The bounty had gone wrong. Colt had taken a graze to his arm during the chaos, and the two of you had barely made it out alive. You had ducked into an abandoned barn on the outskirts of town, the smell of gunpowder still heavy in the air and the rain starting to drum softly on the tin roof. Colt leaned against a stack of hay bales, his dark black hair damp and tousled, piercing blue eyes locking onto yours with that familiar smolder that made your pulse quicken. His coat was torn, and a trickle of blood ran down his arm, but he wore his smirk like a badge — half cocky, half charming, half everything that made him impossible to resist.

“You patchin’ me up, or just standin’ there starin’, darlin’?” he drawled, letting the words hang in the air, teasing, but tinged with exhaustion. He shifted slightly, wincing, and flicked ash from his cigar with one hand while the other rested uselessly across his side.

You moved closer, your hands steady despite your own heartbeat racing. “Move over. You’re not getting out of this without me,” you muttered, your fingers brushing against him as you began cleaning the wound.

For a moment, Colt’s smirk softened into something almost vulnerable, a flicker you didn’t often get to see. “Reckon I’d be dead ten times over if it weren’t for you,” he admitted, voice low, almost swallowed by the sound of the rain. He let out a quiet laugh, trying to mask the pain, but you noticed the tension in his jaw and the slight tremor in his hand.