Page 97 of The Break Out

He chuckles. “Don’t care, I want to.” He nods his head at the painting. “Do you get it yet?”

I turn back toward it, and he wraps his arms around my middle as I shake my head. “No, I think you just like pink.”

Colton nips the place where my neck meets my shoulder.

“See how the pink color looks like it’s taking over the white and black?” He points out.

I guess I kind of see that, so I nod.

“Remember, how I told you I thought the pink was healing?” he asks.

I remember what he said about what the painting represented. At the time I thought he was just talking out of his ass, but the longer I look at it I can see what he was trying to say.

“You’re the pink for me, Brynn,” he says softly.

I turn around toward him again, my eyes wide. “What?”

He cups my face with both hands. “I’ve never felt like this withanyone. You make me happy and that’s not something I’ve felt in a long fucking time. You get me in ways no one else gets me. You bite back when I deserve it, you surrender to me when we both need it. I’ve been a shit for a long time, I know it, but you make me want to be better. You’ve healed the broken parts inside of me.”

My jaw is dropped because I can’t believe Colton fucking Wheeler is saying these things to me. I have no idea what to say. I can’t admit that he’s also healed something inside of me that’s been broken for as long as I can remember. That he gives me exactly what I need, even when he’s pissing me off, I need that push. But I can’t make the words come out, so I just stare at him with my mouth gaping in shock.

“Come on, I have breakfast, but you’re eating it in my bed,” he says, breaking me out of my trance. Turning me back toward his bedroom with a grip on my waist, he leans down to my ear and whispers, “Then I’m going to eat my breakfast.”

He swats my ass with a light smack that has me lurching forward to take the first step back to the bedroom.

Despite him saying I’m the one who healed him, I think I broke him. In the best way, but I don’t know why my mind won’t let me just accept this. It’s like there’s a roadblock in the way warning that it’s too good to be true. I may have given him every piece of myself physically, but there’s a tiny shred of my heart I’m not able to part with because I know once he has it, I’ll never recover.

But when he comes into his room, joining me on the bed with a tray full of eggs, bacon, toast, and fruit I push the worry away for now.

When he pushes our empty dishes away and drops his face between my legs I forget everything else completely.

The only reasonI was able to leave Colton’s bed the day after New Year’s is because he had practice in the morning and a game that night. A game I had to promise to be at or he threatened to not go to practice to make sure I stay in his bed.

“That is stupid, you’ll get in trouble and I’m not worth that,” I told him with a giggle.

“You’re worth everything, Princess,” he replied before kissing me senseless.

Now I’m home, and Ellie shoots me a look that says she’s not happy.

“I’m sorry, but you have an automatic feeder and water fountain,” I tell her.

She meows, hopping down from her cat tree and walking away. I sigh because I’m getting the silent treatment from my cat, after spending way too much time getting railed by a man I thought I hated. What a turn of events.

After a long hot shower, I settle into checking on work. Now that the holidays are over it’s back to being serious and I need to check anything I may have missed. I also know I’m about to be met with an overload of requests on Spencer’s status since we told the label to check in next year and they take that a bit too seriously sometimes.

Like, hello, it’s two days into the new year, do you have an album for us yet?

No, no she doesn’t, and no one is going to rush her.

When I log onto my email, a subject line in all capitals catches my eye and it’s not just from the label. My stomach drops as I read what it says.

STATEMENT REQUESTED AFTER KENNETH RICHARDSON ABUSE SCANDAL.

Abuse scandal? This is going to be bad.

I click on the email, quickly skimming it to make sure no one is saying he abused Spencer. If that fucker ever put hands on her, I would be at his door with several large pissed off men as my backup to kill him.

What I gather is that several women have spoken out about Kenneth’s treatment toward them. Forcing himself on them, fear for their life when they tried to leave, and he hurt them for it.

---