Page 62 of No Apologies
Chapter Twelve
Skylar sat on the front steps outside Colt’s apartment and tried not to think about the last time she’d waited here for him to return. She’d told herself that she was only worried about Colt because he was her friend. But the second she’d seen him bloody and bruised, nothing could have stopped her from reaching for him that night.
To offer comfort. To be there for him. To reassure him that someone cared if he was okay. And maybe, just a little bit, because she’d needed the reassurance that he was okay too.
But he’d pushed her away, just like he always did. He’d snapped and snarled at her like a dog that had been kicked one too many times. And it had hurt so badly hearing that he didn’t want her there, didn’t want her to care about him, that she’d walked away.
She’d spent weeks pretending that she didn’t care. Weeks trying to convince herself that it would be better for both of them if she didn’t. Weeks of forcing herself not to think of him and trying to move on, trying to be with another man, a good man, but in the end trying not to think about him had only made her think of him even more and that had made her mad.
Getting mad at Colt was easy. He gave her plenty of reasons to be angry with him. Staying mad at him, however, had proven to be the tough part. Because even through her anger, she knew that she couldn’t hold his reactions against him.
He was what he was. He was a wild animal and he lashed out when he felt threatened. He didn’t know how to trust because everyone he should have been able to rely on had let him down. His first instant was to fight because he’d had to fight all of his life just to survive a father that wanted him dead and a mother too stoned to take care of him. He isolated himself because Cash was the only person in the world that had never abandoned him.
She couldn’t blame him for that. She couldn’t hold any of that against him. He was what he was but she was what she was too. She was a fighter too and this time she couldn’t let him win. She couldn’t let him push her away. She wouldn’t.
All day she’d watched him retreat further and further into himself, further and further away from her, and she wanted him back. She wanted Sweet Colt. The man that had made love to her in the middle of the night. She wanted Affectionate Colt. The man that had refused to stop protecting her. The man that, for just a minute there, she’d let herself believe loved her in return.
Despite the awful attack on their businesses, she’d had hope when the morning started. Colt had talked to her, even flirted a little. He hadn’t made any grand gestures to move them forward but he hadn’t backtracked either. She’d kissed him and he’d let her. He’d admitted that he worried about her and wanted to keep her safe. She’d thought that they were finally getting somewhere.
And then Trey had walked in.
Skylar silently cursed her newly minted ex-boyfriend all over again as she picked at her manicure. It was all kinds of wrong to blame Trey. She knew that. He’d come because he cared about her, because he was a good friend. She’d called Owen for help knowing full well that Trey was probably with him but she hadn’t been thinking about that. She hadn’t given a thought to how his presence would affect her fragile, precarious relationship with Colt. She hadn’t thought about the damage she was doing when she hugged him. Not until she’d turned around to find Colt watching them.
She couldn’t name the look she’d seen on his face but it had scared her. The mix of anger and frustration weren’t surprising but it was something else that she couldn’t quite place that had made her heart ache. Disappointment maybe. But when she’d tried to go and talk to him, explain why Trey was there and tell him that it didn’t mean anything, he’d crossed his arms over his chest as though he needed the extra line of defense against her and then walked away.
And he’d kept walking away. She’d had to deal with Indifferent Colt all day. Every time she approached him, he found somewhere else to be or someone else to talk to. He’d avoided her and ignored her and the one time she’d managed to sideline him for a split second he’d growled at the first mention of Trey’s name, said it was none of his business, and stormed away.
She’d had too much going on to go after him. She’d filed a police report and talked to the insurance agent that Colt had given her number to. She’d sent her brother and Trey off to buy wood to board up the windows and then helped them get it installed when they came back. She’d swept up the glass and checked in on Rachel and her cut hand. She’d kept an eye on her shy assistant as she interacted with Colt’s big brother as well and if she had any spare energy to deal with someone else’s love life at the moment she would have been figuring out a way to keep Rachel away from Remy.
But she didn’t. Because she was too worried about Colt. And after she’d watched him leave with his cousin, her worry had morphed into actual fear.
He’d left his shop late in the afternoon with Lincoln at his side. He’d crawled into his cousin’s truck and roared away without a backwards glance. When she’d asked Remy where they were going he’d given her the standard Bomar line that it was better if she didn’t know.
So yeah, she’d been worried and as afternoon turned to evening and then to night and Colt remained away from the shop and then missing from his apartment, fear for his safety had begun to set in.
Clearly whoever had hit the shops didn’t have a problem inflicting physical damage and after seeing the message on Colt’s wall she’d known her initial reaction had been wrong. It hadn’t been kids. It had been someone with a grudge that wanted to hurt Colt. They’d settled for his business this time but she wasn’t naive enough to think they wouldn’t love to take a shot at him if given a chance.
Colt had told her he didn’t know who was responsible but that had been before Lincoln showed up. She wasn’t stupid. She knew exactly who and what the eldest Bomar boy was. He was their unspoken leader and he was dangerous as hell.
She’d never spent much time with him. Whenever he came into the shop while she was hanging out with Colt, he’d dismissed her. Colt hadn’t wanted her near his cousins, any of them, but the way he sent her away when Lincoln appeared had been blatant and obvious.
All she’d ever seen out of Lincoln was that cocky, knowing smirk that seemed to permanently reside on his face. And it was one sexy ass smirk. She could admit that. Lincoln Bomar had the kind of smile that could get a girl pregnant. It was a good thing her ovaries only threatened to explode for one Bomar boy and it wasn’t the criminally inclined leader of their little band of thieves.
Despite that smile and the panty-dropping prowess that was legendary, Lincoln was also known for going from a grin to a scowl in the blink of an eye. She’d never seen it herself but she’d heard about it. He was smart and calculating and if Colt’s moods could be classified as volatile then Lincoln was a Molotov cocktail with no conscience or sense of right and wrong.
If Lincoln had figured out who was responsible for the destruction of Colt’s business, she figured the two of them had gone off to deal with the person. That meant fists and fighting if she was being optimistic and if she wasn’t it probably meant bullets instead of bruises. Either way, it meant bloodshed and pain and that meant Colt would come home in one of his dark moods.
Whenever he had to deal with his family, the darkness overtook him. His demons threatened to drag him down, back into hell. That was what dealing with the family business and his parents did to him. It brought out all the bad and reminded him that he hadn’t broken free, not yet, and she thought it scared him that he might never be free of them.
But she’d seen the tattoo on his arm. She knew what it meant now. She’d always known really, she just hadn’t understood her part in it. He called her his angel and in the image she was pulling him up towards the light. She wasn’t an angel. She’d told him that. But if that was what he needed her to be, she’d damn sure try to save him.
So here she was, sitting on his porch, waiting for him. Again. Worrying about him. Again. And knowing that when he did finally come home that it was highly likely he would try to send her away. Again.
She had no idea how long she sat there in the dark. She’d contemplated going home and waiting for him there, keeping a lookout through the window but she hadn’t trusted that she could get to him before he shut the door and locked her out if she did so she’d stayed put. She sat on the porch long enough that her butt went numb and she had to get up and stretch. Long enough that all she seemed capable of imagining was the worst.
When a pair of headlights flashed over her, she squinted, trying to see if this time it was the man she would wait on forever or if it was just another false alarm. The headlights stayed on for a long minute after the truck pulled to a park across the lot. She was framed in the glow and her heart started to race, a sure sign that it was Colt’s gaze on her.
She put her hand up to shield her eyes from the bright lights and they immediately clicked off. It was sad that she saw the simple act as a good sign. The man didn’t want to blind her? Yay! But with Colt she’d always taken the smallest gestures to heart because she didn’t know if she’d ever get the big ones.
