“I knew it wasn’t your fault that my father was obsessed with you. Nothing he did was your fault. Yet if it wasn’t for you, none of this would have happened. At least not in my mind. If you hadn’t been there competing that day, my dad would have never seen you. He wouldn’t have risked his marriage, and he wouldn’t have hurt my mom.”

“Colt…”

“I know, I know.” He throws up his hands. “I know I shouldn’t have blamed you. I know that. I’m just explaining to you how it was easy to do.”

“It came so easy to you then. How do I know we won’t go back to that? How can I trust that you won’t wake up one morning and decide to hate me again?

“Because I let that shit go. You have to believe me. I let it go, and now if I simply think about it, I feel so fucking guilty. I’m sorry. I hope you can give me time to prove it.”

“I didn’t feel the same about you,” I admit. “I wasn’t pretending to hate you. I really did.”

“I can’t blame you.”

“But you were right about me trusting you before. When your dad made us do those things, I felt the safest with you. I was glad it was you touching me and not him. However, that doesn’t mean I love you.”

“Do you hate me?”

“I don’t hate you anymore. I haven’t for a while. Now, all I want is for us to have a life. Maybe together. You think we can figure that out?”

For the first time in a long time, he looks genuinely happy. “Yeah. I think we can if we put our heads together. It might take a while, but we can figure it out.”

I stretch up on tiptoes to kiss him, smiling when I pull back.

“We’ve got all the time in the world.”

CHAPTER 42

If someone had told me a few weeks ago that I would be dating Colt Alistair, I would have bet millions of dollars against it. Yet here I am, having dinner at a restaurant because neither one of us felt like cooking or eating frozen dinners again. I guess this is considered a date. Even if it came out of necessity, we’re still two people eating a meal in a public place. We also sleep in one bed every night and have sex almost every day. So yeah, dating seems like the right term, even if we have never actually called it that.

“Are we dating?” I ask point blank.