Page 35 of Where They Belong

“What?” Mason rocked back in his chair. His eyebrows pinched down. “I might have been too afraid to say anything in the heat of the moment, but I never lied to you, and I sure ashellnever said anything like that.”

Colt snorted. “Oh, really?”

How could Mason sit there and act like he hadn’t done anything wrong. Like he hadn’t stabbed the metaphorical knife into Colt’s heart and twisted it.

“Your dad came to the house that night. Did you know that? I heard him and my mom arguing. He told my mom that you said I made it all up. That I was a pervert and took advantage of you.”

“What the hell?” Mason launched to his feet, eyes wide and eyebrows disappearing under his bangs. Colt almost believed his shock was genuine. “I never said a damn thing about you to my dad.”

Colt threw his arms up. “And there’s the crux of the whole damn problem.”

“Colt.” Mason dropped his voice, his tone placating. “I don’t know what you think you heard, but I never said anything like that to my dad. I told him I lov—”

“No.” Colt shook his head and raised both hands. He did not want to hear that word coming out of Mason’s mouth. He’d been a sucker to believe Mason had ever meant it in the first place. “He kicked us off the ranch that night.”

Mason frowned and shook his head.

“No, he didn’t.” That Mason had the nerve to argue stunned him. Colt’s vision narrowed as Mason continued. “He sent me away early the next day to live with relatives. In North Dakota. Tomake a man out of me, or what-the-fuck-ever. I tried calling, but there was never any answer. Then you were gone when I got back. He said you all moved away and didn’t leave a forwarding address.”

“Really?” Colt glared at him in disbelief. If Mason thought he could gaslight him, he had another thing coming. Colt wouldn’t be fooled a second time. “That’s how you’re going to play it?”

“I’m notplayingat anything,” Mason shouted.

Green fire sparked in his eyes, and Colt’s traitorous body reacted with an answering flame of its own, deep in his groin.Fuck. He needed to deal with his libido getting all excited right now like he needed a bullet to the head.

“That’s what happened.” Mason kept talking, digging the hole deeper and filling it with lies upon lies. “I called, I left messages, I even wrote letters. I begged for your forgiveness, and yes, I told youI loved youover and over. I would have done anything to go back and change that day. But not once did you reply.”

“Because I. Wasn’t. Here,” Colt bit out, ire bubbling up in his chest. It was like they were having two different conversations. How could Mason’s version of what had happened be so different from his? And did Mason honestly think he would buy his horseshit?

“According to my dad, yes, you were. I was worried about you, but he told me you were perfectly fine.” Mason’s voice wavered on those last few words, but he took a step closer.

His nostrils flared. Heat radiated off his body in waves, reaching for Colt, calling to him like a siren song, while conflicting emotions tangled his synapses into twisted knots. He wanted to lash out at Mason, hurt him like he’d been hurt. Angry at words never said when they should have been but that were no longer wanted now. But at the same time, this blazing, powerfully intense Mason Hayes was hitting every single one of hisyes, pleasebuttons. His hands twitched with a growing need to grab Mason, back him up against the wall, and revel in his body.

Because some stupid part of him still wanted Mason.

“How could you just cut me out like that?” Mason continued, each word weaker sounding than the one before, and for the first time, Colt heard pain in Mason’s voice. Raw, deep, heartbreaking pain, as he whispered, “You were everything to me.”

Something in Colt’s heart cracked. He tried to swallow, but his throat felt thick, as though their long, not-so-dead history was clogging it. He didn’t want to fall for Mason again because of what Mason had done and said, but what if Masonwastelling the truth? What if he’d never said those awful things and had been sent away thinking Colt was still here and ignoring his attempts to apologize.

Jesus. He needed to get out of there, needed distance from Mason so he could think clearly.

“I wasn’t here,” Colt muttered, like that was the whole takeaway from their confusing argument and new revelations. Could he have been wrong all this time? Could Grant Hayes have told them both a different story to keep them apart?

Mason stared at him for a long, heated moment, but Colt couldn’t parse his thoughts enough to form words. There was too much swirling around in his head. Too many memories, too many feelings.

“What? Nothing to say about it? I knew you wouldn’t listen,” Mason snarled. “Ineversaid any of those things about you, but go ahead and believe whatever you want, if that’s what lets you sleep at night. I told my dad therealtruth. That we loved each other, that we were going to run the ranch together one day.Youare the one who never gavemea chance to make up for not standing up to him in the barn.”

Colt studied Mason. His body was so tense and rigid that for a second, Colt thought he wasn’t breathing. The skin around his eyes was tight, his mouth pinched into a flat line, and the pained anger in his eyes was too real to be anything but the truth. The truth as Mason knew it. But the truth Colt knew wasn’t the same. The common denominator behind each version: Grant Hayes. Realization struck him like a hoof to the chest.

Grant manipulated them to keep them apart. How had he not seen that then, or in all the years since?

“I would have given you every chance in the world,” Colt said. His voice wavered and sounded broken to his ears. All these years, he’d been hating Mason for ruining what they had when it had been Grant who’d ruined them both.

“Then why didn’t you?” Mason took another step closer, his voice softer, pleading.

Because everything I thought I knew was a lie.

“Don’t you get it, Mase?” Colt implored as the pieces fell into place and finally made sense. “Your dad did this.”

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