Dark Sexy Knight (A Modern Fairytale)(66)

Whether or not he’d yelled her name became an important part of the equation as afternoon turned into evening and she still sat in his car, dressed in a princess dress, her beautiful memories of last night mixing with the horror of watching him kiss another woman today.

It took so much strength and effort for her to try to see Colton and Sandy’s kiss in any light other than mutual desire, but after she calmed down and stopped crying, she concentrated hard and forced herself to re-create exactly what she’d seen.

She’d turned the corner of the barn as Colton was heading out, but suddenly he whipped around and kissed Sandy. It was a quick kiss, ending with Sandy stumbling back several steps as though pushed away. Colton mumbled something Verity couldn’t hear. While Sandy asked if she was looking for someone, Colton also turned around, and yes, she could see it in her mind: the sheer horror on his face. And yes, as she ran away, he called her name. She remembered.

But she still couldn’t make sense of it.

Why was Colton’s shirt off? Who had initiated the kiss? And why hadn’t Colton immediately run after her?

She took a deep breath, surprised to note that the sun was getting lower behind Walmart. She looked at the clock on the dashboard: six thirty. She’d been sitting in the car for almost an hour. The show wouldn’t be over for a while, but there was only one way to get the answers she needed. She had to talk to Colton. Turning the key in the ignition, she started the car and headed back to the castle.

***

Colt paced in front of the living room window, staring out at the street, looking for his car. It was after eight o’clock now, and she still wasn’t home. After Verity had peeled out of the parking lot, Colt asked Sebastian for a ride home, then called Lynette to say his stomach was hurting. As Sebastian headed back to work, Colt checked in the garage for the car, but it wasn’t there. He still ran into the house calling her name, but everything was quiet. She wasn’t home.

His squire was already queued up to play the Viking Knight tonight, and since he didn’t have a car, Colt was stuck at home, where he paced like a caged animal, wondering where the f*ck she was and if she was okay and if she would ever come back.

“She has to come back,” he muttered time and again. “Her stuff is here.”

He knew what it must have looked like to her—him kissing his ex-girlfriend in a dark barn with no shirt on. Fuck. He knew exactly what it looked like. And yet, when he thought about what they’d shared last night, it hurt him that she hadn’t let him explain, hadn’t given him the benefit of the doubt. Didn’t she know how much he loved her? Couldn’t she see that his feelings for her weren’t fickle or weak?

He sat down on Aunt Jane’s couch, his head in his hands, and closed his eyes. What if last night was all he’d ever get? What if Sandy had ruined things with Verity?

“No!” he raged, swiping Aunt Jane’s porcelain figurines of Beauty and the Beast, Hansel and Gretel, and Little Red Riding Hood off the coffee table in front of him. “FUCK THAT! No, no, no! Fuck!”

The little statues crashed into a far wall, smashing into tiny pieces that fell onto the carpet.

“Please!” he growled, upending the coffee table and kicking a leg off just as headlights brightened the room.

He raced to the front door and whipped it open to find Ryan walking up the driveway.

“Hi, Colton!” he said, waving cheerfully.

No thunderface. No thunderface.

“Hey, buddy,” he said softly, through clenched teeth, looking over Ryan’s shoulder at Verity, who sat in the front seat of the car, facing straight ahead, staring at the garage.

“Artie won,” said Ryan. “Again.”

“Yeah. He wins every Wednesday,” said Colt.

“Yeah. Every Wednesday. Ver’ty said go to bed.”

Ryan walked up the stoop and into the house, past Colt, his footsteps fainter and fainter as Colt walked away from the house, toward the car.

He took a deep breath and stood beside the driver’s door. She was still wearing the princess dress she’d been wearing when she caught sight of him and Sandy in the barn, which meant that, while she’d picked up Ryan after his shift, she hadn’t gone back to work, where she would have changed back into street clothes before coming home. He reached for the car door, relieved that it wasn’t locked, and squatted down beside her.

“Please, sunshine,” he said as gently as he could. “Please let me explain.”

When she turned to him, the sadness in her eyes made him feel worse than any beating he’d ever taken from his father. They were bloodshot and swollen, like she’d been crying for hours, and behind them was such immense sorrow, he felt like he’d die if he couldn’t take away her pain.

“You were . . . k-kissing h-her.”

Her voice was so soft and small, so broken, he could barely hear her.

“No,” he said. “She kissed me. I pushed her away.”

“You didn’t have a shirt on.”

“Neither did Sebastian or Shawn. We’d been training in the sun for hours. We were all sweaty and beat.”

Her eyes welled with tears, so full, he didn’t know how they didn’t fall. And when they did, he winced.

“You didn’t . . . you didn’t come after me.”

“I did, baby,” he said. “You burned rubber out of the parking lot with me calling your name behind. Sebastian brought me home, and I waited for you. I’ve been waiting for hours.”