Honkytonk Hell: A Dark and Twisted Urban Fantasy (The Broken Bard Chronicles Book 1) eden Hudson (best book club books txt) 📖

“You like it,” he’d said.

In the here and now, Colt rested his face against his knees and curled his arms tight around his legs.

I leaned my head back against the wall. Tried to tell myself this had been inevitable. Even without Mikal, Colt would’ve broken eventually. The hyper-compartmentalized life. The unbalanced temper he’d inherited from Shannon. The obsession Danny had worked the kids into that Colt hadn’t been able to escape. The rigid routine where every second was exercise, reading, guns and ammunitions—no downtime—as if he was scared to stop moving.

Looking back it was easy to tell myself I should’ve done something, but when Colt was with me he hadn’t needed help. He’d made those dry, geeky jokes or let me lean against him for warmth. Nothing else belonged in the “Tiffani” compartment.

The only time I’d seen a crack was that last morning Colt had come by the bakery, a little more than six weeks ago. He had watched me get ready to open, but didn’t touch the lobster tail pastry I’d given him. He barely said anything, even when I asked him questions. I could smell that he hadn’t had a drink in a week—that alone should’ve been a clue. We tried to watch an X-Files, but he wasn’t paying attention. After a while, I had shut it off.

“Want to tell me what’s wrong?” I asked.

“Not really,” he said.

“But something is.”

He had shivered, but when I started to move away, he put his arm around me. “It’s not you. I’m not cold, I promise. Will you talk to me or something?”

I don’t even remember what we talked about. Nothing important, I guess.

“It was the morning after you shot Mikal’s familiar,” I told the shadow rocking in the corner. “Took me a week to find out through the grapevine. By then you’d already killed five of the poor bastards and gotten enthralled yourself.”

I could try to tell myself that if I had known I would’ve tried to stop him, but it wouldn’t have worked. All those times I’d told him to piss off that first winter—anyone else would’ve given up. Colt had just watched and planned and caught me one morning when I hadn’t been able to pick up a vamp-groupie. Then he offered me his wrist.

“Let me guess,” I had said, “You’ll let me drink if I’ll spy on your brother for you?”

“Tell me one time if you know Tough’s in trouble,” Colt had said. “You can even pick the situation. It doesn’t even have to be mortal danger.”

I’d been starving, starting to see the veins under his skin pumping him full of hot, red life. I could’ve warned Colt it was going to hurt like hell—the wrist is one of the worst places to be fed on—but I wanted to teach him a lesson. I tore into the vein, clipped a tendon. I heard Colt grit his teeth, but he didn’t stop me and he didn’t struggle. His heart beat exactly the way Shannon’s used to when she was turned on.

It was too much for me—the visceral pleasure of feeding, knowing that Colt liked the way I was hurting him, smelling the tattoo ink in his skin—too much like Shannon. She had thought she needed to cover her body with tattoos, couldn’t stop with just one. “I’m not addicted,” she used to tell me, “I’m art.” Then I had moved just right and the orgasm brought me crashing back to Colt. I threw him the hell out of my bakery.

God hates vamps, but He loves irony. I took Colt’s deal the day before Tough told Mitzi that he loved her.

When Colt came by again, I told him what Mitzi had done. I went through the speech—crow magic, vamps are monsters who get off on mutilation and pain, all that. Colt just stood there, staring down at the table like he didn’t know what to do. Seeing that break in attitude had been like seeing Shannon drop all the rock star swagger in that first panic attack. That was what finally did me in.

I had sighed. Rolled my eyes at what a damn soft-shell I was.

“Coffee’s going to be ready in a minute and those cinnamon rolls are almost done,” I’d told Colt.

He hesitated. I think he knew people around here didn’t like him.

“You can leave before the bakery opens if you want,” I said.

So he had stayed. We didn’t talk. He just sat in the booth and ate his cinnamon roll.

“You ate like you could appreciate all the subtleties of the flavors,” I remembered. “Orange zest in the frosting. Madagascar bourbon vanilla extract in the dough. Probably just me projecting, though.”

In his corner of the bedroom, Colt had gone still. He was listening.

I pushed up to my knees. Leaned forward.

“I think that’s how you got me, Colt,” I said. “The next time you came in, I started up the first episode of The X-Files so I could watch you eat without you realizing it.”

The locusts outside were singing louder than he was breathing. I could feel him straining to hear me.

“It took you six months to make a joke in front of me,” I said. “Do you remember what you said?”

Silence.

“I screwed up the lemon drops I was making. When I cussed and threw the pan at the slop sink, you said, ‘It was that bastard Krycek.’”

The soft huff could’ve been a laugh or the breath someone lets out when they slice open their finger.

“Remember me, Colt. Please.”

He swallowed. I could hear the dry catch in his throat.

“Real or not,” he said, “You’re the last person I want to remember.”

Colt

—the only one who will ever love you, Colter, the only one who can give you what