LITMIR.BIZ

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hated himself for following in dear old Dad’s footsteps.

      He’d run. Run from the house, into town and straight to the Haskell’s house, which was the closest thing to a home he’d ever known. He’d tried to run from the shame, but it was always there, in the memory of a pitiful old man’s fearful eyes and trembling hands.

      Of course the bum hadn’t patched up the hole. Doff probably didn’t even notice it, in his constant drunken state. But that was okay with Colt. He didn’t need the past to be patched up and glossed over. He would leave that hole there until it was the finishing touch on the house. Because the ache was like a sore tooth, and he needed to know it was there. He needed to remember.

      He paced, edgy. The room had darkened with his mood, and he stood in front of the window, watching clouds build on the horizon.

      It irritated him that his injured back slowed him down, and resentment made him want to work harder. But he knew that, for today at least, he was done.

      He walked out to the back porch, a fresh wind stirring the grass. The ball of rage that sat constantly in his gut—sometimes a dull glow, sometimes a hot flame—flared as lightning slashed a vertical rip in the sky a few miles away. Once again, Doff had the last laugh. Colt had been close—so close—to beating Doff’s record, to proving he was the better man, the better athlete, when he’d been tossed from Rascal’s back. He could swear that in his dying moment Doff had possessed Rascal’s body and dug that horn into his back, just to get in the last word. Thunder rolled overhead, and the temperature of the wind dropped noticeably. It chilled the sweat on Colt’s neck and tossed his hair. Lightning cracked. He could see the rain line just a few miles away now.

      It wasn’t much of a surprise that his mind drifted south, to Becca’s house. He’d heard her car drive by a few hours ago, when she came home from school. He could go there.

      He should go there. He’d left things in a bungle last night. But hell, what did she expect, dropping a bomb like that on him? He stuffed his hands in his pockets and scowled. He’d handled the news badly.

      But a virgin? He’d known Becca’s life was sheltered, but for crying out loud. How in the world did someone as pretty and sweet as Becca get to be thirty years old and remain a virgin?

      Not that he was going to ask her, not after last night. But in his gut he knew he’d made the right choice twelve years ago. It had been hard as hell, but he’d done the right thing by telling her no. She would have ended up hating him.

      And that was one thing he didn’t think he could take.

      He rubbed his jaw and looked over at her house. She’d turned on the kitchen light, and the welcoming glow caused a shifting somewhere in him, a lump in his throat that he swallowed against.

      Funny, he’d forgotten that he’d always gone to Becca, when they were kids. When things got rough with Doff, rougher than normal, and it was either clear out or get killed, he’d always found some way to get to Becca. She’d developed a signal for him to send her, an old tractor tire someone had left out in the fields behind their houses, and he rolled it over by the big cottonwood that bordered her yard. She explained it all like some kind of secret spy adventure, but they both knew it was a desperation call. When things got to be too much, and he needed her, that was his way of calling her.

      And she always came. He waited out by the old quarry, pitching stones and dreaming about another life, and she always came. She made up stories to tell him. Nonsense, fanciful tales where kids ruled the world and had all kinds of fantastic adventures conquering demons and trolls. And for a few hours, he forgot what waited for him, and she forgot what waited for her.

      So it wasn’t a surprise to find his feet headed across the field that separated their houses. It was an old habit, one that he hadn’t thought about in many, many years, but one that came back to him with ease. Things were getting to be too much, and maybe now he didn’t need her, but he sure as hell wanted to see her again.

      Becca laid the stack of papers she had to grade on the table beside her favorite wicker chair on the screened-in porch. Pewter clouds built high in the sky; the storm was only minutes away. She didn’t want to miss it.

      Lightning cracked again, thunder rumbled immediately after, and the sky broke. The rain came thick and heavy right away, and immediately the world shrunk down to a few dozen square yards. Her little house was the universe, and she alone lived there. She smiled.

      She heard the teakettle shriek on the stove at the same instant she saw the dark gray form moving across the field. She knew it was Colt by the walk, even before she could make out the features.

      She opened the porch’s screen door. “Hurry,” she called above the downpour. “You’ll get soaked.”

      As he jogged up the steps, she saw that it was too late. His entire body was already streaming with wet.

      She stepped back and let him in. “People get killed by lightning, you know. Don’t move. I’ll get a towel.”

      She flipped off the burner under the screaming teakettle on her way through the kitchen. In the bathroom she grabbed two towels and a quilt. On the way back outside, she stopped, watching Colt pace up and down her porch. She set the quilt and towels on the kitchen table and took two tea bags from the cabinet. Chamomile and hibiscus. She and Colt could both use the calming.

      She tossed the tea bags in a teapot and added boiled water, then tucked the quilt and towels under her arm, kicked the door open with her toe, and carried the hot tea outside.

      “Hold these,” she ordered, in the same tone she’d learned to use on errant students.

      He took the cups from her, sniffing rainwater off the end of his nose.

      She dropped the towels on the chair and took the cups from him. “Okay, strip down and wrap up in this quilt. I’ll throw your clothes in the dryer.”

      “No, that’s okay—”

      “Colt, you have chill bumps the size of marbles on your arms, and you’re trying so hard not to shiver, you’re about to crack in two. Now strip, and I’ll throw your clothes in the dryer.”

      At his hesitation, she raised an eyebrow. “You don’t honestly think this is my way of making a pass at you, do you? I tried that already, remember? Now strip. I’ll wait inside. Lay your clothes on the table inside the door, and knock when you’re decently covered. Okay?”

      He gave her a sheepish grin that made her heart do a slow flip, and started working the buttons to his shirt. Becca beat it inside before she made a fool of herself by staring.

      He did as he was told. She joined him on the porch a few minutes later, but only after giving in to ridiculous curiosity. Powder-blue boxers.

      He sat in her favorite chair, one hand clutching the quilt closed at his neck, the other curled around her china cup. His bare white feet and shins poked out from the bottom. He was doing a pretty good job, she decided, of looking like he didn’t feel ridiculous.

      He had toweled his hair, and it stood out in unruly black curls around his head. Becca sat down opposite him and tried not to laugh.

      “Okay, want to tell me why you’re here?”

      “Just thought I’d stop in and say hello.”

      “Sure. In a thunderstorm. I believe that.”

      Colt sighed and hitched a shoulder. “I couldn’t get any more work done today, and I couldn’t—didn’t want to just hang around there. And I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

      “Now there’s an answer I believe.” She sipped her tea, telling herself that it didn’t bother her to be the last resort. What else were friends for? She openly studied the haunted look in his eyes, the dark circles underneath. He hadn’t shaved that morning, either. “It’s hard for you to be in that house,” she said.

      He drew his head back. “It isn’t hard. It just hacks me off to have to clean

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