Colton stands in a pair of blue jeans and nothing else. Bare feet, bare chest heaving with exertion, and hair dripping with water that runs in rivulets down his chest. He looks as if he literally stepped out of the shower, noticed I was gone, and chased me. He takes a step toward me, his throat working a nervous swallow, and his face a mask of conviction. He is utterly magnificent—breathtakingly so—but it’s his eyes that capture me and don’t let go. Those beautiful pools of green just hold mine—imploring, apologizing, pleading—and I’m frozen in the moment.
“I just need time to think, Colton,” I offer as a justification of my actions.
“What is there to think about?” He blows out a loud breath, a harsh curse following right after. “I thought we were…”
I stare at the paint on my toenails; flashbacks flit through my mind of them on his chest not too long ago. “I just need to think about us…this…everything,”
He steps closer to me. “Look at me,” he commands softly, and I owe him this much regardless of how much I fear seeing the look in his eyes. When I raise my eyes to meet his, searching mine in the full moonlight, I see worry, disbelief, fear, and so much more in the depths of his eyes and as much as I want to look away—to hide from the damage that I’m about to cause—I can’t. He deserves better than that from me. His voice is so soft when he speaks that I barely hear him. “Why?” It’s a single word, but there is so much emotion packed behind it that it takes a minute for me to find the words to respond.
And it’s the same question I need to ask him.
“If this is real, Colton…we’re supposed to complement each other—make each other better people—not tear each other apart. Look at what we did to each other tonight.” I try to explain. “People who care for each other don’t try to purposely hurt one another…that’s not a good sign.” I shake my head, hoping he understands what I’m saying.
His throat works as he thinks of what to say. “I know we’ve made a mess of this, Ry, but we can figure this out,” he pleads. “We can get us right.”
I close my eyes momentarily, tears spilling over as I remember where we are and what tomorrow signifies. “Colton…you need to focus right now…on the race…we can talk later…discuss this later…right now you need to get your head on the track where it belongs.”
He shakes his head emphatically at me. “You’re more important, Rylee.”
“No, I’m not,” I murmur as I avert my eyes again, silent tears endlessly sliding down my cheeks now.
I feel his finger on my chin, guiding my eyes to look back at his. “If you leave, it’s not just to think. You’re not coming back, are you?” He stares at me, waiting for a response and my lack of one is his answer. “Did us—you and me—earlier not mean anything to you? I thought that...” his voice drifts off as I can see it dawning on him “...you were getting closure. That’s why you were so upset,” he says, talking more to himself than me. “You were saying goodbye weren’t you?”
I don’t respond but rather just keep my eyes fixed on his so maybe through his pain he can see how hard this is on me too. It would be so much easier if he raged and threw something instead of these soft pleading words and eyes filled with disbelief and hurt.
“I just need some time to think, Colton,” I finally manage, repeating myself.
“Time to distance yourself to make it easier on you is what you really mean, right?”
I bite the inside of my cheek as I carefully chose my next words. “I—I just need some time away from you, Colton, and the disaster that we’ve made of the past couple of days. You’re so overpowering—so everywhere—that when I’m near you I become so lost in you that it’s like I can’t breathe or think or do anything on my own. I just need a little time to process this...” I look around before turning back to him. “Time to try and figure out why we’re so broken…”
“No, Ry, no,” he insists, the rasp in his voice breaking as he brings his hands up to frame the sides of my face at the same time he bends his knees to bring us inches apart, eye to eye, thumbs caressing over the line of my jaw. “We’re not broken, baby…we’re just bent. And bent’s okay. Bent means that we’re just figuring things out.”
I feel like my heart is going to explode in my chest as he recites my words—the lyrics of the song I once said to him—back to me. It hurts so much. The look in his eyes. The raw simplicity in his explanation. The pleading conviction in his voice. The subtle irony that the one person who doesn’t ever “do the relationship thing” is giving the advice here on how to fix one.
Ours.
I just shake my head at him, my mouth opening to speak but closing again to just taste the salt of my tears when I can’t find the words to answer him. He’s still bent down, eye level with me. “There’s so much that I need to explain to you. So much I need to say…so much I should have already said to you.” He breathes out in a desperate plea. Colton puts both hands up on to the back of his neck, elbows bent, and paces back and forth a few steps. My eyes follow him and on his fourth pass, he grabs me without preemption and crushes his mouth to mine, bruising my lips in a kiss teeming with desperation. And before I can regain my footing beneath me, he tears his lips from mine, hands on my shoulders, eyes boring into mine. “I’ll let you go, Rylee. I’ll let you walk away and out of my life if that’s what you want—even if it fucking kills me—but I need you to hear me out first. Please, come back to the room so I can tell you things that you need to hear.”