Words.
Words, Colby had found, were weapons. Sometimes, he sheathed them in velvet, wrapped them in silk and so carelessly threw them to hurt and maim and destroy. It was rare he used them for all that was good and right and wholesome; rarer still he was kind with his words, loving even. Colby ran far, far away from anything tender, anything intimate.
Words.
They were something he needed to use now, let his truth be so sweetly heard. It was a truth he had hinted at back at the venue, a truth he had thought was only believed to be a lie. He had thought wrong, there was no other way Saraya would be sitting on his bed if she thought he lied for even a second.
She was here to talk, to understand just what Colby had started to unravel. Why he did that, he didn’t know. The words slipped free, fell from his lips as if he didn’t know how to lie, to keep everything tucked away behind a smile, behind a facade of cruelness he wore like armor. Maybe it was because he was just tired of it all: tired of the lies and pretending to love a woman he didn’t.
Maybe, in the end, he was just tired.
The words he needed now, wouldn’t come. They were locked away, trapped thick and jumbled in the base of his throat. The one time he needed words and he didn’t have them, didn’t know how to untangle the knot they had become and get them out there. He shouldn’t have taken that pain pill, shouldn’t have let it addle him as it did.
Silent, he stepped closer to her, slowly raised a hand and cradled her face so, so delicately he ached with the tenderness of it all. Gently, he let their foreheads press together and for a long moment, he was content with their closeness, to breathe in the same breath she did. Shifting his head, he let out a soft, gentle sigh, “I’m in love with you.”
Sober and clear headed, those words never would have left him. Colby would have ran from the truth he let slip free, what he had started to let out back at the venue. There was no denying his truth, no denying what he had tried to run away from for years upon years now. It was out there and it felt good, felt as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
“I’m in love with you.” He repeated more sure and firm. Gently, he tipped her chin back and kissed her.












