Broken

squirreled away enough money, we would leave my dad’s controlling ass behind and move to Nashville where we would sell our songs and make millions.” She reached up and wiped her tear-filled eyes with the back of her hand. “Stupid dreams.”
“Not stupid,” I reassured her, my heart wrenching at her pain. “Everyone needs dreams.” I gave her a few minutes to compose herself before I spoke again. “How did your mom die?”
“Opioid overdose. Turns out she had a secret addiction.” She shook her head as if not quite believing that was true. “We went ice skating for my tenth birthday. One minute we were both laughing about how clueless we were, the next, she was on her back screaming. Two broken vertebrae. Thank God, she didn’t damage her spinal cord, but after she healed, she was in constant pain.”
Tears streamed down her cheeks. She turned to look at me, enough sorrow to bring a grown man to his knees filling her face.
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart, I’m so, so sorry.” The words of her song came back; you can even blame me till I feel ashamed. “Jesus Christ, your dad thinks your mom’s death is your fault?”
A shudder shook her shoulders. “Said if I hadn’t been such an awful daughter and had helped her out more instead of sitting in my room with my head in the clouds that she wouldn’t have had to take as many pain pills. That if I hadn’t begged her to go ice skating that day, then she wouldn’t have fallen and hurt her back.”
“This isn’t your fault,” I said, emotion making my voice thick. “None of this is your fault.”
You can knock me down. Anger toward her father surged inside me. “Did he hit you?”
Her face crumpled. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.
I pulled her into my arms and rocked her like a baby. “Let it all out, Nattie. I’ve got you. No one will ever hurt you again.” I’d kill anyone who came near her, and if I ever saw her father, I’d put him six feet under using only my bare hands.
Natalie
By the time I stopped crying, a wet patch had formed on the shoulder of Colt’s T-shirt, and my throat throbbed from sobbing. How the heck was I supposed to get up on stage in a few hours and sing my heart out?
I hadn’t meant to spill my guts, but that’s precisely what had happened. I didn’t know if I felt relieved, but my shoulders were a hundred percent lighter.
For the longest time, we sat in silence with him stroking my back. And I practically purred when he placed small kisses over my hair.
I lifted my head from his chest and saw in his face how much he hurt for me. That wasn’t something I wanted. My past and my pain were my burdens to carry, not his. I cupped my hands around his cheeks and held his face the same way he’d held mine the first night I’d sang for him.
“Don’t be sad for me.” I gave him a small smile. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?”
“That means you’re stronger than any man, woman, or child walking this earth.”
I pressed my nose against his and grinned. “I’m going to use that in a song.”
He laughed quietly. “That so?”
“That’s so.”
He laughed again, louder than before, the deep sound vibrating against my body. “Do I get royalties?”
“You get something better than that,” I said, stroking his day-old whiskers.
“What’s that?”
“Me.” I straddled his thighs and splayed my hands on his chest, loving the steady thud, thud, thud of his heart against my fingertips.
“Bad idea.” His baritone voice seemed to lower another octave. His words might have said one thing, but the very sizeable erection tenting his sweatpants said another.
“Why?” I gritted my teeth against his second rejection. “Is it because I’ve got some junk in the trunk and more than a few jiggly bits?”
“Are you shitting me? Everything about you is as hot as sin. It’s because I’m afraid I’ll break your heart and from the sound of things, it’s been broken enough.”
“Let me worry about my heart.”
“Don’t go thinking about commitment or long term, Nattie, because you won’t find it here. I don’t do relationships.”
“I’m only thinking about now. I’m thinking about how much I want you. Thinking about how much I want to give myself to you.”
I trailed my lips down the side of his neck and along the pulse jumping in his throat. Then, reaching up, I dragged my fingers through his hair and tugged.
“Kiss me, Colt.”
A low rumble came from somewhere deep inside him. He brought his mouth close to mine and, after a few seconds of hesitation, he kissed me as though he needed my breath to live. If he kept kissing me in such a sexy way, I’d climax without him having to do anything else.
My hands started to move, running all over his shoulders and arms, across his chest and through his hair. Living under the same roof as him for a week had been a crazy kind of foreplay that had built up to this moment.
“You’re going to kill me,” he rasped against my lips.
“I’ll try not to.” Wanting to touch him all over, I slid my hands beneath his T-shirt, loving the solid muscles I found there.
“I tried to resist you,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Promised I wouldn’t do this, but I can’t help myself.”
He wedged a thigh between mine, and I gladly straddled it, grinding and riding like I was naked and on top of him. I didn’t have much experience, but instinct took over, guiding me, making me confident, making me bold and brave.
“You sure this is what you want, Nattie?”
“I want this. I want you.”
“Glad