Consolation Prize Read online

  “How could they be silly if they worked?” I asked.

  She smiled and grasped my wrist before I could retract my hand from the rabbit fur. Squeezing, she murmured, “I’m glad they worked.”

  “Me too.” I drew her knuckles to my mouth and kissed them tenderly. “Did I ever thank you for chasing my nightmares away?”

  Flushing, she shook her head. “There’s no need for that. I barely did anything.”

  Barely anything my ass. She’d taken the time to talk me through my night terrors, then she’d helped me brainstorm ways to combat them, and to top it off, she’d given me these two keychains with a story about how they could protect me. And the nightmares had gone away completely.

  I wouldn’t call that nothing. To me, she was a hero.

  “You did a hell of a lot more than you know,” I argued as she turned down my street.

  She glanced at me and patted my thigh. When she turned into the driveway, she said, “Now, tell me straight before I go in there with you. How bad off is she? Really.”

  My chest tightened, and I shook my head adamantly. “You don’t have to come in. It’s fine. Just take my truck home. I’ll pick it up some time tomorrow.”

  Felicity killed the engine and I knew she was coming inside. Fuck.

  Yeah, she was Aspen’s best friend and all, but it devastated Aspen every time someone outside the family—or anyone inside the family, for that matter—saw her in her current state. And we Gamble men hated seeing anything devastate our Aspen.

  She’d weathered the wedding a hell of a lot better than I’d thought she would—than I’m sure we’d all feared she would—but she was probably paying for it now.

  My mind raced with some way to talk Felicity out of coming inside. Aspen would probably cry and apologize and feel really shitty, and Noel would kill me for being the cause of it.

  Next to me, Felicity sighed throughout the quiet interior of the cab. “I know she’s suffering from more than just a simple case of the baby blues, Colton. She has some major postnatal depression going on, and I’m not sure why you Gamble boys seem so determined to keep it hidden from me, but I am her best friend, you know? So just what are you so afraid I’m going to do to her?”

  Glancing at her, I answered honestly. “Make her talk about it. She only gets worse if you make her talk about it. And we’re already getting her help, I promise you. So there’s no need to go pushing any triggers, especially after she’s already spent a full day out of the house and around so many people. She’s got to be extra vulnerable right now.”

  “Well.” Felicity blew out a breath. “I can assure you I will not make Aspen talk about it if that’s what you’re so worried about. But the way I see it, there are three people in that house right now who need assistance, so it only makes sense to me that it’ll take three of us to give each of them the attention they need.”

  My shoulders slumped as I shook my head, giving in. “Okay. Fine. But Noel won’t like it.”

  “Let me handle Noel.”

  We climbed out of the truck together and started up the front walk. The moment we hit the porch, the front door came open. Noel bounced a fussing baby on his shoulder as he scowled out at me. “What the hell took you so…” His words died as soon as he saw Felicity, and his gaze went wary before he shifted an accusing glare to me.

  “Hey, Noel,” she murmured, taking over before he could say anything. “Reinforcements have arrived. I’ll take the baby.”

  Before Noel could really react, she was easing the infant from his shoulder and cradling her in her arms, cooing, “Hey there, little Lucy Olivia. Have you been giving your daddy grief? Yes, it sounds like you have. Aww…aren’t you just precious?”

  As Lucy Olivia settled down to gaze up at the woman talking to her, Felicity snagged the burp rag still hanging from Noel’s shoulder and jiggled the baby in a happy manner, still talking to her, as they left the room together and disappeared down the hall in the direction of the nursery.

  Noel sighed and rubbed his face. He was still wearing his tux from the wedding, with only the jacket removed and the bow tie undone at his neck.

  “Beau’s still awake if you want to—”

  “Yeah,” I murmured, waving him off. “I got the kid. Go take care of your wife now.”

  Noel nodded gratefully and started to turn away, only to do a double take when he finally focused on me.

  Question filled his face as he took in my gaping shirt, but I shook my head. “Long story.”

  He looked too weary to pursue it, so he turned away to find Aspen. She was probably curled up in their bed, staring at the wall. She did that a lot these days. It was traumatizing for all of us to see her decline the way she had since Lucy Olivia had arrived, but it had hit Noel the hardest.

  It felt as if I aged ten years as I trudged back to my room that I was currently sharing with my nephew. After Brandt had moved out to live with Sarah, the Beau-meister and I had gotten separate rooms. But then Lucy Olivia had come along a few months later. The plan had been for her to stay in a crib with Noel and Aspen in their room, but Aspen hadn’t been able to handle her crying, so Beau and I ended up together in order to make a nursery where baby sounds could be muffled.

  When I opened the door to my room, toys lay scattered across the floor, and my three-year-old nephew sat happily in the middle of them, still wearing his slacks, button-up shirt, tie and black dress socks.

  “Colt!” he cried eagerly when he saw me. Abandoning his toys, he raced over and jumped so that I had to catch him in midair.

  “Hey, Bo Bo. You being good in here?”

  He nodded seriously. “I haven’t left once, just like Daddy said not to.”

  “Good job, kiddo.” My smile was painful. Beau understood the least why things had changed and he needed to give his mother more time to rest. We’d tried to explain she was sick, but then, of course, he’d had to ask her about her illness, which had, of course, resulted in her having a breakdown and fearing she was failing her son completely.

  To say the least, Beau and I had been hanging out a lot more these days.

  “Let’s say we get you cleaned up and into some pajamas, huh, big guy?”

  Beau wrinkled his nose. “Daddy said I didn’t have to take a bath tonight.”

  I totally didn’t get his aversion to baths. The kid loved water—he usually begged to go swimming every day during the summer. And once you wrangled him into the tub, he played with his toys until you had to drag him out with all his fingers and toes pruned and wrinkled. But he fought it every night anyway, without fail.

  “Oh, did he?” I murmured, arching a censorious eyebrow. “Let me smell your hair.”

  Beau eagerly tilted his head down for me to bring my nose close, and when I actually got a whiff of clean soap, I shrugged. “All right then, bud. But we still gotta brush your teeth.”

  He groaned and complained, but I set him on the floor and swatted him lightly on the back to urge him along. “Get going, Captain Underpants.”

  He laughed, loving the title, and raced from the room. I followed a little more leisurely and paused just outside the bathroom to let him do his thing on his own. Every wall of the hallway was plastered with hundreds—maybe thousands—of little slips of paper with a quote either handwritten or printed on each one.

  When my gaze caught on one near the bathroom entrance, I snorted derisively. It said something about regrets only coming from things you never tried.

  “Bull…shit,” I muttered, thinking immediately of bright pink cotton panties and the prettiest pussy I’d ever seen. I definitely regretted trying that, regretted learning more about her and kissing her and watching her come apart in my arms. And most of all, I regretted getting close enough to her that she could hurt me.

  Down the hall, in the opposite direction as the nursery, I heard hushed, muffled voices. Needing to know how Aspen was doing, I inched that way and barely peered around the corner into Noel’s bedroom, hoping they didn’t spot me eavesdr
opping.

  The two lay on the bed together, curled around each other, with both of them still wearing the clothes they’d gone to the wedding in.

  Aspen sniffed and burrowed her face against Noel. “I didn’t do too bad today, did I? Do you think anyone knew?”

  “No, not at all. You did great.” He smoothed her hair behind her ear before kissing her brow. “You did amazing.”

  “No,” Aspen murmured, closing her eyes. “I didn’t.” A single tear trailed down her cheek.

  Noel quickly wiped it away. “No one suspected a thing. You did just fine.”

  She sighed and closed her eyes, and he hugged her close. “I’m tired of being this way, Noel. I’m so tired.”

  “I know, sweetheart.” He rested his cheek on the top of her head and smoothed her hair. “It’ll be over soon, and you’ll feel better again. I swear.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do.”

  I turned away from the doorway and headed toward the bathroom to check on Beau, believing my brother. His sheer force of will would heal Aspen if nothing else did. I swear, he wanted it to happen so bad, it almost had to. She would get better, eventually. There was no maybe about it.

  Noel loved his wife with an intensity I saw in few couples, three of those few being all of my siblings.

  It was strange. Noel, Brandt, and Caroline had each found someone to fit them perfectly. In this day and age, that was unheard of, and yet…it left me with this hope, this determination that someday I’d find the same thing too. So I was always on the lookout, testing the waters to find that perfect fit for myself.

  I mean, I didn’t turn down casual hookups along the way. Hello, I was an eighteen-year-old dude. But in the back of my mind, the ultimate goal had always been to find her, that girl who filled the gaps in me the same way all my siblings’ spouses had filled the gaps in them.

  As my thoughts wandered back to Julianna, I decided something. Maybe I didn’t regret what had happened between us after all. I had tried something, tested the waters, and it hadn’t worked, but at least I’d tried, and now I knew without a doubt, the two of us were definitely not meant to be.

  JULIANNA’S CHAPTER | 7

  My eyes felt crusted over and dried up when I tried to open them. The sunlight was obnoxious and way too damn cheerful as it streamed through the blinds of my window and prodded me out of my sleep.

  Grumbling, I slapped my pillow over my face to muffle the stupid light, only to wince when all that soft cloth jostled my tender, aching temples. Fuck, I’d drank way too much last night, and ended up being way too stupid.

  I wasn’t sure what I regretted more: starting something with Colton, or stopping it—more aptly, stopping it the way I had.

  I wanted to say starting anything with him at all had to be worse, but no…no. Those asinine words that had tumbled out of my mouth had to take that prize. All I could remember was that lost, devastated expression on his face as he’d jerked his cock from my hand and backed away from me. So, yeah, that had to be the very worst moment of all.

  The kicker of it, though, was I had no idea why I’d even said it. I hadn’t even been thinking about Brandt. And why had I used the l-word? I’d had a crush but was pretty sure I hadn’t ever felt love for him because no way could my attention have been so utterly captivated by Colton that quickly if I’d been in love with someone else.

  Which had to mean I was the stupidest girl ever for saying the most untrue thing at the worst moment possible.

  But the weird thing was, I wasn’t that girl. I wouldn’t do that, wouldn’t say that, wouldn’t drink that. Some idiot must’ve taken control of my body, messed up my entire evening, and then returned me back to myself this morning. That’s all there was to it. Because I certainly had never gone to a wedding I didn’t even want to attend before, gotten drunk there, or made out with the best man who just so happened to be the brother of the very guy I’d kind of wanted to have a chance with.

  Nope. Not me.

  Denial set clearly in place, I pushed the pillow off my face and winced as the blinding sunlight burned my hangover.

  “Not cool, not cool,” I chanted to the sun as I slid out of bed and tiptoed to my closet.

  After gathering the first set of clothes to reach my fingers, I tiptoed to the door—no idea why I was tiptoeing—then I eased open the handle and peered cautiously into the hall. I so wasn’t ready to share any of my evening with either of my roommates.

  When I saw the coast was clear, and I didn’t hear any stirring, I darted into the hall and hauled ass to the bathroom.

  Once I was locked inside, I pressed my back against the wall, closed my eyes and blew out a breath.

  Then I muttered, “I am so freaking weird,” to myself as I ripped my night scarf off my head.

  Resigned to that fact, I took a bath.

  It was actually my scheduled day to wash my hair, but I didn’t feel like going through the whole lengthy process, so I skipped that part and climbed back out of the tub a couple minutes later to towel myself dry and scurry into the clothes I’d grabbed, which happened to be a pair of shorts with the word Angel on the butt and a thin, gray ESU T-shirt. I wanted to bypass makeup altogether, but that was unheard of for me, so I dabbed it on quickly and pulled open the door with nothing but coffee on my mind.

  It was easier to think about what I needed to do next, instead of last night.

  Use bathroom.

  Clean myself

  Dress myself.

  Find coffee.

  See: Simple. Easy. Guilt-free.

  I was already trying to decide what to force myself to do after getting the coffee when I entered the kitchen.

  “Damn, girl,” a male voice immediately said, making me jump and skid to a stop. “You look rode hard and put away wet.”

  I paused to glare over at my roommate Tyla’s boyfriend at the table and muttered, “Fuck off.”

  Hey, some days you had to get out the broom, hat, and big black cat and remind everyone who they were dealing with. This was one of those days.

  Theo lifted his hands, letting me know he was backing off. Ignoring him and the other three occupants of the table who were scolding him for his jackass comment, I went straight to the coffeepot and poured myself a cup.

  A throat cleared and my second roommate, Sasha, hesitantly asked, “So…how’d the wedding go?”

  Beside her, her man, Chad, snickered and I heard flesh slap against flesh as she whacked his leg under the table.

  After focusing all my attention on the stream of coffee trickling into my mug, I finally glanced over to send my two roommates and their boyfriends a tight smile. “It went fine.”

  “He married her then?” Tyla pressed, sending me the most sympathetic puppy dog eyes ever.

  I ground my teeth, wishing I’d never told Sasha and Tyla about that stupid crush I’d formed on Brandt, or that I’d be attending his wedding. Another stupid thing the stupid person who liked to invade my body must’ve done while I was out of commission.

  “Of course he married her,” I said, frowning as if she were crazy. “Why wouldn’t he marry her?”

  “Well, shit.” Chad snorted. “I thought you were going to stand up in the middle of the ceremony the moment the priest said ‘if anyone here knows why these two should not be married—’”

  I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. That didn’t happen. He married her, and honestly, I wish them both all the happiness in the world.”

  I didn’t even feel a smidgeon of bitterness when I said that either. Hmm, strange. I really did hope Brandt was happy with Sarah, which was another telling sign that I hadn’t been as far gone for him as I’d always suspected. I mean, seriously, wouldn’t it hurt more to know he was on his honeymoon this very second, doing—

  Well, I didn’t even care what he was doing. So, there.

  Truth be told, I was more concerned with what Colton was doing right now. How much did he hate me? And how the hell was I go
ing to avoid him from here on out whenever he showed up at the bar to visit his brother? Because there was no way I’d ever be able to face him again. The humiliation would kill me.

  I’d quit.

  Yes!

  The idea came in a flash, and for a moment, I was tempted to do just that. I was honestly that afraid of facing Colton again. But then…that was a ridiculous reason to quit a job. And bartending at Forbidden was the most lucrative employment I’d ever had with the best boss I’d ever worked for. I couldn’t quit my job.

  I only had one semester left of college, then I could move away—far, far away—find my dream job in business finance, and live happily ever after, taking care of no one but myself. That was the plan, and I was sticking to it.

  So, I’d just have to be a big girl and suck it up if I ever stumbled across Colton’s path again. And if he happened to demand an apology from me, well…then, I guess I’d just give him one. He deserved that, at the very least.

  But he really hadn’t seemed like he’d wanted an apology last night before he’d stormed from that room, so maybe…maybe we’d never have to talk again.

  One could always hope.

  Except the idea of never talking to him again kind of made me feel sick and shaky and restless.

  “I still can’t believe he got married in the beginning of January,” Sasha was saying, jerking me from my straying thoughts. “I mean, really. Who gets married then?”

  I sighed and shrugged. This was about the fifth time she’d voiced her opinions about the date Brandt and Sarah had picked for their ceremony.

  “I mean, New Year’s Day, okay, I can see the point there. But the eighth? Why?”

  I didn’t have an answer, and honestly, I didn’t care. I was just happy this meant Brandt would now be gone from work on his honeymoon and away from the bar for the next week. I think he’d mentioned they would return a day or two before college classes resumed for the new semester, where he was going to begin his graduate program in physical therapy. To me, though, what it really meant was a weeklong reprieve where Colton would have no reason whatsoever to stop by the club.