I giggle and then quickly cover my mouth, embarrassed. He cuts a sideways glance at me.
“See?”
He pours an ice water and pushes it toward me. “You have a nice laugh.”
I sip my water and the room gets quiet. We both seem to realize the night is winding down. It’s after three in the morning, and everyone else is long gone. Pretty soon we’re going to run out of excuses to be hanging out this late. It’s either admit there’s something more between us or part ways.
And I’m not sure whether I’m being stupid or what, but I don’t get up from my seat. I just wait and hope he doesn’t make some excuse about being too tired and wanting to get home.
“Let’s see. Last weekend you quizzed me about my family. So what’s your story?” he asks, coming around the bar and settling down on the stool beside me. “You’re an only child, right?”
I exhale. I so didn’t want this night to end just yet.
“Growing up it was just me and my dad for as long as I can remember,” I say.
“What happened to your mom? If you don’t mind me asking.”
The strange thing is, I didn’t mind. I usually hate talking about my mom, but with Colton, everything is easy. He has a way about him that just puts everyone at ease, including me.
“She left us when I was a little girl,” I say. “I had just turned five when she told us she was going to go visit her parents for a few days in Tennessee. She said she’d be gone a week, tops, but she never got there. And she never came home.”
“Wow, where did she go?”
“I have no idea,” I say. “After about two days, Dad was worried out of his mind. He’d called her parents about a thousand times asking about her, and they just kept saying they hadn’t heard from her. She apparently had never even told them she was coming there to visit. Dad was convinced her car had broken down somewhere on the road and she’d been murdered or something horrible. It was one of the scariest weeks of my life. I swear neither one of us slept a wink. He’d called nearly every hospital from here to Nashville trying to find her, but no one had any information.”
“I can’t even imagine that,” he says. “Did you ever find out where she was?”
“She called him about a week later out of the blue, acting like nothing was wrong,” I say. “I still don’t know everything they said to each other that night, and I was too little to really understand what was happening. I just remember Dad yelling for what seemed like forever, telling her she needed to come home and talk about this instead of running off like a coward. She never even said goodbye to me, really. She just called that one time to tell him she was gone and that he shouldn’t come looking for her. We never heard from her again except when Dad got the divorce papers in the mail.”
“Holy shit,” Colton says. He runs a hand across his forehead. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
I shrug, and the simplicity of the gesture tells me how far I’ve come toward accepting what happened between my mother and me. It has taken me years to come to terms with her leaving, but now it just feels like something that was always meant to be.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’ve come to believe that it was for the best, really. I hardly even remember her now. It’s always just been me and Daddy, like two little peas in a pod.”
“You two look out for each other, huh?”
“Always,” I say. “I can’t even imagine life without him.”
“He’s a good man,” Colton says.
“I guess I should probably go home and check on him again,” I say. “It’s getting pretty late, anyway.”
“Don’t go,” he says softly, touching my hand. It’s the first time he’s touched me so deliberately, and it flows through me like warm honey. “Stay for one more drink. I’m buying.”
He raises an eyebrow and smiles, but I shake my head. I’ve already stayed too long and said too much. I’ve already opened up my heart a little more than I intended, and I’m afraid if I don’t walk away now, it’s going to lead to something messy and complicated and painful. I don’t have room in my life right now for all that,