Page 15 of Fixing to Be Mine

My thoughts are suffocating and overwhelming, so I stand with stiff legs that are slow to cooperate. The denim clings behind my sweaty knees as I walk across the room. I pull the bedroom door open and quietly step into the hallway.

The house is dim as darkness presses in from all sides. The sound of the fridge humming cuts through the silence as I tiptoe toward the living room. When I see him on the couch, I pause.

Colt has a muscular arm tucked behind his head, the other resting low across his stomach. He must be carved from stone because he’s solid like a statue. He’s all angles and heat, built like someone who uses his body, not poses with it. Men like him don’t exist in New York.

It’s something about the way he exists in this space—with his bare skin, work-worn muscles, and the faint line of a tan on his hips. Memorizing him like this feels too intimate for a man I recently met.

His face is relaxed, and my eyes slide over the scruff on his chin, over his perfect lips, and high cheekbones. I should focus somewhere else, but I can’t. It almost feels impossible as I watch him breathe, trying to remind myself that I’m not here for that. Even if he’s attractive, sexy, flirty, and kind, I can’t get lost with this man, but I want to.

With every ounce of strength I have left, I pull my drunken gaze away from him and ease open the front door.

I slip into the late summer night, and the air hits me like a wall. The breeze sticks to my skin and doesn’t let go. Behind me, the screen door creaks closed, and I let out the breath I was holding since I saw him sitting on that porch swing. I don’t know what I expected when I escaped to Texas, but it wasn’t Colt Valentine.

Gravel presses under my boots as I step off the porch. The Camaro sits under the porch light’s reach, coated in a film of dust from too many small towns and in-between gas stations. Seeing how filthy it is brings a spark of joy to my life. Donovan would lose his shit if he saw it now.

Good.

He should be glad I didn’t shift it into neutral and push it off a cliff before I came to Texas.

I open the trunk, and my duffel bag is right where I left it, along with a suitcase full of new clothes I bought. My gorgeous wedding dress is crumpled and stuffed inside without care. The satin heels, studded in diamonds, are thrown on top. The dress waits for me like a reminder of how trust, love, and family mean nothing.

My stomach turns, and a rolling nausea rises like it’s trying to crawl up my throat.

That was the costume I was wearing when the curtain was pulled back on my life. I still remember the sound of the zipper when I yanked it down and how I ripped the fabric, trying to wiggle out of it. The silk felt like it was burning into my skin as I dragged it off in a blind, shaking rush in a random gas station. I didn’t fold or hang it. I balled it up, threw it into the trunk, and slammed it shut, like that could erase everything. Seeing the expensive, custom dress now feels like a punch. The mess of white silk and beading is like a ghost, haunting me, and I stare at it like it might sit up and scream my secrets into the silence.

“Fuck you,” I whisper, pulling my luggage from the trunk, then pressing my palm flat against the cool metal of the car. The snap echoes into the darkness.

I turn around, looking up at the big open sky, seeing a sea of stars above. I’ve never seen so many at once, twinkling just for me. A star glitters across the sky, and I close my eyes to make a wish, then head inside.

I pull open the screen door, careful with the creaking hinges, and slip back inside. This time, I don’t focus on the couch. I can’t let this sexy Southern man with his sexy accent distract me.

With all my strength, I lift the wheels off the hardwood floor as I move down the hallway, so it doesn’t wake Colt. It weirdly feels like I’ve done this a million times before. I gently push openthe bedroom door. Nothing has changed. The same soft hum of the fan nudges the arm around the space, but it feels different, comfortable. I open my suitcase and dig through the clothes I brought for this escape.

I’m unsure if I’m running from or toward something, but it feels like I’ve finally arrived.

At some point,I must’ve fallen asleep after staring at the ceiling.

Sunlight spills through the window in long golden rays. I blink hard; sleep still clings to me, but I haven’t felt more rested. It’s the first good night of sleep I’ve had since I left the city. I suck in a deep breath, wishing the elephant on my chest would leave.

I smell it first, and then I hear the sizzling of bacon, followed by the clinking of a pan and whistling. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand, slow and stiff, like I’m stepping into a different world. The hem of the T-shirt I borrowed from his dresser brushes against my upper thighs.

I move down the hallway that opens into the large kitchen. I pause, my eyes sliding down his back, and I swallow hard at the muscles I nearly reached out and touched last night. Men like him should be illegal.

When he reaches for plates, I see he’s wearing black-framed glasses. His hair is damp, curling at the ends. He smells like soap and cedar, clean and grounded and unfairly good. He doesn’t see me right away, giving me a few seconds to watch him move comfortably in his space. His biceps flex as he reaches for the salt.

“Wow,” I whisper, not realizing the word fell out of my mouth.

He glances at me over his shoulder. “Mornin’. How’d you sleep?”

It nearly unravels me when I see him so comfortably domestic.

“Great actually.” I move into the kitchen, closer to him, and have to keep myself from floating. “You cook?”

He shrugs. “I eat. Seemed like a logical skill to learn.”

It makes me laugh, something not many can do.

“Want some coffee?” he asks, nodding toward the maker on the counter. “Mugs are in the cabinet above the pot,” he tells me.

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