Page 40 of Came the Closest
Colton leans down to whisper something in the child’s ear. I wish I could keep this moment in a bottle like Justin’s ships. I’d keep it on the shelf so I could pick it up twenty years from now, so I could remember the feel of Colton’s bare knee brushing mine and the sound of Milo’s laughter.
“He says to say—” Milo pauses for a rogue giggle “—you don’t sit by a window when it storms.”
A surprised laugh parts my own lips, but I force my smile away and lift my brows. “He did, did he?”
Milo nods vigorously. Above his head, Colton innocently bats his eyelashes.
“Well, you tell him that I’m a Midwesterner,” I say to Milo, fighting to keep an even voice. “He should be happy I’m not standing on the front porch.”
Colton rolls his eyes and mouths over your dead body, you would, but he’s entirely too serene when Milo reaches for his chin. There’s something about Milo’s small hand on Colton’s whiskered cheek while the child tugs his face down that makes me tingly. Here they sit, this tiny boy and this fully grown man, a complete contrast.
“Ah,” Colton says, nodding. “Yes, that is a very good point.” He gestures to me and clears his throat. “Proceed, Captain. Tell Annie what you told me.”
My dad’s nickname for me on Colton’s lips should send grief crashing through me. It should elicit a bone deep ache to hear it on my father’s lips again. It was Dad, after all, who put Cheyenne on my birth certificate instead of Cheyanne; the reason he gave me the nickname that doesn’t truly match my name.
But it doesn’t.
“I’m s’pposed to say you delayed the game,” Milo tells me. “So now I get all of your sharks.”
My mouth falls open. “Um, you never answered me about if you had a whale.”
Milo giggles and looks at his hand. “Uh-uh. You have ta go fishing!”
Shaking my head disdainfully, I draw a card. I pretend to be grumpy when Milo asks for my sharks, and I glare when Colton tries to cheat by telling Milo to pick up a card that flipped over. Three rounds later, Milo has won the fourth game in a row, and by the time we have the cards picked up, he’s completely out.
“I don’t know how he trusts so easily,” Colton admits quietly, his gaze fastened on Milo. “He just lost his mom, his sister isn’t staying here, and he just…goes with it.”
“I guess that’s why I’ve always wanted kids.” I wrap my arms around my knees and hug them to my chest, my admission soft. “They force you to live fully in the present. They basically always choose happy.”
My gaze sweeps over Milo. Blond lashes rest on soft round cheeks, and his cupid’s bow lips are parted in sleep. Then my eyes tiptoe upward slowly. My pulse trembles when I realize Colton’s attention has shifted fully to me, and he looks at me with great intent. Like he can see the past I’m not telling him about.
“He didn’t want kids,” he says slowly. He doesn’t have to name drop for me to know who he’s asking about. “Did he?”
I look away. If I confirm his suspicions, he’ll have been right about who Stephen always was, even when I was too blind to see it. When Stephen led me to believe he wanted love and a family, only to suddenly change his mind after I’d taken his last name.
“He told me he did,” I whisper. My attention fixates on the empty white stucco vase on my desk. If there were still flowers in it, they’d be wilted, dead. It feels fitting for how I feel right now. “And I believed him.”
Naively, I’d believed every false truth that came out of Stephen’s mouth. Looking back now, it’s abundantly clear. The way he promised me everything under the sun, but never really followed through. How fluently he fit into my life after that one chance meeting at the Institute, until I no longer fit in his life. Covering his affair with Courtney by saying he had to pull late nights at the office, and then buying me already dying flowers to keep up appearances.
Gentle fingertips brush my chin, and Colton’s firm hand turns my face until I’m forced to look him in the eye.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “You deserve a love that doesn’t try to change you, it accepts and glorifies everything about you. If I knew how to give that to you, Cheyenne, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”
I swallow, hindered by the lump in my throat. I want to nestle my cheek deeper into his palm, and I want to lean forward and brush my mouth over his.
I want to love him.
“I know you would,” I say, because I can’t say I know he could.
His throat works and his jaw tics under his beard. He drops his hand from my face, flexing and unflexing his fingers. He looks down at Milo, at the small drool spot on his shirt. I think he’s going to get up. The storm has quieted, and my eyes are getting heavy.
He doesn’t. He looks at me with renewed mischief.
“I have an idea,” he says, like it’s not two in the morning.
Laughing, I remind him of that fact.
Also laughing, he tells me that life is an adventure and that I should trust him.