Page 69 of Fake Shot

In retrospect, his leaving probably saved us. I don’t want to think about what Audrey’s and my life would have been like if he’d stayed. Jameson was a better father figure to us than our dad ever was.

And I don’t want to go down “Flynn Road,” as Dad calls it. It’s the same road his father walked before him, succumbing to alcoholism and a premature death from it. And it only took one night in Vegas, with too many drinks and a broken heart, to have me following in my father’s footsteps.

I will never be him. I won’t allow it.

I owe it to my family, and to myself, to be better than he was. It’s why I’ve been so damn careful. Until now.

The banging on the hotel room door starts a few minutes later. Or maybe I’ve dozed off with my head on my arms where they’re folded across the toilet seat? There are angry voices in the hallways outside the bathroom door, then Jameson knocks and says, “Jules, open the door.”

I push up to standing, holding on to the countertop for support as I walk to the door. And when it’s open, Colt’s standing there. Jameson’s behind him with one hand around Brock’s neck, while Brock holds his hands in the air, saying, “I swear I didn’t touch her, man.”

“Shit, Tink.” Colt’s words are a whisper as he reaches his hand out to me. And without thinking, I extend my left hand into his grip. He freezes when he sees the ring, then holds up my hand for Jameson and Brock to see. “What the fuck happened last night?”

And that’s when all hell breaks loose. Jameson’s got Brock on the floor before I can even blink, and Colt scoops me up, cradling me protectively in his arms as he stands in the doorway of the bathroom looking at the skirmish below. I wince when Jameson’s fist connects with Brock’s jaw, but Colt turns us toward the door. “Do you have everything?”

“My phone.” I nod my chin toward the bathroom where it sits on the countertop, and he reaches over to grab it with one hand while holding me to him with his other arm like I weigh nothing. “We’ll be outside.”

He flips the lock to the hotel room door, propping it open as we exit—I assume, in case he needs to get back in there to help my brother—but he doesn’t set me down in the hallway. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Ineverwant to talk about this. In fact, promise me now that you’ll never bring it up again.”

I watch his throat bob and his lips twist together before he says, “This wasn’t your fault.”

“Promise me, Colt. We’re not talking about this now, nor ever again.”

He sighs, and it’s a deep movement that, from my vantage point in his arms, feels like it deflates him. “Okay, Tink. I promise.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

COLT

Present Day

“You’re not saying anything,” she whispers, the sound escaping from where she’s pressed up against my chest, with my arms wrapped around her and my shirt wet from her tears. It’s so similar to the way I cradled her in my arms that morning in Vegas that it has my heart seizing. At least this time, we’re in the quiet of our own room at the inn, and hopefully by now she knows I’d do just about anything to make sure she feels safe.

I’m so consumed by my own guilt that I don’t know what to say. She got drunk and married him because I hurt her. Not intentionally, but it was me being oblivious to her feelings that drove her straight into his arms. All for what? Some random chick I never saw or thought of again. I was supposed to be taking care of her, and knowing that not onlydid I fail her in that, but I actually caused the whole situation, has a knife twisting inside my gut.

It didn’t mean anything.I think his words—the same ones I said to her in that alley a couple of weeks back—will haunt me forever. She deserves so much more than that. She deserves to meaneverythingto someone.

“I had no idea.”

“About what?”

“About why it happened. I mean, I got the sense that you had a crush on me when you were younger, but I thought you outgrew that when you were old enough to figure out...”

“That you were the biggest fuckboy in the league?” she suggests when I don’t provide an end to that sentence. Then she lets out a small laugh and relaxes against me. “Yeah, I always hoped there was more to you than your reputation. And I think I was right.”

“I think maybe you’re the only one who ever tried to see beneath the mask.”

“What Gabriel and Cheri did to you...Colt, if I’d have known, I don’t think I would have suggested forgiving them.”

The fact that she is even considering what happened between me and my brother, right now, after telling me what happened to her...I don’t know if she’s just extremely empathetic, or if she’s trying to turn the conversation away from the huge bomb she just dropped.

“You didn’t,” I remind her. “You said I didn’t have to forgive them, that I could just choose to move on. And that advice, I think, begs the question: why haven’tyoumoved on from what Brock did to you?”

“Besides the fact that this was only six years ago, not fifteen?”

I can tell she’s joking, trying to buy time to decide how to answer the question. “Touché.”

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