Say You’ll Stay

Summary: Even after she leaves LA, Freya has a hard time not thinking about Colt. This was inspired by a request from a friend for the prompt “I called you at 2 AM because I need you”. Set after the final chapter of Ride-or-die.

The first time Colt calls her, Freya’s been at Langston for a couple weeks. She’s in class and misses it. The area code is one she recognizes, but the number is unfamiliar. When she calls it back, it’s no longer in service. She can’t say why, exactly, but she can’t shake the feeling that it was Colt.

The next call comes two weeks later. It’s another unfamiliar number. She’s studying in the library, carefully marking pages for her upcoming exam. There’s silence on the other end of the line when she answers.

“… Colt?” she says quietly.

There’s a sharp inhale and then a dial tone in her ear. She tries calling the number back right away, but it just rings and rings until she finally hangs up.

The third call comes a little less than two weeks after that, another one where no one answers her. She doesn’t say his name this time, afraid he’ll just hang up again. She’s grateful her roommate is out and she’s alone in their dorm room. For long, silent moments Freya sits there with her phone held to her ear. She can’t bring herself to hang up, to let go of this thin, fragile connection to who she’s certain is Colt.

She only reluctantly ends the call when she’s about to be late for class. “I have to go to class,” she murmurs into the phone. “Be safe, okay?”

When she mentions the calls to Riya, her friend hesitates and then says, “I know you think it’s Colt, but what if it’s not? What if it’s just some random person messing with you?”

That possibility has crossed her mind, but she can’t (or won’t, she admits to herself sometimes) really believe that it’s not him.

She very purposely doesn’t tell her dad about the calls. Their relationship is still on fragile and uncertain ground. As much as Freya doesn’t love hiding yet another thing from him, she knows exactly what her dad would say. And she knows she’s not willing or ready to completely let go of Colt, even being this far away and given their last conversation.

The calls keep coming regularly, from ever-changing numbers out of the Los Angeles area. No one ever answers. She never says anything beyond “Hello?”.

Usually the calls are completely silent, though sometimes she hears the sounds of traffic in the background. A couple months into receiving the calls, one of them nearly shatters her. There’s loud, angry shouting and a massive crashing sound a few minutes in that makes her heart leap into her throat.

“Colt? Colt?” Nothing.

“Answer me! Colt!” She can’t stop the words from coming out of her mouth. The call ends abruptly. A strangled sob rips out of her. Freya keeps the phone pressed desperately to her ear, her knuckles in a death grip. There’s no one on the other end, but she says his name again anyway, a broken whisper of a question.

Finally, she sets the phone down with shaking hands. She manages to pull herself together enough to leave for class, but she walks there in a daze and barely remembers the lecture.

Later that night, she’s sitting at her desk, staring blankly at the textbook in front of her. The phone call from earlier keeps playing in her head, over and over. She wishes Colt would answer her. Just once. He never calls more than once every couple of weeks, but she hopes against hope that he’ll call again tonight just so she knows he’s at least alive and not- She slams the textbook shut, refusing to let her thoughts go there.

It’s Colt. He’s fine. He has to be fine. She hasn’t spent weeks thinking about him and worrying about him more than she’ll admit for no reason. Freya takes a deep breath, opening her book up again. But she can’t make herself focus, no matter how hard she tries.

She has too much restless energy to just sit and do nothing, so she does the laundry she’s been putting off. She makes her bed. She’s desperate enough for a distraction that she organizes her desk. Her roommate invites her out to an event at the student center, but she’s not in the mood to be social and turns her down. Her phone remains silent.

Just as Freya is about to head to bed for the night, giving up on Colt calling again and knowing she needs sleep, her phone finally rings. It’s the same number from before. She nearly drops her phone in her haste to answer it.

“Colt?” she says immediately.

All she hears is quiet, steady breathing.

“Please,” she begs. “Please, Colt. Say something. Just tell me if you’re okay.”

There’s another few seconds of silence, and then someone says, “I’m okay.”

She sobs in relief before she can stop herself. She knows that voice. The call ends suddenly and it sends Freya’s thoughts reeling. It stings, almost worse than the conversation they’d had the last time she’d seen him.

The way they’d left things still makes her hurt, mostly late at night when she’s alone and the thoughts she can usually distract herself from during the day come creeping in. She wonders if he’s okay, if he’s managed to avoid the police, where he’s staying. She wonders if anyone is there for him. Knowing Colt, he hasn’t let anyone in.

Even across the country, she’d still be there for him if he’d let her. But it’s Colt. She’s sure he’s still trying to convince himself that he doesn’t need anyone.

Freya’s hopes that he’ll start calling her more often are squashed when days pass with nothing. After that last call, she starts to worry about him even more and it begins to wear on her. She tosses and turns at night, finds herself distracted in lectures, has trouble focusing more often than not when she’s trying to study.

The next call that comes starts out the same as every other one; she answers, he says nothing, and they sit in silence. For weeks that’s been enough for her, a quiet comfort that he’s at least okay enough to call her.

But now, his stubborn refusal to say anything makes anger bubble inside her. It starts slow, gradual, a niggling irritation that he still won’t talk. The irritation turns into annoyance that after everything they went through, after telling her he loved her, after thinking he’d been injured or worse, all he’ll give her are these silent phone calls. The longer she sits there, the phone pressed to her ear and listening to his quiet breathing, the angrier she gets.

Her temper has always been like a volcano, simmering just under the surface, growing and growing until it explodes. This time is no different.

“Damn it, Colt!” she finally snaps. “Say something!”

She’s surprised he doesn’t just hang up immediately, but he doesn’t say anything either. His continued silence makes the dam of words inside of her burst. She can’t hold them back any longer.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she says, blinking back angry tears. “I can’t sleep, I can’t focus. I worry about you all the time and you apparently don’t care. So say something. Say something, Colt, or stop calling me.”

She can hear the way his breathing has grown rapid. She waits for him to speak. She waits. And waits. Nothing.

“Goodbye, Colt,” she says quietly, and hangs up.

Despite that call, her angry ultimatum for him to talk to her or stop calling, Freya still finds herself waiting for the next call. But two weeks pass, and there’s nothing. Another week passes, and another. She can’t help but wonder if he’s not calling her again because she told him not to, or because something has happened to him.

Great, she thinks to herself bitterly late one night. There are no more silent phone calls, but you’re still thinking about him all the time anyway.

Still, she tries to push herself to focus on everything else. She spends time with her friends, goes to lectures, works on projects and essays, calls her dad at least once a week. The angry, hurt feelings that had reared their heads inside of her after her last call with Colt slowly start to subside.

She’s in the middle of a deep, dreamless sleep one Thursday night when her ring phones. Groggily, she answers without even looking at the screen.

“Hello?” she whispers, keeping her eyes closed and her head on her pillow.

“I’m sorry.”

The voice on the other end makes her eyes fly open.

“Colt?”

Freya climbs out of bed and pads quietly out into the hall. For a second, she’s so relieved to hear his voice again that she forgets how angry she’d been the last time he’d called her.

“I’m sorry,” Colt says again.

“For… calling me?”

“Yes.”

Frustration builds inside her again. It’s too late and she’s too tired for this conversation. “Then why did you?”

“No, I meant… damn it,” Colt nearly growls. “I’m sorry I called so late. I should’ve waited till morning.”

“But you didn’t,” Freya points out, sinking down on the cheap linoleum in the hallway.

“No. I didn’t. I needed…” Colt takes a deep breath. “I needed you. I needed to hear your voice.”

It’s a shockingly vulnerable thing for him to admit.

“Are you okay?” she asks quietly.

“I’m fine.”

“Where are you?”

“At Langston.”

She’s stunned into silence for a minute. “What?”

“I’m at a hotel. Just off campus.”

She thinks she must be dreaming. The last thing she was expecting tonight was for Colt to call her at all, let alone at two in the morning to tell her he needed her and that he was in the same city as her.

“Colt…”

“You don’t have to see me,” he rushes out.

She hears him mutter that maybe he shouldn’t have come.

“Colt, shut up,” she says. “Just give me a second to process this.”

There are too many thoughts swirling through her head.

I’m still hurt. I want to see him. I’m still mad. I miss him. I can’t do this back and forth again. I still love him.

She takes a deep breath. “I have an early class. Text me the hotel you’re at, okay?”

Colt exhales. “Okay.”

When her classes are done the next day, Freya heads to the address Colt sent her. It’s a short walk, not nearly long enough to let her think about what she’s going to say to him.

But when he opens the door to his room after she knocks, she thinks anything she would have had planned out to say would have left her mind anyway. He stands there watching her. She’s acutely aware of her heart pounding in her chest as she looks at him.

“Colt,” she finally breathes out, and steps through the door.

As frustrated and worried and angry as he’s made her, as maddening as those silent phone calls had been, it all starts to melt away at seeing him again. She can’t keep herself from hugging him. Colt wraps her in his arms the second hers go around him. She clings to him as Colt gets the door shut behind them and they tumble onto the nondescript bed in his hotel room. She breathes in his scent and buries her face in his neck. His arms are banded so tight around her waist that she can barely move, but she doesn’t mind.

“I’m still mad at you,” Freya says, her voice muffled against his skin.

Colt barks out a laugh. “Yeah. I know. You should be.”

She lightly punches him the best she can from where they’re lying together. He runs his fingers through her hair, making her eyes drift closed. She savors him holding her again. But as good as this feels, she knows they can’t avoid talking.

“Why are you here, Colt?”

His fingers still. Freya lifts her head up, her dark eyes meeting his.

“I needed to try and explain. After my dad died, you told me you wished you could be there for me,” Colt says.

She’s confused where this train of thought is going, but she patiently hears him out.

“And I told you that you had been,” Colt continues. “That your voice was the one guiding me with every decision I made.”

“I remember.”

He shifts his hand from her hair to cup her cheek. “After you left LA, it was still your voice that I heard. But it got to where I couldn’t hear you.”

Understanding dawns over her. “So you called.”

“I called,” he confirms. “I needed to hear your voice. And when it got to where I couldn’t hear you anymore, I’d call again.”

“But you never said anything. And when I tried, you hung up,” she says, her voice beginning to quiver.

Colt tilts his head down, resting his forehead on hers. “I was still trying to protect you. I didn’t want the police to be able to connect you to me.”

“Do you have any idea what that did to me?” Freya whispers. “I worried about you all the time. All I had of you was silent phone calls. You hung up on me after I thought you’d been hurt or-” She still can’t make the word come out of her mouth.

Colt takes a ragged breath. “I know. I’m sorry. God, I knew I wouldn’t be able to take the sound of you crying.”

He sounds genuine, sincere, but… She pushes herself away from him to sit up. Colt sits beside her, but she carefully keeps space between them.

“Are you just going to go back to not talking to me again after this?” she asks him.

He at least looks guilty when she asks.

“If you want me to,” he answers. “I’m selfish. I needed you. I still need you. I want whatever you’ll give me. But if you want me to go and not contact you again… I will.”

Silent tears roll down her face as she closes her eyes. Deep down, it’s not what she wants. Even as her brain silently chastises her and tells her that being done with him is probably for the best, it’s not what she wants.

“I didn’t say that,” she murmurs.

She turns to face him. Colt’s hand comes up, his thumb brushing her tears away. She leans into his touch instinctively.

“But I can’t just give you bits and pieces of me, Colt. I can’t just be that person on the other end of the line when you need it. I need more than that.”

“I know, Freya. You deserve more than that.”

There’s really no simple way she can think of to make this work right now. She’ll be in college on the east coast for the next three and a half years. Colt is in LA, and she knows how determined he is to get a new shop opened and a crew back together. And yet, her stubborn heart refuses to accept that they can’t make this work.

“I’ll be the one to point out that this won’t be easy,” she says.

Colt shrugs, a telltale confident smile on his face. “When has anything we’ve ever done been easy?”

She laughs a little through her tears. He’s right.

“You can’t just shut me out again, Colt.”

“I know. I’ll keep working on it,” he promises.

They lay back down chest to chest. She knows there’s so much more for them to figure out, but for now, being here with him and knowing they both want this is enough. Freya sighs when he kisses her. She’s missed those kisses.

“You still didn’t really tell me what made you fly all the way out here,” she murmurs against his lips.

“Turns out when I could hear your voice, it liked to remind me that I could end up alone if I wasn’t careful.”

Colt kisses her again. “I used to be okay with that, until you showed up and ruined those plans.”

She narrows her eyes at him and he smiles, kissing her harder until she quietly gasps his name.

“My pop really had no one at the end. You made me realize I don’t want that.”

She nuzzles her nose against his. She wishes he could have just told her that before, but he’s just as stubborn as she is. More so, actually.

“I don’t want to drag you down, Freya,” Colt says. “But I want you with me.”

She wants to be with him too, no matter what the future throws at them. If they’re in it together, she knows, she’s prepared to tackle anything.

~~~~~~~~~~

Los Angeles feels different when Freya gets off the plane after her college graduation. She grabs her backpack and heads outside, the sun warming her skin. The rest of her belongings arrived last week and are stacked in piles in Colt’s apartment. She knows how different her life will be here this time around, and she’s okay with that. This is what she wants.

Her eyes scan the line of cars waiting to pick people up. She grins when she spots the familiar bright pink color of her car and sees Colt leaning against it.

“No motorcycle?” she calls out when she gets closer.

Colt shrugs. “You’ve had almost four years of barely driving. Figured you’d need the practice.”

She smirks, leaning in close until their lips are almost touching. “I think you’re underestimating just how good of a driver I am.”

Colt snags her lips in a heated kiss, her hands fisting in his shirt. She’s breathless when they part, her cheeks flushed. He tosses her backpack in the backseat and hands her the keys.

Freya sighs happily when the car rumbles to life, the motor purring smoothly.

“I missed this,” she sighs, running her hands over the pristine interior. Colt’s taken good care of it for her.

“I missed you too,” Colt smirks.

Freya rolls her eyes and laughs. “You know I missed you.”

She leans in for one more kiss, then grins at him as she pulls away from the curb and zips off. It comes back to her like she never left.