Consolation Prize (Forbidden Men #9)(62)

“There.” He exhaled and relaxed behind me.

I practiced a few more deep breaths before I realized I was relaxing too, and it felt nice, like two puzzle pieces interlocking. Which only made me more uneasy. Getting this close to Colton when sex wasn’t involved seemed scary.

“Your heart’s racing,” he whispered into my ear, his breath stirring my hair and making me shiver while my nipples hardened.

“But I’m relaxed,” I whispered back. “Isn’t that a start?”

“You’re right. It is. You’re doing great.” His hand squeezed encouragingly around my hip. “Want to know a secret?”

When I hummed out my assent, letting him know I did, he said, “I really like your dream catchers.” His fingers drifted over my tattoo with the softest caress. “When I was little, I had someone try to help me get over my nightmares too. But she didn’t give me a dream catcher.”

I sighed, content, as one of his fingers traced the feather that came around my ribcage toward my front. “What’d she give you?”

He chuckled softly. “A rabbit’s foot and a little bottle of breath spray.”

My eyebrows perked. “The rabbit’s foot and breath spray you have on your keychain?” The very pair he’d held in his sleep all night on my couch?

“Yeah. Those.” His fingers paused at the very tip of my feather before moving on toward the underside of my breasts.

Closing my eyes as he circled my chest with a lazy, swooping fingertip, I said, “I understand the rabbit’s foot, to give you luck, but...breath spray?”

He chuckled again, a little more ruefully this time. “She called it monster repellent, and said if I ever got scared, I could spray it on the monster to scare it away.”

I laughed, a languid, happy giggle. “That’s priceless. I love it. It’s a perfect story for a little boy too. And I guess you used it if you’ve run out.”

“Well, I used it as breath spray too. And I’ve had it nearly ten years so...of course I’ve used it all by now.”

“Makes sense.” A couple of quiet moments passed before I skimmed my hand up the arm that was wrapped around my waist and squeezed his bicep warmly. “Want to know a secret from me?”

Even as I asked, my stomach muscles clenched, making me wonder why I was opening up to him.

But then he said, “Of course,” and I had to admit the truth.

“I’m really not a cuddler, but this...this I like.”

“Hell yes, you do,” he agreed with a hungry kind of growl as he tugged me tighter against him. “Because you’re cuddling with me.”

“Oh, Jesus.” I rolled my eyes but grinned as I did. “We really need to work on your ego, you know that?”

“Nah, I actually don’t think all that highly of myself. I’m pretty realistic about who and what I am. All the hoopla I put on is mostly a ruse, just to have some fun. The truth is, I’m not all that. I’ve let down some of the people closest to me in the worst ways possible.”

He sounded so sad about that. Sad and Colton should never be used in the same sentence. I rubbed his arm, trying to think up something wise and comforting to say.

But then he sighed.

“It really eats at you, you know,” he admitted quietly, “when someone you love suffers because of you. But f*ck, what’re you supposed to do when they recover and forgive you? Get all depressed and turn emo because of it? Or pick your damn self back up, laugh it off, and try to make their sacrifice worth something?”

I shook my head, surprised he was spilling all this to me, but kind of really touched by it too. “Okay, you can’t just vague bomb me like that and not expect me not to want to know what you’re talking about.”

“Fine, here’s one example. When I was nine, my family went to this park to have a picnic. My sister, Caroline, and her husband, Ten, took me down this condemned walking trail to see a waterfall. But the place was condemned because of really bad ground erosion around the river. Well...I got too close to the side and began to fall in, but Ten jumped forward and pulled me back, only to fall in himself.”

I sucked in a breath. “Did he…?”

“He lived,” Colton reassured me. “But he got a pretty good bash on his head that put him in a coma for a while. Then when he woke, he’d lost his memory. It took Caroline to help him get that back. Today, he’s fine except for a nasty scar on his face, which reminds me every time I see it that I’m responsible for it.”

I turned around to face him and cupped his beautiful flawless face in my hands. I knew as I stared into his eyes that he wished he could’ve taken on the coma, memory loss and scarring his brother-in-law had suffered himself.

“Maybe you should see it as a reminder of how much you’re loved,” I said.

He studied my face right back, and I could tell he wanted to disagree. But he murmured, “Yeah, maybe you’re right.” Then he grinned. “All the same, it’s just as well you and I are only f*cking here. I mean, if we’d actually attempted some kind of relationship or something, I’d probably just end up failing you too.”

He closed his eyes as if he were going to fall asleep on me but it was only late afternoon, so he had to be faking it to avoid more conversation.