with that, so I nodded. “Okay.”

They had parked only a few spaces down from me, and went off to situate their ankle-biters. While they were doing their thing, I unlocked my truck and slipped into the passenger seat. A minute later, Felicity opened the driver’s side door and climbed behind the wheel. I held up my keys for her without a word and continued to stare out the front windshield.

“Thank you,” she murmured as she tugged them from my hand. After she started the engine, she glanced over at me, and I could feel her gaze examining me up and down.

Finally, she asked, “Do I even want to know what happened to your clothes?”

“Nope,” I answered, still staring out the window.

With a sigh, she backed out of the parking spot. “Oh, Colton. How do you manage to get into these pickles?”

I shook my head, clueless. “Just lucky, I guess.”

She made a sound in her throat, and from the contemplative tone of it, I was probably doubly lucky she didn’t say what she was thinking. A dozen years my senior, Felicity was like a second mother to me, or maybe a third mother, since Aspen was technically my second mother, though I thought of her as more of a first mother. Whatever the ranking, I was sure anything Felicity had to say at this moment would not sit well with me.

Because I already felt like shit.

I glanced at her from the corner of my eye to make sure she was going to keep her thoughts to herself and caught sight of the earrings dangling from her ears. They weren’t dream catchers, but I was suddenly thinking about dangly dream catcher earrings.

I have no idea why learning Julianna had suffered from childhood nightmares too had endeared me to her. Hitler had lost four of his five siblings, both his parents, given all their pensioned money to his little sister Paula, and then been forced to live in homeless shelters because of it all by the time he was eighteen, and I didn’t feel much sympathy for him. But I’d felt a definite connection with Julianna.

Maybe it was because she still carried around a reminder of her night terrors, or rather the cure that had helped her get over them.

Just like I did.

Without meaning to, I reached out and flicked my finger against the rabbit’s foot and breath spray hanging from the keys in the ignition.

“Oh my goodness,” Felicity murmured, glancing at what I was doing. “Please tell me that’s not the original can of monster repellant I gave you years ago.”

I grinned at her fondly. “And if it is?”

“Colton,” she murmured, shaking her head and grinning wildly. “You sentimental sweetheart. What’re we going to do with you? I can’t believe you kept those silly ol’ things.”

She was probably one of the only two people I’d let call me a sweetheart, or sentimental. Then again, she was probably one of the only two people who’d think that way of me. But then, she and Aspen would probably always see me as their little sweetheart.

“How could they be silly if they worked?” I asked.

She smiled and grasped my wrist before I could retract my hand from the rabbit fur. Squeezing, she murmured, “I’m glad they worked.”

“Me too.” I drew her knuckles to my mouth and kissed them tenderly. “Did I ever thank you for chasing my nightmares away?”

Flushing, she shook her head. “There’s no need for that. I barely did anything.”

Barely anything my ass. She’d taken the time to talk me through my night terrors, then she’d helped me brainstorm ways to combat them, and to top it off, she’d given me these two keychains with a story about how they could protect me. And the nightmares had gone away completely.

I wouldn’t call that nothing. To me, she was a hero.

“You did a hell of a lot more than you know,” I argued as she turned down my street.

She glanced at me and patted my thigh. When she turned into the driveway, she said, “Now, tell me straight before I go in there with you. How bad off is she? Really.”