Fueled(book two)(20)

I run my hand over the side of his cheek and cradle it there. He closes his eyes at my touch. “It’s just too much, too fast, Rylee.” He breathes and opens his eyes to meet mine. The fear there is heartbreaking. “For so long I’ve…your selflessness is so consuming that it…” he struggles, reaching up to take my hand framing his face in his own. “I can’t give you what you need because I don’t know how to live—to feel—to breathe—if I’m not broken. And being with you? You deserve someone that’s whole. I just can’t…”

The words to the song from the car flash into my mind, and they are out before I can stop myself. “No, Colton. No.” I tell him, making sure his eyes are on mine. “You’re not broken, Colton. You’re just bent.”

Despite my saying it with serious intent, Colton belts out a self-deprecating laugh at the apropos corniness of me using a song lyric to try and express myself. He shakes his head at me. “Really, Ry? A song lyric?” he asks, and I just shrug at him, willing to try anything to break him out of this rut he keeps returning to. I watch as his smile fades and the concern returns to his eyes. “I just need time to process this…you…it’s just too…”

I can feel his pain and rather than just stand there and watch it manifest in his eyes, I opt to give him what he needs to confirm our connection. I step up to him and brush my lips against his. Once. Twice. And then I slip my tongue between his lips and connect with his. He won’t hear the words, so I need to show him with this. With fingertips whispering over his jaw and up through his hair. With my body pressed tight against him. With my tongue dancing with his in a lazy, decadent kiss.

He slowly lets go of the tension in his body as he accepts and gives in to the feeling between us. The desire. The need. The truth. His hands slide up to cup the sides of my face, thumbs brushing tenderly over my cheeks. Rough to soft, just like the two of us. He places a last, lingering kiss on my lips and then rests his forehead onto mine. We sit there for a moment, eyes closed, breath feathering over one another, and souls searching.

I feel settled. Content. Connected.

“Pit stop,” he whispers against my lips.

The words come out of nowhere, and I jolt at their sound. Come again? I try to pull back to look at him, but he keeps a firm grip on my head and holds me against him, forehead to forehead. I’m not sure how to respond. My heart’s unable to follow the path he’s just chosen while my head is already five steps ahead of him.

“A pit stop?” I say slowly as my thoughts race one hundred miles per hour.

He eases his hold on my head, and I lean back so I can look at him, but he refuses to meet my eyes. “It’s either a pit stop or I tell you that Sammy will drop by a set of keys for the house in the Palisades and we meet there from here on out,” he slowly lifts his eyes to meet mine “…to keep the lines from getting fuzzy.”

I hear him speak the words but don’t think I actually listen to them. I can’t comprehend them. Did he just actually tell me that after last night—after this morning—he’s going to pull this shit on me? Push me back in to the arrangement category of his life.

So this is how it’s going to go? Fucking hell, Donavan. I take a step back, needing the distance from his touch, and we stand in silence staring at each other. I look at the man that broke down in front of me earlier and is trying to distance himself from me now, trying to regain his isolated state of self-preservation. His request stings but I refuse to believe him, refuse to believe that he feels nothing for me. Maybe this all spooked him—someone too close when he’s used to being all alone. Maybe he’s using his fallback and trying to hurt me, put me in my place, so I can’t hurt him in the long run. I so desperately want to believe that’s what this is about, but it’s so hard to not let that niggling doubt twist its way into my psyche.