Josie tried to pull Colt off of me when I felt my left eye swell shut, and by the time my right was following suit, Colt’s punches had slowed. I could tell they were still a long way from being done though. The unexpected bonus of getting the shit beat out of me was that somewhere along the way, my whole face had gone numb. The hits didn’t sting anymore.
“What the hell are you doing, Colt?” Josie grabbed one of his arms and tugged on it. “What the hell are you doing, Garth?”
Josie had seen me in plenty of fights, but that was the first one she’d seen where I hadn’t come out the winner. She hadn’t seen when my dad used to lay me out with one strong backhand to the cheek starting when I was four. She hadn’t seen his backhands turn into fists as I’d gotten older. She hadn’t seen the guy I’d picked a fight with the night after she and I slept together. That was the first fight she’d seen where I just laid there and took it. I liked keeping those fights private, and Josie having a front seat to my twisted form of therapy was something I couldn’t decide how I felt about.
“Stop it, Colt! You’re going to kill him!” Josie kept trying to drag Colt off of me, but he had her by a good seventy pounds and seven times that in the rage factor.
I was close to blacking out when I heard the unmistakable sound of a shotgun being racked. Colt’s fists stopped instantly.
“You better get off that boy now unless you want to see how we Montana folk use a shotgun,” Brandy ordered, inching the barrel toward Colt’s face. “And it isn’t to decorate our walls like some kind of fancy trophy. Around here, we shoot coyotes, wolves, and ass**les. And it’s been a while since I’ve got to shoot an ass**le. I’m going through withdrawals.”
Colt lifted his hands and slowly lifted himself off of me. It was a smart move; I wasn’t afraid of most anything, but Brandy Hansen holding a loaded shotgun in my face was one of them. And yes, it had happened to me once before.
“Now get out of my joint.” Brandy waved the shotgun at the door. “I’d recommend you not come back unless you want me to ask questions second.”
Colt huffed but continued toward the door. “Maybe you’ll wake up tomorrow learning your lesson finally, Black. Don’t mess with me.”
I had to spit out a mouthful of blood before I could respond. “I learned my lesson all right. That you fight like a little girl.” Leaning up just enough to make eye contact with him, I raised my middle finger and blew him a kiss.
Flames rolled through his eyes, and I could practically taste how badly he wanted to come take another swing—or ten—at me, but Brandy took a few steps in his direction and Colt kept moving for the door.
“Josie? You coming or staying?” he called.
I spit out another mouthful of blood. Good thing Brandy liked me because from the looks of it, more of my blood was splattered across her floor than I had left in my veins. “There’s no chance of Josie ‘coming’ if she goes anywhere with you, Mason.”
Colt shot me a lethal glare. “Joes? What the hell kind of nickname is that? ” He shook his head before glancing away from me. “Josie, are you coming?”
“I can’t just leave him, Colt. Not like this.” Josie had on a brave face, but her bottom lip looked close to quivering. She’d never been a fan of blood, especially when it came to me spilling mine or someone else’s.
“That’s exactly the kind of guy you leave behind.”
I might have been beat to a pulp, but I didn’t like what Colt was implying.
Crossing her arms, her eyes narrowed at him the way I was used to seeing directed my way. “Not to me.”
“You’re actually going to stay behind with this loser?”
Most days, I tried to convince myself I didn’t like Josie Gibson, and some days I failed. That was one of those failure days. I propped up onto my elbows. I didn’t want to admit it, but that small movement hurt like hell. Colt had done a number on me. “If I’m a loser, what does that make you? Oh, wait. Never mind. There hasn’t been a word created for that yet. Colt Mason is all we’ve got to sum up what a good-for-nothing prick your kind is.”
Colt’s fists balled, but Brandy and her shotgun kept him from coming at me again. “Just what kind am I? The kind who doesn’t go home to a dad who’s the town drunk? The kind who doesn’t live in a ramshackle trailer that should have been condemned two decades ago? The kind who only has friends like Josie and Jesse Walker because they pity you? If that’s the kind I’m not, then I’m good with that.”
I kept my face blank. I went to that place within myself that was always angry at the world because when I was good and burrowed down in that place, I didn’t feel anything. Least of all the words coming from the mouth of the jackass in front of me.
Colt shook his head at me—sprawled out, broken, swollen, and bleeding—and the look he gave me almost brought me to my feet with both arms swinging. That look, a mixture of pity and disgust, far outdid his words. I didn’t take well to people pitying me. Despite Colt saying Jesse and Josie only hung around because they pitied me, that was bullshit. Jesse and Josie and I had history. We’d bled through life together. When people shared the kind of ups and downs the three of us had, the common denominator wasn’t pity—it was loyalty. But Colt Mason was looking at me with true pity. If I didn’t feel like I’d just been stampeded by a herd of cattle, I would have beaten his ass until he’d never even consider looking at me that way again.