Page 51 of Pinkie Promise

I smirk at him and he hides his face in his hands.

“What? Am I not supposed to know about the fact that you climb through the window of the chick next door’s bedroom at night?”

His jaw drops as he stares up at me. “How the hell d’you know about that?” he rasps.

“Because mom has fucking ears, Colt,” I say, laughing at his expression.

“Momknows?” he asks despairingly. “We ain’t doing anything in her room, Iswear. We just, you know…” He trails off his sentence, looking away from me and swiping his tongue over his lower lip.

I could confidently bet my last five pay cheques on what Colt’s been doing, or at least what he wants to be doing, but it’s good to hear that he isn’t doing the type of ‘anything’ that I know he would definitely tell me about.

“You being nice to her?” I ask him, folding my arms over my chest.

“What kinda question’s that?” he says, looking up at me with a horrified expression. “Of course I’m being nice to her. Whywouldn’t I be nice to her?” He thinks for a moment and then shoots up to his feet. “Did someone say I wasn’t being nice? Tell me who said it.”

Such a good kid. “No one’s said anything,” I reassure him. “Just wanted to make sure.”

He gives me a cautious prolonged frown before letting out a deep breath and nodding to himself. “What about you?” he asks, kicking at a rogue piece of gravel from one of the tires. “You got anyone?”

Colton hardly ever asks me stuff like this and it makes me want to rough up his hair like he’s seven years old. It’s also the first time in my life that I can finally answer him with a, “Maybe.”

He glances up at me with big bright eyes. “For real?” he asks. “You’ve got a chick?”

I snicker at his phrasing and then drop the eye contact, because now it’s my turn to feel a little nervous. I haul one of the car’s replacement tires off the far work bench and bring it over to the vehicle, just for something to do with my hands.

“There’s, uh… there’s someone I like,” I say gruffly, keeping it vague. As if she didn’t come over to our party last night and end up in my bedroom on her back. The memory of her opening up for me like she did, trusting me with what she’s been going through, makes the tire in my hands feel fucking weightless.

“What’s she look like?” he asks.

I smile, then try to scrub the happiness off of my cheeks. “Uh, blonde hair, big eyes.” I rake a hand through my fringe and say, “She’s kinda small.”

Colton mulls that over and then asks, “How small are we talking here?”

Now I’m really laughing. I shove him in a headlock to diffuse the growing fuzzy feelings.

“Show me a picture,” he grunts, his voice muffled against my forearms.

“Hell no,” I reply as he rams his elbows into the meat of my abs. “I ain’t sharing.”

“You aren’t sharing what?” A girlish voice sounds from behind us and we both whip around.

“Who the–”

I shove my hand over Colt’s mouth as Fallon gives me a shy smile from the doorway.

“Sorry,” she says, shaking her head and making her curls bounce. “It was weird of me to stop by without texting. I, uh, I brought you a coffee though?” She raises a paper to-go cup and I feel a painful constriction in my chest.

I give Colton a warning glance before I remove my hand from his face.

I walk over to Fallon while simultaneously jerking my chin, telling her to get her ass in here instead of waiting out there in the doorway. She takes a couple of tentative steps into the shop, eyeing Colton curiously around the swell of my bicep.

I hook my thumb over my shoulder towards him and say, “My brother, Colton. Want me to introduce you?”

She looks up at me with surprised wide eyes, shaking her head. “Oh no, I wouldn’t ask you to do that, I’m not your girlfr–”

“Colton, this is Fallon. Fallon, that’s Colton,” I growl.

I hear Colton mumble a deephellobehind me.

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