Firefly Nights

CHAPTER 13.50

"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.