Page 34 of Break Me Like a Promise (Oak Valley)

“Well, you thought wrong, Ruby.”

“Jesus, no need to be a dick.”

“You don’t know me anymore. Stop pretending you do.”

She shook her head and pushed her chair out from the table. “I was just asking.” She not-so-quietly took her plate into the kitchen, banging around while Colton sat under his cloud of defeat.

31

The slam of the trash can lid and her plate in the sink should not have been so satisfying — Ruby wasn’t an inherently angry person — but in the face of Colton being an asshat, it was.

It really was.

She banged around while cleaning up, slamming things just hard enough to get the satisfaction without actually breaking anything. If Mr. Touchy Pants wanted to have an attitude, fine. She could, too.

He meandered into her peripherals, and the call his body had on hers only fueled her anger. She slammed the contents of the fridge onto the counter, making room for the takeout containers full of tacos. Rearranging the fridge gave her an excuse to not look at him.

“What do you want, Colton? You wanna leave this town? You want to isolate yourself, live with your family for the rest of your life? You have your whole life ahead of you and yet you’re right where you were ten years ago.” She didn’t mean for her actual thoughts to slip out, but the heat in the room must have made her woozy.

“Why does it matter to you so much, Ruby?”

Where she’d expected the booming thunder of his voice, it was instead a rolling growl. Low, soft, but she knew it carried the storm. Her hands stopped, breath shaking. She couldn’t tell him the truth. Couldn’t tell him that despite ten years, despite not knowing him all that time and even now, despite how often and how much she wanted to strangle him, she still loved him. That there was a part of her that had never stopped.

His footsteps crept behind her, the heat from the wall of his chest filling her.

She definitely didn’t trust herself to turn around now.

“Colton, I care about you. I want what’s best for you — always have, always will. You and I both know that isn’t living at home, working at the auto shop for the rest of your life. I just… I want you to see what I see.”

“And you think that’s me opening a pastry shop?”

His low voice sent a tremor through her body, and she resumed her fridge organization. Anything to keep him at bay.

“I—I think it should be something in the kitchen. You’ve always loved it, and you kind of have a new lease on life right now. You have money and time to invest in whatever you want that to look like.”

The cold air from the fridge filtered through her cotton long-sleeve, an indication to close the doors and face him.

“Ruby, look at me.” His voice, husky, bordered on commanding.

She took a step back to close the doors, almost stepping on his feet. Her back pushed against him, the hard muscle, his hands going for her hips as the doors closed against the cold. Her breath caught — it’d been awhile since a man had touched her.

But it’d been forever sincethisman was the one who had the honor.

She turned, goosebumps erupting over her skin as his fingers lightly grazed the skin under the hem of her shirt. Ruby’s eyes travelled the length of his torso, over the defined pecs pulling the fabric of his Henley, the way his Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed. Her breath caught when she met his brown eyes, wanting to sink into their depths just as she had so long ago. It’d been so easy then, she knew it was just as easy now.

“Colton…” Faced with him, she let his name dance in her mouth and roll off her tongue, savoring the way it felt like home.

“We don’t know each other anymore, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn,” he whispered.

“T-That sounds like a bad idea,” she said, breathless. One of his hands trailed up her side, skimming her breast before landing on her neck. His fingers cupped her neck, thumb pressed behind her ear. Her body immediately responded to the almost-forgotten touch, a gasp escaping. It’d always been one of her favorite placements, and Colton had always had a way of holding her that lit a fire she hadn’t felt with anyone else. Like he owned her, but would see that she was taken care of before anything else.

“I think I’m the king of bad ideas.” He dipped his head, slowly, as if to give her time to stop him. But maybe he did still know her, even a little, because the way his lips met hers said he knew she wasn’t going to.

The hard press of his mouth released a wave inside her, and she welcomed him in. She wanted, needed, to drown in everything he had been and was. He pressed his body against hers, pushing her into the fridge. Her arms snaked around his neck, desperate to pull him closer while their tongues danced in heated fervor.

He tasted like the warmth fall brings, sunny and gold before the crush of hibernation. It was crisp but still felt like home. Colton’s hands held her face, firm, the hard length of him pressing into her belly. The insistent reminder of what loving him felt like barreled into her, the wave now a tsunami. She crashed around him, pulling and drinking and following the way her body remembered his.

When he finally released her mouth, they were both panting and clinging to the other. Colton rested his forehead on hers, and she breathed in his scent. Wood and grease, sweat and the unmistakable musk of him. It was a smell she’d only encountered once since their relationship, when she passed someone in a mall in Midtown. It had thrown her body into a tailspin, not only when she franticly looked around to see if it was him, but for days after when the memories haunted her. It had played a part in her fling with her coworker’s ex — his smell was almost as intoxicatingly masculine as Colton’s was, and it dragged her in.

---