Page 89 of Colt
“I know. Do you think your dad has ever been sorry about hurting anyone? Do you think he’s ever worried so much about being a good person?”
“No,” I say, a little bit dumbfounded by that realization. But of course it’s true. Of course, he’s never worried about that.
“Your love is good enough.” I duck my head, suddenly overwhelmed by emotion. I let out a hard breath, and look at her. I let her see it. I’ve gone through all this and not shed a single tear, but she makes me want to weep like a baby. Because what she said is true. She’s loved me forever. Even when she was kind of a brat to me, she loved me. What a difficult position she was in, all these years. Feeling like it was impossible. She’s brave enough to have taken a chance on us years ago, but the connection…
We still have to deal with our respective parents. With the way this is going to affect the family. But that feels extremely secondary to us knowing we’ve made a real commitment to each other.
“I would like to live here,” she says finally. “Just because I’m not sure how I feel about us cohabitating in a house your mom owns.”
“We’ve had more sex in houses owned by my mom than can be readily catalogued.”
She laughs. “I know. But for our life. If you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind. I’ve traveled all over the place. I can do apartment living for a little bit.”
She wraps her arms around mine. “You’re still a cowboy, you know.”
Something about that goes a long way to healing a sore spot in my chest. “I want to go talk to your dad.”
I feel some real dread about that.
Because Jim is my father figure. Hell, he’s just my dad. In ways my own certainly never has been. Robert Campbell doesn’t care about me. He didn’t send me anything when I got injured – the cascade of cards and texts that I received in the hospital didn’t have a single thing to do with him. My hero in so many ways. A real man. Who bakes pies for his family, and loves his kids. Who went through something impossible, a grief that must’ve split him open. A grief I feel closer to now, now that I know what it’s like to love somebody. Like this.
I don’t want to do anything to compromise my relationship with him, and yet, Allison is the one thing that’s worth it.
“I should probably talk to your mom.”
“I can handle all that.”
She shakes her head. “Divide and conquer. I think that seems fair.”
“I assume Gentry has already talked to you,” I say.
She wrinkles her nose. “No.”
“Well. He knows. “He’s a real friend. Agoodfriend. I didn’t appreciate what he was offering to me because it was something that disrupted my narrative. I appreciate it now, though. I really do.
I make breakfast, then we decide to make the trip to Golden Valley. It’s a mirror, in many ways of that time she drove me home from the hospital. Except this time I’m healed. My body might not be totally healed, but my soul is. That matters a hell of a lot more. I never thought I’d be in that position, where what was inside me mattered more. Because all I wanted was to be able to win that championship. To prove myself. I don’t have to do that anymore.
But as we pull up to the house, I do feel some fear. Those old feelings of insufficiency wash through me. Because patterns are hard to break.
As I get out of the driver’s seat, Jim comes walking up from the direction of the barn. “What are you two doing here?”
“I want to talk to you,” I say.
Allison doesn’t touch me, but she does smile at me. “I’m going to go talk to Cindy,” she says.
She walks away from the truck, up the stairs toward the house. I take a deep breath, and turn toward Jim. “I don’t really know how to say this. So… I just have to.” I close my eyes. “I love Allison.”
I’m waiting for something. For an ax to fall, for a punch to get thrown. But he’s just standing there, looking at me, and suddenly it seems absurd that I would think my gentle, lovely stepfather would suddenly throw a punch when he’s never done any such thing. I realize how much of this comes from inside me. How much of it never had anything to do with him. All my insecurities, for all my life. They’re just about me. I projected that mirror onto other people.
“Do you want to clarify, because there are a few ways I could take that.”
I nod. “Yeah, I… I want to marry her. And I get that that’s weird. Or maybe it feels like it’s coming from nowhere. Or like it’s not right, and I struggled with that a lot. We did.”
Jim nods and lets out a long sigh. “Colt, you’re not as subtle as you think you are.” He closes the distance between us and claps me on the shoulder. “It’s been months of the two of you circling each other, being together, being distant, and when we moved Allison into her apartment and you weren’t there, it was clear something had happened.”
“You never treated me any differently.”
