Page 29 of Fake Shot

“Can we rewind time and go back to that restaurant so you cannotsay I’m your fiancée? What the fuck, Colt?” I finally meet his eyes. “Where did that even come from?”

He shakes his head, his lips pressed together. “I have no idea. I was just so ...” He looks beyond me, toward the bathroom, like he’s searching for the right word, and the possibilities fly through my mind.Angry, worried, pissed, frustrated, jealous ...but none feel quite right, especially the last one. Though why else would he act in such a possessive way, likeJerome was touching something that washis, if he wasn’t jealous? “... pissed off about how he was treating you.”

“And that led to you calling me your fiancée, how exactly?”

“I don’t know.” He releases his own huge sigh. “Probably because I felt like I needed a reason to explain the insane rage I was feeling and it needed to be something that would convince him to get his hands off you, and because we’d just been at Drew and Audrey’s engagement party, so ... I don’t know. I guess maybe the whole ‘engaged’ thing was just in my head? Honestly, I’m not sure why I said that.”

He gives me a shrug and a sheepish smile, both of which are just so quintessentially Colt that it pisses me off. His happy-go-lucky, no-one-can-stay-mad-at-me-because-I’m-just-so-damn-likable routine has no place in this situation.

“You didn’t need to step in, and I wish you hadn’t. I had that situation fully handled.”

He steps closer, and I tilt my head back to look up at him. “Did you, though? Because you might have been standing your ground, but the look on your face was ... I don’t even know. It looked like you were terrified.”

Did it really?God, I hate it when I lose control of my own emotions. I can rein them in 98% of the time, but when I can’t, Ireallycan’t.

“What happened?” he asks.

I don’t say anything for a moment, wondering how to explain why I froze up like that in the restaurant, and why I couldn’t breathe in that alley. I don’t want to get too personal, but he also deserves an explanation. If I hadn’t reacted that way, he may not have felt the need to step in andwe might not be in this situation. Or maybe we still would be. It’s impossible to know.

“I’m terrified when I’m not in control,” I say, my voice weak and quiet.

“Tink.” He grinds out the nickname like the thought of me being scared is pure anguish for him, then he cups my cheeks in his hands and tilts my face up so I have to look at him. “Why?”

I can’t tell him the truth. He’ll feel guilty, and it’s not his fault that he didn’t have feelings for me and that I handled the realization so badly.

That’s on me.

“I just hate the feeling of not being in control.”

His thumbs sweep across my cheeks softly. “Is that why you almost had a panic attack in the alley.”

Fuck.He is way too perceptive. And with his eyebrows lowered as he gazes down at me, studying me, he doesn’t look like he regrets what happened between us at all. In fact, he looks like he’s about to make it happen again.

I step back quickly. “I wasn’t having a panic attack.”

He steps forward just as quickly. “Bullshit.”

“Colt,I’m fine. I was just”—I shake my head, trying to quantify how I was feeling an hour ago so I can convince him he saw something other than what we both know he really saw—“frustrated about what happened. I was mad at myself for how I froze when he grabbed my wrist, instead of fighting back.”

“You weren’t breathing.” He takes another step toward me, and I step back. But it doesn’t stop him from advancing. “In fact, I don’t think you started breathing again until I kissed you.”

I take another step back. “Colt,” my voice warns. He looks like he might try it again, and I don’t know if I’d have the willpower to resist him if he did.

“Yeah, Tink?” His voice is low and seductive, and I force myself to think about that text from earlier today. The one that reminded me he’ll never change—just another man in my life who refuses to grow up.

“You should probably go call Bambi back.”

His head rears back like I threw cold water on him, but then he focuses those eyes back on me again. “Can’t. I’m busy.”

“Busy doing what?”

“Busy trying to figure out why you’re wound so tight you’re about to explode.”

Oh, I’m wound tight alright. A shiver of desire snakes its way through my body, from my tailbone, up my spine, and to my shoulders, radiating forward so my core and my nipples feel the ripples of longing.

No.Never again.

I don’t understand why my body doesn’t remember that we’re not doing the wholelonging for Coltthing anymore, we’re doing theprotect Jules at all coststhing—and the two are entirely incompatible. My mind will just have to keep reminding my body.

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