He remembered forcing himself to throw up last night. That seemed to help the intensity of the next day hangover. This morning, his body already craved his morning Bloody Mary to help ease the pain. What was the old saying about hangovers… hair of the dog?
Maryia mumbled, and her hand came up. Something scrapped Colt across the face. He lifted a hand to his stinging cheek and it came back bloody. The scratch came from Maryia’s engagement ring. Reality came crashing down on him.
He was an engaged man. Fuck!
Ignoring his aching body, Colt dislodged from Maryia, and apparently Clint, who had his legs tangled up with Colt’s. He pulled himself up, working his way to the end of the bed. Colt placed his feet on the floor and pushed himself into a standing position. Shit! The pounding in his head was making him nauseous, fighting to keep the contents of his stomach down. He padded to the restroom, determined if he were going to throw up, it would be there and not his bedroom.
The bile churning in his belly had nothing to do with the alcohol he’d consumed and everything to do with the situation he let himself get involved in. Colt had agreed, or rather, had been coerced, into marrying a conniving, manipulative bitch, which seemed to be a metaphor for his entire adult life. Fuck my life!
Colt doubled over the commode, purging everything in his belly. He didn’t fight it, staying right there through all the dry heaves, never forcing himself up. He had allowed himself last night to have the pity party to end all pity parties.
He always heard a person needed to experience every possible crappy outcome of their partying ways and hit rock bottom before they underwent detox. For Colt, rock bottom already happened nine years ago. Something seriously needed to give. He heard rehab sucked shit, but for him, nothing could suck as much as this miserable, fucked up existence he called a life.
Colt didn’t know firsthand, but he assumed it was going to be difficult to just stop drinking. Alcohol was something he’d drank every single day since the meeting in Johnny’s office where he’d been forced to give up Jace. If only his heart would have let go, too.
Actually, Colt had done a lot more than drink for much of the last nine years, trying to fill the void of Jace Montgomery. He’d stayed drunk because drinking numbed the pain and helped him forget. His few patches of sobriety centered on football games and working out, but honestly, he’d been pretty messed up for most of those, too.
Alcohol was the second most important thing in his life. Like always, when he thought about the situation like that, the first most important thing came to mind. Colt cut his eyes to his closet door. The scene of the crime and the only reason for his impeding nuptials. Fuck, the evidence was still lying all over the floor.
The contents littered across his closet were the only thing that enticed Colt into getting off the tiled floor in front of the toilet and cleaning himself up. It was just better all-around for him to ignore the image greeting him in the mirror. He looked like hell, and who wanted to see that? Instead, he brushed his teeth, washed his hands—because they smelled like ass—and splashed water on his face. After drying himself off, he finally made an attempt to deal with the chaos in his closet.
Colt hadn’t bothered to dress; he could do that later. He forced himself to enter the closet and clean up the mess Maryia had made. Bitterness rose. How could she? There lay his most precious possessions in the world. His heart sank as he got a closer look at what that bitch had done to them. Anger at Maryia gripped him, but the pain and hurt of his past forced him to his knees. Almost a decade's worth of his collection dumped all over the floor. Many of the pictures and articles were crumpled, some were ripped up, but as Colt looked them over, he saw some had managed to survive her wrath. He smiled. Relief hit him strong as he looked down at the photo lying on the floor in front of his knees; Jace’s sweet face stared up at him.
Colt slowly picked up the photo, his gaze centering on Jace’s eyes. He liked this picture the most because Jace had looked right at the camera. The eyes seemed as if they looked right through him, seeing straight into to his soul. If Colt moved to the right, the eyes in the picture followed him. God, how he wished his life were different right now. He wished he’d never walked into Johnny’s office that day after spring break.
Colt began methodically making two piles. One pile collected all the salvageable pictures and articles Colt had found on Jace throughout the years. He organized them as he went, starting with college and working his way to the last few months. Jace had done well with his life. He’d opened a cheerleading gym in Dallas and had done great over the years.
The next pile held the pictures and news stories he’d have to replace. The ones Maryia shredded in his face when she’d blackmailed him yesterday. Colt didn’t know what pissed him off more. The fact Maryia had dared to touch his secret collection or that she’d used Jace to extort him into marrying her. Both set fire to his soul, adding to the long list of vile names that came to mind when describing the gold-digging, scheming Russian whore, better known as his fiancée.
Yesterday’s battle had been epic. Maryia was strung out on meth. He had been in his normal drunken state, and it shocked the shit out of him that he’d refrained from putting his hands on her. He’d never hit a woman before in his life, but when he came in and found her going through his pictures, threatening to expose him if he didn’t do exactly what she wanted him to do… yeah, he’d almost punched her right where she stood. Instead, the closet door took the brunt of his anger. And it now lay broken to pieces just feet away.