Page 70 of Colt
It’s not a burden. It’s something that I cultivated.
Because Gold Valley has been good to me. And if I’m going to be its favorite son, then I need to be worthy of that.
I feel it right now, maybe it’s the beer, maybe it’s the whiskey that I added on top of that. Allison has been nursing a daiquiri slowly. She has to drive us home, so I know she has to go extremely light on the alcohol. I almost feel bad. Almost.
But this is my party. It didn’t start that way, but it turned into it.
I relish this moment to just not be in complicated thought patterns. To not worry.
Maybe I can just forget that anything has changed. Yeah, I have a big brace on my leg, but everything else feels normal. Maybe it can be a year ago in my mind. When my life hadn’t changed. When everything felt all right.
Then I look up, over at the back of the bar, and I see a man talking to Allison. He reaches out, touches her cheek, and she lowers her eyes. And suddenly, I’m not seeing this bar through the haze of alcohol. Through the delightful haze of a party. No. Suddenly, all I see is red.
I walk over to where she is, and practically get between them. “Move along. She doesn’t want to talk to you.”
She looks at me. “Colt. I’ve got it.”
“He looks like he’s bothering you.”
“He’s not bothering me.”
“He should be,” I say, feeling a rush of rage that I know I have no entitlement to. I was just thinking about how everything could be back the way that it was. How everything could be normal again. And here I am, doing something I would never have done before.
Allison is beautiful. Men flirt with her. It’s something that happens all the time. And it’s definitely not something I’m entitled to manage. I know that. But I can’t stand there and watch this while she’s mine. She’s been in my bed for weeks now. My bed. And maybe she isn’t going to stay there. Hell, I don’t think anyone is going to be a permanent fixture there. That’s for other men. Other men who…
It doesn’t matter why. It doesn’t matter. She’s mine right now.
“Isn’t she your stepsister?” The guy is clearly picking up on the holy-shit-so-inappropriate jealousy radiating off of me in waves, and I can’t even care.
“Yeah. She is. Don’t go getting on a girl in front of her brother.”
“Oh Jesus Christ,” Allison says, turning away from me and from him and stalking across the bar toward Gentry and Lily.
Okay. I think I messed up. I caused a little bit more of a scene than I anticipated. I definitely made her unhappy.
“She’s just… Not in the place to get hit on right now,” I say, a weird, half-assed, slightly drunk attempt at covering for what I just did.
When I come back over to the table, everyone is looking at me. Except for Allison.
No one has the guts to say anything, though.
“It’s a party,” I say. “Everybody, stop looking so serious.”
Which is when I just start drinking more. Because I don’t want to feel anything. I don’t want to feel the conflicting emotions that are rolling around inside of me. I don’t want to deal with any of this.
The atmosphere is celebratory, but I’m not anymore. I fake it. Because God, dammit, if there’s one thing I’m really good at, it's smiling. All the damned time. Being the golden retriever that everybody wants me to be. I am so good at that. I would probably fetch a ball if they asked me to. Look at me.
Which is right about the time I decide that I’m going to walk home.
Gentry and Lily are already collecting all their things, Dallas and Sarah left 30 minutes before, and Allison is looking sulky and sober in the corner.
“I need some fresh air. I’m going to walk back.”
“You are not,” Allison says.
“Yes I am,” I growl.
“You’re not,” she says.
