kiss they’d almost shared, and her heart clutched from his quiet denial when he was—in every way she could imagine—her living and breathing knight in shining armor.
“I don’t think so,” she said, opening her door and slipping into the car before he could say anymore.
***
But Colt wasn’t so sure, and as they rode home in silence, he mulled over the reasons why getting involved with Verity was such a very, very bad idea.
It had started when he was in grade school: the quick, hot, red rage that would rise up inside him like a flash storm over the sea. His mother claimed it came from out of nowhere—the slightest provocation would bring on a reaction so overinflated, there was no time for anticipation. She could barely brace herself before he’d swing into a full-blown tantrum, which often led to the damage of material things, like furniture or clothing, and sometimes even threatened her safety when a plate or mug went flying. His father’s answer to such episodes was to yell louder and hit harder until Colt submitted, cowering in the corner with a black eye and bruised limb, his anger subsiding and tears falling. His mother’s approach was to take him to a psychiatrist while his father was away on a business trip.
At age nine, he was diagnosed with a condition called intermittent explosive disorder, a condition in which a child or a young adolescent is unable to resist angry impulses, resulting in explosions of rage that are disproportionate to the situation, leading to the possibility of dangerous or destructive behavior.
When his mother shared this diagnosis with Colt’s father and asked for his permission to pursue treatment, she was backhanded across the face for consulting a “quack” and Colt was told to “get himself under fucking control,” or his father would take “treatment” into his own hands.
In the end, his mother took things into her own hands, sending Colt from their home in Seattle to live with her sister, Jane, in Atlanta the summer after his tenth birthday. Though his mother’s plan was to have him stay for the summer, hoping the distance between father and son would cool them both down, Colt’s parents were killed in a car accident a month later, and he ended up remaining at Aunt Jane’s indefinitely.
And while his aunt had tried to get him to open up about his feelings for several weeks following the accident, Colt simply hadn’t felt very much—or, more accurately, hadn’t wanted to feel very much. It was all too overwhelming. He’d barely gotten his head around the fact that his mother had chosen to send him away and stay behind with his father. How did he feel? He felt like ignoring their deaths, and despite Aunt Jane’s pleas, he refused to go to the funeral with her, opting instead to stay in Atlanta with his uncle and cousin that weekend. He felt like pretending that they were alive, still living their fucked-up, corrosive, codependent lives together in Seattle.
Finally Aunt Jane gave up on talking to him about them, just as she’d given up on trying to get him to attend the funeral. She told him that when he was ready to talk about his parents, she’d be ready too. That day never came, however, because Colt chose not to think about them, and living with Aunt Jane, Uncle Herman, and Melody made it easy for Colt to move on.
Unlike his father, Uncle Herman didn’t believe in hitting back, and unlike his mother, Aunt Jane didn’t believe in psychiatry, she believed in action. She believed that the key to controlling Colt’s impulses was inner strength and natural supplements, so under her supervision, he practiced yoga twice a week, took Saint-John’s-wort daily, and drank two cups of chamomile and lavender tea before school every day and before bed every night.
With Aunt Jane’s gentleness nurturing him, Colt worked hard to get some measure of control over his outbursts. There were still fights at school from time to time, and freak-outs over homework assignments, but Aunt Jane and Uncle Herman’s home was so warm and loving, Colt was able to develop coping techniques when he felt the rage building—physical exertion helped, and acting in plays, where he could give his fury free rein playing a villain or warrior.
Plus, he learned to conceal his outbursts, letting his anger build until he was in a “safe” place to explode—the woods half a mile from his house, in his car at the deserted quarry, or in