Crashed(book three)(162)

The raw grief breaking his voice has me sitting beside him and waiting for him to look up into my eyes. “What did you do?”

He reaches out and grabs my hand, lacing our fingers together and squeezing tightly. “I found my mom.”

The breath catches in my throat because when I made that comment, never in a million years, would I have thought he’d actually do it. And now I don’t know what to say, because I’m the catalyst for all of this pain.

“Colton …” It’s all I can say, all I can offer besides lifting our hands and pressing a kiss to the back of his.

“Kelly called me while I was … Oh f*ck! I missed the ceremony. I stood you up.” And I can tell by the absolute disbelief in his voice that he really, truly forgot.

“No, no, no,” I shush him, trying to tell him that it doesn’t matter. That only facing his fears is what matters. “It’s okay.” I squeeze our hands again.

“I’m so sorry, Ry … I just … I can’t even f*cking think straight right now.” He breaks his eyes from mine and averts them in shame as he uses his other hand to wipe the tears from his cheeks. “You know...” he shakes his head as he looks out at the darkened track in front of us “...it’s kind of funny that this is the place I come to forget everything and tonight it’s the first place I thought to go in order to come to terms with it all.”

I follow his eyes and look out at the track, taking in the enormity of it all—the track and his actions. We sit in silence as the importance behind his words hit me. He’s trying to face things, to move on, to begin to heal. And I’ve never been more proud of him.

“I asked my dad a couple of months ago if he knew what had happened to her. He got me in touch with a PI—Kelly is his name—that he’d hired when I was younger who kept tabs on her for ten years to make sure she didn’t come back for me.” His voice is even, flat, such a contrast to the hiccupping despair from moments ago, and yet I can feel the extremity of the emotion vibrating just beneath the surface. “He called me today. He found her.” He looks over at me, and the forlorn look in his eyes—a lost little boy trying to find his way—undoes me, breaks the hold on the emotion I’m trying to hold in so I can be strong for him.

Be the rock while he crumbles.

My first tear falls as I reach out and place my hand on his cheek, a simple touch that relays so very much about what I think, how I feel, what I know he needs from me. I lean in, his jaw clenching beneath my palm, his eyes fused with mine, and place a feather soft kiss to his lips. “I’m so proud of you.” I whisper the words to him. I don’t ask him about what he found or who she is. I focus on him, on the now, because I know his head is desperately trying to reconcile the past while trying to figure out the future. So I focus on the here, the now, and hope he understands that I’ll be here for every single step of the way if he lets me.

We sit like this, the silence reinforcing the reassurance of my touch and the understanding behind my kiss. And for once, the silence is comforting, accepting of his tortured soul.

He works a swallow in his throat and blinks his eyes rapidly as if he too is trying to understand everything, and yet he has so many more pieces of the puzzle than I do, so I sit and wait patiently for him to continue. He breaks our eye contact and leans back, eyes drawn back to the track.

“My mom is dead,” he says the words without any emotion, and even though they float out into the night, I can sense them suffocating him. I stare at him, take in his moonlit profile against the night sky, and I choose to say nothing, to let him lead this conversation.