Page 13 of Bolt To Me
The first thing Carli noticed was the weight. Not heavy in a burdensome way, but warm, steady, protective, the solid anchor of an arm draped across her waist, the quiet hum of a presence that had been there through the night. For a few precious moments, she didn’t move. Her breathing slowed until it matched the deep, unhurried rhythm behind her. The faint cottony scent of the sheets mixed with something warmer: Cory. His skin smelled faintly of last night’s cologne, smoke from the festival’s bonfire, and the unmistakable musk of a man who had been close to her, impossibly close, for hours.
She tilted her head just enough to see his face in the thin spill of morning light seeping through the white cotton curtains. Cory slept deeply, his lashes casting faint shadows against his cheeks, his lips parted in a breath that seemed to belong to some dream she could not enter. But his brow faintly held that crease she had always noticed, even in laughter, as if some part of him could never quite let go of the weight he carried. She hadseen it last night, too, right before he’d touched her like she was something both sacred and dangerous. He looked beautiful like this. Too beautiful. And that terrified her.
Because beauty like this, truth like this, had the power to undo her. She had spent years protecting herself from precisely this kind of vulnerability, walling off the softest parts of her heart. But now, in the dim quiet of this morning, those walls were rubble. She could feel the ache curling beneath her ribs, low and certain, a steady whisper that this wasn’t just attraction anymore. It was need.
Slipping gently from beneath his arm, she reached for the oversized shirt he had left draped over a chair, pulling it over her bare skin. The fabric carried his scent so strongly she almost pressed her face to it before stopping herself. She padded through the small space, each creak of the wooden floorboards sounding far louder than she wanted, as though the house itself might wake him before she was ready.
The porch was cool beneath her bare feet, the air tinged with dew and the faint sweetness of hay from the far fields. She curled onto the porch swing, tucking her legs beneath her, and stared at the horizon. The sky was still in the gentle stages of waking, painted with the pale blush of early dawn that promised the kind of day where the heat would settle in slowly, curling into the bones of the countryside by noon.
“What are you doing, Carli?” she whispered to herself. Her phone buzzed on the swing beside her, the sound too loud in the tender quiet. She glanced at the screen. A text from her mother.
Call me. We need to talk. The Whitmores are still asking questions.
She stared at the words for a long moment, the guilt prickling at the back of her neck. Eventually, she sighed,pressing the call button. Her thumb hesitated over the screen for a breath before lifting it to her ear.
Her mother’s voice came sharp and quick on the second ring. “Carlita Maria Santana. Do you have any idea what kind of firestorm you’ve caused?”
Carli’s lips quirked in a humorless smile. “Hi, Mom. I’m safe. I’m good. Thanks for asking.”
“This is not a joke,” her mother snapped, her words clipped, each one edged with the kind of precise anger Carli had grown up fearing more than any raised voice. “The Whitmores are furious. Your father is humiliated. People are talking.”
“They’ve been talking, Mama,” Carli said softly, her voice low enough to make the air around her feel heavier. “They started talking before I even put on that wedding dress about how I wasn’t right for the Whitmores.”
“And now you’re living with Cory Hayes? In hisguesthouse? Carli, do you have any idea what kind of message that sends?”
“Jeez, Mama. Make it sound worse than it really is. Aunt Rosie told you that? I’m staying in the guesthouse, not living with him.” She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. She was tired of this. “Mam, I’m not interested in messages right now. I’m interested in breathing.”
That stilled her mother.
Carli took the pause as permission to keep going. “I couldn’t marry Thomas, Mama. I couldn’t keep lying to myself just to make everyone else happy. I couldn’t…” her throat tightened, but she forced the words out “…keep being the girl who always folds herself into the shape other people want.”
“You didn’t just walk away from a wedding,” her mother said after a beat, quieter now. “You walked away from a future.”
“No, Mama.” Carli’s voice cracked then, just enough for the truth to show through. “I walked away from a future thatwas never mine.” There was a long, aching silence. The kind that carried all the words neither of them had said over the years.
“You think I didn’t have dreams too?” her mother finally said, her voice like glass, sharp, but fragile. “You think I didn’t wonder what my life would have been if I hadn’t followed the plan?”
Carli shut her eyes. “I think you still do,” she whispered. “And, I’m sorry, but I never liked the plan in the first place, and I’m finally doing something for me and not the plan. And trust me, Thomas was not the plan.”
“Thomas would’ve given you everything. What can Cory Hayes give you?” her mother asked in sharpened curiosity.
Carli snorted. “Everything. If it’s making sure I’m provided for all my life and never want for anything, then I assure you, Cory can give me that. The Hayeses are richer than the Whitmores and a lot more fun.” She paused. “With horses.”
Another long pause. This one stretched so thin that Carli could almost hear it snap. She heard her mother chuckle. “You always liked their horses.” She could imagine her mother shaking her head. “What is your brother gonna say when he finds out you’re staying with Cory?”
Carli grinned. “Thank God you’re safe, and it was Cory that found you, that’s what he’d say.”
When her mother spoke again, her voice was softer, but still laced with warning. “Just… be careful. That boy’s never been steady.”
“He’s steadier than you think,” Carli said. “And I’m not the same girl anymore either. I’ve grown up, and so has he.”
Her mother exhaled in a way that made Carli imagine her pinching the bridge of her nose, leaning against the kitchen counter back home. “Are you coming home?”
“Just to pack.”
She ended the call before her mother could answer, before the heat in her eyes could spill into tears.
Inside the guesthouse, she heard the faint rustle of sheets, the floorboards creaking under weight. Core was awake. She didn’t move. Not yet. She wasn’t ready to see what might be in his eyes this morning. Would it be regret, or, worse, something that looked like indifference?
