His Pretend Baby by Theodora Taylor

Author:Theodora Taylor [Taylor, Theodora]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781530996223
Google: W7EDkAEACAAJ
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2016-04-10T05:00:00+00:00

20

“Did you really think I didn’t remember who you were?”

An anvil drops down on my heart, and I stare at Colin, speechless.

“You know who I am?”

“Yeah,” he says, dipping his chin like this is a conversation he really didn’t plan on having tonight. Maybe not ever. “From the moment I saw you singing. You’ve changed a lot.”

He points to my now very messy curls, which had been dark brown and straightened with a flat iron that long ago night. “Especially the hair. But I remembered you clear as day. And I could see from the look on your face you remembered me, too.”

“But…” I shake my head, trying to process what he’s just told me. “Why didn’t you say so? Why did you pretend we were meeting for the first time?”

Colin scrubs a hand over his face. “Do you really think I wanted to get turned on by that fight we had that night? By one of Mike’s girls? You think I wanted to keep obsessing over you after it happened… like a goddamned psycho?”

He breaks off and turns his head away from me, staring into the morning fire. “I tried the whole dom/sub thing. For years I tried to make it work. But it just got to feeling… hollow. So I decided to try something else with Josie, who I had a nice, wholesome teenage crush on before you came along. I figured if anybody could have cured me, it would have been her. Sorry if that doesn’t sit well with you, but I was fighting hard against becoming the beast you saw that night.”

He turns back to me, his stare now pained. “But then you had to go and fuck that up for me.” He throws me a half-wry, half wary look. “The truth is, you’re lucky I let you out of that hotel room, Purple. Lucky I didn’t pin you to the floor and fuck you right there, after you blocked my last path out. Because that’s what I wanted to do.”

“I—I…” …have no idea what to say.

“And then you called me.” He bares his teeth at me. “Asked to be friends.”

I shake my head, feeling defensive and confused. “I thought we were friends.”

Colin shakes his head. “We’re a lot of things, Purple,” he tells me somberly. “But friends ain’t one of them.”

I stare at him, my mind a complete blank for moments on end. He remembers me. He’s been remembering me all this time, just like I’ve been remembering him. Remembering and trying to fight against becoming the guy he was with me that night.

“But I should thank you for calling me,” he says. “Talking to you… getting to know you helped. Helped me come to terms with something I’d been fighting for a while now.”

I think about his earlier words about us being consenting adults and not letting other folks get a weigh in on what we do, and realize he must have said them to himself a whole lot before he ever said them to me.

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