Noah
“ Fuck ,” I say for the hundredth time, my voice getting lost to the wind as I take a turn on my bike. Daphne guides me along the outskirts of town as my mind runs winding paths of its own.
All this time… All this fucking time, and Colton had no clue who I am. Who I was .
The kid who moved in with his uncle, grieving and trying to acclimate to a new school months from graduation. One who’d hit it off talking about horses, of all things, with another boy from his class.
One who—hopeful he’d found some good in this fucked-up world—found himself learning another reality entirely.
It took me so long to forgive Colton for that. For kicking me when I was down. For being heartless and cruel when all I’d been looking for was a friend.
I did forgive him. Eventually. I had to let it go for my own sanity.
Even as I never forgot.
And now, what? It wasn’t even him to begin with? He never knew. He never fucking knew . His coldness, his aloofness, all those scowls he sent my way for years… It had nothing to do with that prank pulled on me when we were only seventeen years old.
He didn’t even remember me.
Fuck .
I take a corner faster than I should and immediately slow down, not wanting to wreck poor Daphne’s body once more. I still haven’t buffed out the prior damage, even as I fixed the tire.
My heart thumps viciously as I pull off onto the side of the road, needing a goddamn minute to process. My boots hit gravel and dirt, and I pace a few steps away, stopping in front of a railing that overlooks a small ravine. The sun is setting, painting the sky in red and orange and brilliant purple.
“Fuck!” I screamat it all, my voice echoing.
Pulling my helmet off, I do it again.
“God fucking damn it! Why him? Of all the goddamn people, why did it have to be him ?”
The painted clouds offer no answer, the mountains stretching so high I can’t see their peaks.
“I trusted him,” I say, my voice cracking. “I forgave him, and I chose to trust him again. And you’re telling me it was literally for nothing? That I was so goddamn angry at him for no fucking reason?”
I heave out a breath, my sides aching, my lungs feeling raw.
“It could’ve been anyone. I could have fallen for anyone . Why did you make me need him ?”
My hands catch the rail, the metal supporting me. It takes me a moment through my blurry vision to see the rack of antlers appear below. Down past the guard rail, between a copse of trees.
The elk seems entirely unconcerned with me, weaving through branches, careful to turn his head just so to make his way through the world. I let out a disbelieving laugh. He’s easily the biggest bull I’ve ever come across in the wild.
“What are you trying to tell me?” I ask, expecting no answer.
The elk looks up at me for a long moment, assessing, before he moves on.
Colton didn’t remember me.
What’s worse? Finding out the seventeen-year-old Darling boy I thought I knew never existed in the first place?
Or learning the only reason he ever hated me…is because of me .
My actions. My anger. Me.
A bugle cuts through the still air, the sound eerie and haunting. The elk cries again, and with it comes the memory of my dad.
“The elk never stops running,” he told me once. “Do you know why?”
I didn’t, not at the time.
“Every creature will find its end, my son. It’s inevitable. But we never stop fighting while we’re here. Like that elk, we fight because every moment we’re on this earth, no matter how big or small, is worth fighting for.”
I wipe under my eye as I turn from the railing, my gaze skipping down my arm. Tugging up my sleeve, I look at the antlers inked into my skin. The memory of my dad. Of the lessons he taught me about love and perseverance and living . He lived such a big life while he was here. He loved deeply. Me. My mother. He taught me compassion for the world around me. How to see through a lens that’s not my own.
And instead of using that compassion, I held a grudge against the one person least deserving of it. I turned the man against me, made him my enemy, and then I fell in love with him despite it all.
What kind of sick, cosmic joke is that?
I pull my helmet back into place, swing my leg over my bike, and get on the road.
The lights are on when I pull into my driveway, the sky around me dark. A quick check of my phone shows several missed calls from Colton. Looking at his name makes the pain in my chest flare anew.
What do I say to him?
So many years of hurt. So much pain that could have been avoided.
Goddamn it .
I walk inside the house, closing the door behind me. “Walt?”
My uncle is in the back room when I find him. He sets down his phone and looks at me over his glasses. “Wondered when you’d be back. It’s late.”
“Sorry about that,” I say, taking a seat across from him. “Did you get dinner figured out all right?”
He scoffs. “I’m perfectly capable of fending for myself, kid. Was more worried about you. Something happen?”
“You could say that,” I mumble, scrubbing my face.
“Well?” my uncle asks.
I huff. “Just found out everything I thought I knew was complete bullshit.”
“Colton?”
I raise an eyebrow. “How’d you guess?”
“Doesn’t take a genius. So what’d you learn?”
My sigh is heavy. Weighted. “That I’m the villain in this story. Not him.”
Not that he ever was a villain, not truly. An asshole, sure. But he had a right to be. Because I was an asshole to him.
My uncle makes a disagreeable sound. “You’re not a villain, Noah. The world doesn’t work like that. There’s good, and there’s bad, but there’s no absolute.”
“He’s a good guy,” I tell my surrogate father. This man who stepped up for me when I had no one else. I appreciate him more than I could possibly say. “He’s always been a good guy, Walt, but he wasn’t to me. And I thought… I don’t know. I thought there was a reason, and I hated him for it. Because I didn’t deserve that.”
“No, you didn’t,” my uncle says softly.
“But neither did he.”
The sound of crunching gravel has my head swinging toward the front of the house.
“Well,” my uncle says, opening his book and nudging up his glasses. “Now’s your time to make it right.”
“What did you do?” I ask slowly, my heart thumping. “You called him?”
“He was blowing up my phone first,” my uncle says, full of sass. “Now get.”
Jesus .
I push out of my seat in time to hear the unmistakable sound of Colton’s voice ringing loud and clear.
“Noah fucking King! Get your ass out here!”
When I pull open the front door, there he is. Colton Darling, standing only a couple dozen feet in front of me on the lawn. The light from inside the house barely illuminates him, but I can see the pain around the corners of his eyes. And…is that a shoebox under his arm?
“Colt,” I start, heading down the porch stairs, an apology poised on my tongue.
The man storms forward before I have a chance to utter a word of it, stopping in front of me and dropping to his knees in the grass.
My breath whooshes from my lungs.
“Now you’re gonna listen,” Colton says, voice stern. “Because there are some things I needa say.”
I nod numbly as he opens the top of the shoebox, tossing it aside. Inside are…pieces of paper?
“What is all this?” I ask, bending down and picking up one of the papers. The words on the clipping are familiar. “Are these…my ads from the newspaper?”
“Shush,” Colton says, not answering my question. “You said I didn’t remember you, but I do . I remember you. And I know exactly who you are. You’re the dick who made me strive to be better just so I could say I’m the best farrier in town.”
Colton tosses some of the clippings my way, the thin papers fluttering to the grass.
“You’re the one who’s been under my skin since the very first time I met you. I liked you then, Noah. I did. And I like you now.”
He throws another handful of papers angrily.
“You’re the guy who’s been haunting me for years. Years . Don’t you get it?”
Colton upends the box, the rest of the clippings falling at my feet, his blue eyes flashing in the limited light.
“Against all goddamn sense and reason, you made me fall brim over boot, Noah King. And now I don’t know which way is up unless it’s with you.”
“Colt…” I say, my voice nearly lost, the vise around my chest so tight it physically hurts.
He shakes his head, dropping the box beside him and pressing his hands together in front of his face. “I’m down on my knees, willingly, because I just got you. I just got you, and I can’t lose you. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize your face from back then. I am. But you , Noah…the boy who asked to ride horses at my ranch.” The sound he makes is wounded. Involuntary. “I know you deep in my bones. And I was so fucking scared of that when you showed back up in town. Because I saw that man. I saw you, and you wouldn’t see me back.”
I drop down in front of Colton before I have the conscious thought to move. I clasp his face in my hands, and he latches on to my wrists, holding tight. “Fuck, Colt. I see you. I do.”
“I know that now,” he says, his eyes wet. “You see me better than anyone. I don’t know why the fuck all of this happened. Maybe in another life we could’ve been friends from the start. But…we’re here now. We made it here. So please don’t hold it against me, Noah. You look so fucking different than you did then.”
My laugh is pained. He’s not wrong. I was heavier as a teen. Add on to that the muscle I put on in college and the ink on my skin, and I’m a different person entirely.
“And I swear I didn’t do it,” he goes on. “I never wanted to turn you away. I never tried to hurt you back then.”
I rub my thumbs over Colton’s jaw, the prickling against my skin the best sort of pain. “I know,” I tell him. Colton was horrified when I recounted what happened. As caught off-guard as me. I know he’s telling the truth. “I’m not mad at you, Colt. I’m mad at…everything else. At myself. At Eddie, apparently. At all these fucking years I blamed you when there was no blame to be had. I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”
The noise he lets out is full of confusion. “You’re… not mad at me?”
“Do you want me to be?” I ask, my hands stroking over his skin. I can’t seem to stop myself now that I’ve started. How did I ever think this man cold when he’s fire and heat beneath my fingertips?
“Well, no,” he says. “But fuck , King. I’m not used to you not being mad at me.”
I let out a breath, skating my palms down to Colton’s neck, my thumb rolling gently over the column of his throat. “None of this is your fault. And I’m sorry I left like that. I just… I needed a minute to think so I wouldn’t blurt out something I didn’t mean. I made assumptions from the start, Colt, and that’s on me. All of this is on me. You simply reacted in kind. Forgive me for that?”
“Jesus Christ, you asshole,” he says, humor—of all things—in his voice. “If it’s not my fault, it’s not yours. How could you have known? For all intents and purposes, I was the dick who tossed horse shit on your head. I wouldn’t have been friendly either in your place.” He lets out a breath, one hand planting on the top of my thigh. His other moves to cover the back of my hand, shifting my grip to the front of his throat. “You hold my reins, King. So please. Tell me where we go from here.”
My own throat feels tight as I swallow, the curve of Colton’s neck a perfect fit against my palm. “We start over.”
His eyes flare wide, alarm there. “What?”
“Shh, little Colt,” I soothe, giving his neck a gentle squeeze before letting my fingers drift away. I hold out my hand. “Hi. I’m Noah King from Wyoming, and I’m a farrier. How about you?”
Colton lets out a wet laugh, his hand clasping mine tight. “Colton Darling,” he says in kind. “Born and raised here in Montana. I’m a farrier, too. Small fucking world, huh?”
“It really is,” I agree, my eyes stinging. “Wanna come inside, Colton Darling? We could talk some. Get to know one another better.”
His blue eyes shut for only a second, shoulders heaving in a sigh before he nods. “Yeah. I’d really like that.”
Our hands stay clasped for a long moment before we finally let go. Colton grabs the shoebox, and I help him gather the fallen clippings.
“So, uh,” I say slowly. “My newspaper ads?”
Colton groans. “Shut it. They were hate mementoes, okay? Doesn’t mean a goddamn thing.”
“Mhm. Which is why you brought them with you as evidence of your infatuation with me.”
Colton’s mouth drops open. “I am not infatuated, you dick. If anyone’s obsessed, it’s you. I’ve got your name on my ass, and it isn’t enough, is it? Pretty sure if I let you, you’d have an honest-to-God bit in my mouth and a bridle wrapped around my neck.”
I still, and Colton looks up slowly, eyes meeting mine.
“No,” he says shortly.
“You sure?”
“Fucking positive. Hard pass.”
I snort, and Colton shakes his head, shoving the lid on top of the shoebox. “We never speak of this again. Ever . It’s bad enough I have to be seen with you. No one needs to fucking know about… this .”
“Sure,” I agree easily.
Colton sighs, looking pained. “ Christ . It doesn’t actually bother me being seen with you, okay? Don’t go all puppy eyes on me. It’s just… We’re gonna have to ease my family into it. No one is gonna see this coming.”
“Puppy eyes?” I ask, helping Colton to his feet.
“You know you have pretty eyes. Shut up.”
Colton groans as I laugh.
“Come on, King,” he says, all business as he heads for my front door. “Fill me in on what I missed while I was too busy hating you.”
There’s a smile on my face as I glance up at the sky. The sunset is long gone, the stars having taken their rightful place, front and center. I wonder about the elk in the woods. If he found what he was running toward.
My dad was right about many things. But especially this.
We fight for what’s important in life. Every big moment. Every small.
And love, well. I think that might just be the most important battle worth waging.