We're in a brief "honeymoon phase" before the storm hits. Little islands of calm as the clouds gather. Drafting these moments has been a challenge, because Colt is usually in constant chaos. But it's fun to pull back, however briefly, and let him just...be...for a minute...

I felt Wyatt’s arms slide around my waist from behind and my body immediately relaxed back into hers. Blessed relief…

“I’m okay,” I said. Which was so obviously not true that I almost laughed right after I said it.

And she said, “Oh, I doubt that,” to let me know she was no fool, either.

“I am now, then,” I said. Partly true. In fact, mostly true. Her just being there was why.

Especially when I felt her kiss my spine—three quick little kisses that tingled in my gut. And then she laid her head against my back and the rush made my head spin like I’d inhaled some strong bud ‘way too hard. You know what I mean, right? That rookie hit that makes you stupid drunk.

She had that effect on me whenever I’d been away from her for a few minutes. I got all giddy and goofy--biggest thrill ride, ever, love. Especially when she murmured, “Talk to me,” into my skin.

Opened me like a door.

So I turned around and embraced her. And looked down into those big doe eyes that were soooo concerned I felt like a total ass for making her worry.

And I said, “It’s probably just all this heinous stuff that just happened.”

And she went, “Duh,” which made me laugh. I mean, this wise ass kid thing, she gives me, right? I leaned down to kiss her for that blessed comic relief.

And then I pulled back and said, “That’s some outfit you got on there.”

It was her turn to laugh. She had my t-shirt on. It was like a dress on her. A dress about ten sizes too big, of course. Probably couldn’t even find her own clothes. I’d sort of snatched them off her all frantic to get down skin to skin—who knew where they’d landed. They were probably all ripped up, too, wherever they were. For sure any buttons or zippers’d be destroyed.

But I loved the idea of her body in my shirt. That we were like that, now—it was symbolic in some way. Yeah, I knew we’d get around to trying to put a label on it. Trying to make “sense” of it and make it work in the real world without freaking people out. She would need that, for sure.

But at that moment, her body in my shirt said it all.

And she took my hands and said, “You need to rest a while.”

“Rested all afternoon!”

She gave me a poke in the belly button and said, “That was most assuredly not resting.”

“Point taken.”

She laughed at that, too. And grabbed my wrists and gave me a gentle tug.

“Humor me,” she said.

I let her pull me back to the bedroom. Onto the bed. Into her arms. And then I couldn’t believe I’d ever left her.

But I’d done that thing where you wake up startled—or something you’re dreaming about startles you awake, more like. And I was drenched in sweat. Dripping and shivery. Not like when you’re sick, but like…a panic attack or something.

So I’d eased out from under her hoping to God she wouldn’t wake up because she looked so peaceful and pretty. When it’s good, they sort of pass out on you afterwards, you know? There’s no pillow talk. In fact, I think if you have to talk, you didn’t “go there.” When you’ve been there, a lotta chin music is the last thing you want.

So after I’d untangled myself from her, I went into the bathroom and stood in the shower jets to rinse the sweat and stress away. And then I was all wide awake and wired, so I wandered into what our decorators called the “sitting room.”

It’s right off the room with my actual bed in it. It’s supposed to be a place to lounge or maybe where people can hang out without being in the place I really sleep, I guess. But there are lots of other rooms in the “master suite,” so I was never quite sure why I needed a room just for sitting in.

Until that particular day, that is. When I needed a place to just be sort of alone but didn’t want to be too far away from Wyatt, either. If she woke up, she could see me from the bed. So she wouldn’t feel abandoned.

Of course, part of me sort of wanted her to wake up. She was my favorite pastime already, that woman. Just looking at her was a full time job—you know how school counselors ask you to fill out those forms listing your possible dream jobs? At the top of mine would be: “Watching Wyatt.”

I finally wound up standing by the big windows looking out over Fourth, but not actually seeing anything. Except Maddie’s dead face. And little scenes from my time with her, running through my mind. It was like the way you supposedly see your own life flash before your eyes just before you die. I know that’s really a thing, by the way—I won’t go into how I know that right now, but I do.

And I believe that’s what Judgment Day is, you know? It’s not God who decides if you were good or bad. You do--that’s what that little highlight reel of your life is for. So you can be all peaceful and calm knowing you really tried to be righteous or feeling awful and blubbering because your time’s up and there’s no “do overs.”

So watching my little Maddie movie explained why I’d been sweating and shivering in my sleep like that. In every scene, I’d been mostly mean or condescending to her in some way. Even back when we had our sad little fling it was more mercy sex than anything else.

She was still pretty, but I could feel things unraveling under the surface. She had come home to JJ as a sort of last resort. Only he couldn’t save her then. He was struggling with his own health problems, and hers just made him sad and also angry, sometimes.

He’d given her the world, and it wasn’t enough. That’s how he looked at it. He hated drugs. They enslaved people, was how he put it—it was undignified. And he was all about dignity. Above all, he loved people who had overcome the odds with theirs intact. He would move heaven and earth for them, like he did for me.

But woe unto those who squandered that one big chance. Like Maddie, who climbed all the way to the top of the totem pole. And then got all dizzy from the view and fell off.

And then I’d turned against her, too--especially once the babies were born. Yeah, I had my reasons. Real good ones, as you already know. But she gave me those babies. That should’ve counted for something. More than I let it, anyway.

“Where are you now?” Wyatt asked me.

Because I’d wandered off again—mentally. And I sighed and buried my face between those nice round breasts I’d spent so much time exploring earlier. She was very nipple sensitive. And I’d tried to drive her totally insane fiddling around with them in all these different ways.

But now I just wanted to burrow down between them. Slightly Oedipal, but I was hoping she wouldn’t go into English teacher mode on me and ruin the mood, though. One constantly wandering mind per couple is enough, right?

Anyway, I finally just said, “I was…it’s just Maddie, mostly. That I’m feeling things about.”

“Is it something you’d rather not talk about?”

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t talk to you about.”

She cradled me like a little baby in her arms. I felt totally safe. Secure. Nice.

So I said, “I just…I think I was too hard on her, you know? And then we just took the babies and ran, pretty much. I mean, she couldn’t have been much of a mother, but she was their mother, right?”

She slid down a little so she could look at me, so I wasn’t nestled between those breasts anymore. But her eyes caught hold of me in another way. And that was an amazing moment, too. Like I was in freefall and then she reached out and grabbed me. All of me—body, mind, spirit just snug as that bug in a rug.

 “You defied a court order to be with her,” she told me. “And to allow the children to be with her. Very brave, considering.”

“Yeah, but, that…was partly guilt, maybe. I mean, did I really care about her or--”

“Colton, that is just ridiculous!”

“Is it?”

“Who took care of those babies? Even her lover was on your side.”

I smiled at her because she was just puttin’ it down, man. I wasn’t going to win this one even if Jesus Christ came down to help me run my game.

“I see what you’re saying, but…”

“She abandoned her children, my love.”

I had to let that “my love” thing wash over me before I could speak again. I don’t know why that particular “term of endearment” always knocked me out so much.

But it took a few seconds for me to say, “Yes, I know. But…I think we were like prison guards, while she was pregnant. Always trying to catch her doing something wrong—I woulda booked, too, probably.”

“But didn’t you have reason to be concerned?”

“Oh, yeah. Few months later, she showed up in Emergency all swollen up—I can’t remember the name of what she had. But they had to do a C-section or they would’ve all died. Almost did die.”

I could feel the panic of that night just by talking about it. How the nurses looked when Bonnie and the girls and me came rushing in. I thought they had died.

“And then two days later, sick as she still was…she just took off. Back to Yuri,” I told her. “Or, he came and got her outta there some kinda way. She’d been with him off and on after she ran from us. And that was his big chance, he thought. To take it back to where they’d been as a team, you know? Only…by then they were both so fucked up…”

“So how many chances do you feel she should have been given?”

“See, I hear all that. I feel all that, too. But…I just saw her dead on the floor, staring right up at me, like she was asking me why I didn’t get there fast enough….”

My voice quavered a little bit. So I paused to get my act back together. She didn’t jump in to rescue me that time. She just kissed my forehead and waited for me. This was the crux of the matter, as they say—the stuff that would blow up like an IED someday, out of the blue, if I didn't defuse it right then and there.

So then I said, “It’s that last look I can’t get that outta my head. She knew she was dead when that shit hit her vein. I could feel it. And I can’t…I hate thinking what that must’ve been like. That last, ‘Oh, shit,’ moment. Laying there on those cold tiles, feeling yourself die. God…”

I buried my face in her chest again. And she stroked my hair and said, “But you came together in a kind of love at least once. I mean, however brief it might have been, there was a moment.Wasn’t there?”

“Honest answer?”

“Always.”

I sighed and said, “The time that did it, I mean, the time when I’m pretty sure we made the babies…she looked at me like I was the last lifeboat on the friggin’ Titanic. Swear to God.”

There was a long silence. Long enough to make me pull back to check on her.

And she said, “I understand that, too. More than you know…”

She had tears in her eyes when she said it. I wanted to give God a piece of my mind for whatever had hurt her that bad. Disappointed her that much.

Instead, I reached up and cupped the back of her head. Drew her down so that I could kiss the bad memories away. And let her know she wasn’t going to have to cry over any of that ever again.

Yeah, there were all kinds of things I was supposed to be doing that afternoon—big things, down at the carnival. Her house situation needed settling, too, even if she decided to just stay with me. There were lots of loose ends and responsibilities.

But she was the only thing I wanted to do anymore. So I eased my shirt up over her head and kissed my way up right behind it. And went to work.