"You're quiet tonight," I said as gently as I could, though the hurt laced through every syllable like barbed wire. I tried to sound casual, tried to keep my tone light, but the sharpness crept in anyway, too tangled with the ache to hide.

Colt's eyes flickered—not enough for most people to notice, but I wasn't most people. I knew that flicker. I knew every beat of it. A flash of heat, a flash of pain, swallowed down so fast it was like it had never been there.

"That girl must've left you speechless," I added, quieter now, but no softer. The bitterness slipped in, thick and inevitable, like smoke from a fire you couldn't put out. I hated the way it made my chest tighten. Hated the way the jealousy tasted—sharp, metallic, like blood in my mouth.

For a long beat, he didn't move. Didn't speak. Just sat there, the storm of him locked down tight, like if he let even a sliver of it loose it would tear the house apart.

Finally, he spoke.

Low. Rough. The kind of voice you only find when the ground's already given out beneath you.

"Don't start, Lemon," he said, and the way he said my name—tired, hollowed out—made something sharp and tender snap inside me. His voice wasn't full of anger. It wasn't even full of fight. It was heavy. Worn. Like the weight of everything between us was already dragging him under.

But I wasn't going to let him get away with it. Not tonight.

"Oh, I'm not starting, Colt."
The words slid from my mouth low and sharp, a blade drawn slow across the thick silence, cutting through the heavy air that hung between us. "You did that all on your own when you let her get close."

I could feel the tremor in my own hands as they moved against his cheek, tracing the edge of a bruise that hadn't yet decided if it was healing or festering. His skin was hot under my touch, alive with the same kind of storm that raged behind his eyes. Eyes that darkened now, narrowing under the weight of what I'd just thrown at him.

His lip twitched, not quite a smile—God, not even close—but a grim acknowledgment, a ghost of something that hurt more than if he'd shouted.

He knew how deep we'd sunk.

How far we were from the place we used to stand, hand in hand, sure of the ground beneath us.

But he didn't move.
Didn't reach for me.

Just sat there, spine rigid, pulse hammering under skin stretched too tight, every inch of him coiled like wire about to snap.

The heat coming off him was suffocating, a wildfire I couldn't outrun. And still, I stayed. Let myself burn.

"I didn't let her get close," Colt muttered, his voice a low, broken thing—more gravel than sound. The frustration wound through it, coiled so tight it scraped raw against my skin. "She followed me. Same way Rhett followed you."

Rhett's name cracked through the room like a whip, sudden and merciless, and for a moment I swayed under the weight of it. It lingered there between us, thick and poisonous, leeching the oxygen from the air.

I swallowed hard against the bitterness clawing up my throat.

"That's not the same, Colt, and you know it."

My voice came sharp, but even as the words left me, they tasted hollow. Ashen. Like a truth I could no longer tell from a lie. The lines between right and wrong had blurred so much, I wasn't sure if either of us even remembered where they used to be.

Colt's gaze lifted then, slow and heavy, and what I found there made my chest tighten until it ached to breathe. His eyes—usually so steady, so stubborn—were full of a storm barely restrained. Dark and wild and cracking at the edges.

"No?" he said, and the word sank low, rough and scraping, drawn somewhere so deep it tasted of iron and heartbreak. His jaw tightened until I could see the sharp jump of muscle beneath skin already darkened with bruises, his whole frame locked tight with a rage that didn't shout, didn't even snarl. It just bled. Quiet and lethal. Like something that had been killing him slow from the inside out for a long time.

He leaned forward, not much, just enough that the distance between us felt like it was shrinking, pulling taut like a wire stretched to the breaking point. His voice dropped into something darker, rougher, the kind of sound a man makes when he's trying not to fall apart in front of the one person who could still wreck him.
"Could've fooled me," he said, and the bitterness in it wasn't sharp—it was heavy, dragging, so thick it nearly pulled me under with it. "The way you let him put his hands on you."

It wasn't a shout.

It wasn't a threat.

It was worse.

It was a wound laid bare, bleeding slow and sure between us, and there was no taking it back.

The accusation hung heavy in the room, pressing down on my shoulders, slipping into the cracks in my ribs, pooling at my feet. I felt my breath catch sharp against the back of my throat, my whole body locking down under the weight of it. He was pushing me—pushing me in the only way Colt Langmore ever knew how—by dragging all the hurt out into the light, daring me to look at it. Daring me to name it.

I wanted to throw something. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run.

But I didn't.

I pressed the cloth against his bruised skin harder than I should have, watching the flicker of pain flash through Colt's eyes — quick, raw, but not enough to make him pull away. He never did. Not from me. Maybe that was the root of it, the thing we never spoke aloud: we hurt each other in ways no one else could because we never learned how not to reach for the flame.

"And what about you?" The words tore free before I could swallow them down, low and hoarse, soaked through with everything I couldn't seem to cage inside anymore. "You think it didn't rip me apart, seeing you with her?" My voice cracked at the end, betraying me, a raw thing bleeding into the small space between us.

My hand hovered over his cheek, close enough to feel the heat radiating off his bruised skin, but I didn't touch him. Couldn't. Not when I didn't know if it would heal or shatter the fragile thing we still had left between us.

His gaze didn't waver. It pinned me to the spot, dark and heavy, the same way it always had when he needed me to understand the things he couldn't say. For a heartbeat, something broke loose behind those storm-colored eyes, something bruised and too soft to survive the night. But then it was gone, shuttered behind the familiar walls Colt Langmore built when he didn't know how to bleed without falling apart.

"I didn't kiss her," he said, and it wasn't an excuse. Wasn't even a defense. It was just the truth, laid bare between us.

The laughter that clawed its way out of my throat sounded nothing like me. It was too brittle. Too sharp.

"Gold star, Colt," I muttered, dropping the cloth to the floor, forgotten. The sound of it hitting the wood was sharp, final. "You didn't kiss the girl practically hanging off you. Guess that makes everything fine, right?"

The words tasted bitter in my mouth, heavy with the resentment I hadn't even known I'd been carrying. I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling suddenly, unbearably cold despite the fire still smoldering behind us.

"You think this is a joke?" he said after a moment, his voice low and dangerous, but there was something broken threaded through it, something too close to grief. "I'm here, standing in front of you, fighting for this, and you want to spit it back in my face?"

The air between us crackled, too full, too charged. I could feel the storm of him pushing against me, pulling at all the places I'd spent the night trying to hold together.

"You think you're the only one bleeding, Lemon?" Colt's voice was quieter now, rougher, frayed at the edges the way rope gets when it's been pulled too tight for too long. "You think what Rhett did—what you let him—didn't rip me apart?"

"Let him? You think I let him?"

The words ripped out of me, raw and burning.

My hand tightened on his shoulder, my fingers curling into the soaked fabric like I could anchor myself there, like I could stop myself from falling all the way apart if I just held on hard enough. Colt flinched—not from pain, but from the accusation I drove straight into him, a blade twisted between ribs already bruised and breaking.

"You think I wanted any of this?"

My voice was shaking now, brittle and wild, but I didn't care. I wanted him to hear it. I wanted him to feel the way it rattled inside my chest, the way it clawed at my ribs like a trapped thing.

His eyes flared, a flash of something wild and reckless crossing the dark blue before he dragged it back under. Every line of his body was locked down, rigid, a man built of nothing but bone and pride and too many old wounds that hadn't ever been given the decency of healing.

"I saw you, Colt," I said, my voice dropping low, thick with the ache I couldn't scrub out no matter how many times I'd tried to convince myself otherwise. "I saw the way you let her get close."

He didn't answer right away. He didn't jerk away from my touch. He just sat there, the rise and fall of his chest uneven under my hand.

"She wasn't you," he said, and his voice was rough enough to scrape bone, rough enough that for a second, it didn't sound like him at all. It sounded like a man drowning quietly.

He said it like it mattered. Like it made a difference.
Like it could erase the way my stomach had twisted into knots at the sight of another woman's hands brushing the shoulder where my own used to rest without fear.

I shook my head, slow and aching, feeling the fight bleed out of me, leaving only the wreckage behind.

"And Rhett wasn't you," I said, softer now, but every syllable still thrummed with the fury and heartbreak I couldn't swallow down. "But it didn't stop it from cutting me open."

I saw the blow land in his eyes, the way his whole body recoiled like I'd put a hand to his chest and shoved him backward.
His silence didn't just burn—it smoldered, slow and relentless, like embers buried deep beneath the ash of everything we'd scorched between us. He stood there, jaw locked so tight I could see the pulse of muscle beneath the bruises that painted his face in shades of rage and regret. But still, he said nothing.

Not a word.

Not a plea.

Not an apology.

Just that same steady, wrecked gaze leveled at me like he didn't know if he should reach for me or run from me.

And maybe that was the thing that hurt the most.

It wasn't the bruises he wore like badges of some war we hadn't won.

It wasn't even the anger sparking behind his darkened eyes.

It was the way he looked at me like I was both the knife and the wound. Like he hadn't decided which one he blamed more.

I swallowed hard against the knot rising in my throat, against the tears clawing at the back of my eyes. My whole body felt brittle, hollowed out by the weight of this night, by the weight of everything we had never been brave enough to say when it would've mattered.

"I'm done."

The words barely cleared my throat, raw and unvarnished, scraping up from some hollowed-out place inside me. I didn't spit them. I didn't scream them.
I just said them.
Quiet. Certain. Like setting down a blade after realizing it had been cutting me too.

It wasn't about the fight anymore. It wasn't about the blood or the bruises or the woman whose perfume still clung faintly to his skin. It wasn't even about Rhett. It was about the bone-deep exhaustion of trying to stitch myself back together around a man who refused to hand me the thread.

Across the room, Colt's shoulders stiffened. I saw it—the subtle shift, the way he flinched like the words had been a bullet he didn't see coming. His gaze flickered to me, fast and sharp, as if he could snatch them back before they landed. But it was too late.
The damage was already done.
Maybe it had been done long before tonight. Maybe we were only just now bleeding from it.

He didn't speak. Of course he didn't.
Silence was his sharpest weapon and his cruelest mercy, and he wielded it with the kind of precision that made me wonder if he even knew he was doing it anymore.

I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek, trying to hold back the rush of emotion rising in my chest like a wave about to crest. But it didn't matter.

The tears came anyway.

The first slid down my cheek hot and fast, an accusation I hadn't meant to give voice to. I turned away instinctively, needing to hide, to shield whatever fragile thing was breaking apart inside me. My body felt too small to hold it all—the grief, the fury, the sick, hollow ache of loving someone who kept his heart locked up behind walls you were never given the key to.

I pressed my palm hard against the edge of the table, grounding myself in the sting of it, desperate to stop the shaking that had started somewhere deep inside me. But it was no use. Another tear followed, and another, until I was standing there, helpless against the flood I couldn't dam up.

"I don't even know why I'm crying," I choked out, the words jagged and humiliating in the quiet.
It wasn't true.
I knew exactly why.