The minute they hit the room, they were assaulted by paint fumes.
“Oh shit,” Feb muttered and Colt smiled.
He closed and locked the door behind them and when he turned she was already headed toward the kitchen. He got there as she dropped the box on the counter. He put the beer in the fridge, grabbed her hand in his and tugged her out of the kitchen.
She tugged back while she said, “Colt.”
Wilson hit the living room and let out a loud meow.
“Quiet pookie,” Feb said to her cat.
“Pookie?” Colt asked over his shoulder, dragging her into the hall.
She gave him a look and asked, “You wanna tell me why –”
She stopped talking when he halted at the door of the second bedroom and pulled her beside him. Then he reached in and turned on the light.
In the middle of the room was a mattress and box springs on a basic steel bed frame. The mattress and box springs had plastic on them. There was nothing else in the room and the walls had been given a basecoat.
“Guess you’re getting a guest room,” Feb noted.
Colt stared. The place had been chock full of stuff, most of it he didn’t even remember what it was. To have it cleared, a basecoat and new furniture, all in one day, was a miracle.
“Your mother doesn’t fuck around,” Colt remarked.
“I hope you didn’t have anything in there that was precious.”
Colt looked at her and said, “The only things precious in life breathe.”
Colt watched as she stopped breathing and stared at him direct in the eye in that way she’d been doing lately. Her gaze filled with surprise and something more, something welcoming, something he hoped to hell was the invitation it seemed to be.
He still had her hand in his and he reached back into the room with his other one, turned out the light then guided her back to the kitchen where he let her go.
She went to the pizza box, he went to the beer.
“You got a choice, Feb, you can eat some Reggie’s and then I can give you some shit news or I can give you some shit news and then you can eat some Reggie’s.”
He turned from the fridge with two bottles in one hand and saw her drop the lid of the box back on the pizza, her neck twisted, eyes on him.
“Shit news, then Reggie’s,” she answered, her voice quiet but shaky. She was preparing.
He used the heel of his hand and the lip of the counter to snap off the caps on the beers and, when he turned to hand her hers, she was still staring at the counter.
“I wondered what all those marks were.” She looked at Colt. “You need a bottle opener.”
“Got one. It’s over there,” he pointed to a drawer across the kitchen. “Fridge is over here,” he jerked a thumb to the fridge and he felt his words were all that needed to be said.
She walked to him, took her beer from his hand then walked to the drawer, rifled through it, pulled out a bottle opener and walked back to him. Reaching around him and up, she put the bottle opener on the top of the fridge and stepped away.
“Now it’s up there,” she said.
Colt did two things. He threw out an arm to hook around her waist, pulling her body to his and he burst out laughing.
Feb’s body jerked against his arm and he tightened it. She went still and looked up at him. He quit laughing, gave her a look and then took a tug off his beer.
“Shit news,” he said when he dropped his beer hand.
She took a tug off her beer, not taking her eyes from him.
“Marie Lowe, Denny’s wife, was found murdered in her bed today.” Feb closed her eyes but Colt kept talking, the faster he got this shit out the better. “She’d been dead awhile, days, maybe longer. She was probably his first.”
Feb opened her eyes and said, “I had nothing against her. I didn’t even know her.”
“I reckon this was all his.”
She nodded and asked, “Is there more?”
“Don’t know a lot. They were just starting to investigate the scene when I got there. I went, I left, I came and got you. Nothin’ I could do.”
Her gaze drifted over his shoulder and she whispered, “Four.”
“Feb?”
Her gaze came back and she said, “Four people and a dog.”
Colt’s arm grew tight again and he nodded.
“How long were they married?” she asked.
“Awhile,” he answered.
“Why her?”
“Don’t know. We’ll know more tomorrow.”
Her gaze drifted back over his shoulder.
“Marie Lowe,” she said softly, trying the name out on her tongue and he didn’t figure she liked how it tasted.
“Reggie’s, baby,” he said just as softly and her eyes came back to his again.
“Reggie’s,” she replied.
* * * * *
That night Colt, who thought he knew most everything, learned a few things about February Owens.
For starters, first chance she got she took off her jewelry. She stood at his kitchen counter, her plate on the counter filled with Reggie slices, and lifted her hands, taking off the choker which Colt saw fastened with a snap. Then went the earrings. Then the bracelets. Last, the rings.
She set them on his kitchen counter, grabbed her plate and beer and wandered into the den. But Colt stood there for several beats staring at her tangle of jewelry sitting on his counter, laid there by Feb like she’d done it every night for years and a feeling swirled around his chest. He didn’t get it just then, it would take him to later that night, all he knew was, it was far from cold.
Then he found out during their four games that she could play pool when she was concentrating. She beat him once, the other three games he took but he didn’t whip her ass.
They were games that went slow because they were eating, drinking, talking and Feb was wandering around his house looking at the photos he had, some of them Melanie framed for him and left behind, none of them had Melanie in the picture but some of them had Feb. It was Melanie’s way of saying she didn’t feel Feb was a threat but Colt knew, deep down, she did. Others were from Delilah who took photos all the time, on special occasions, during times at the lake or even when they weren’t doing anything at all, just jacking around at her and Morrie’s house, Colt’s, Jack and Jackie’s, at the park. Every birthday and Christmas, Dee’d have the best of them framed and she’d give them to him, always telling him she never knew how to shop for him, Colt always telling her the truth, she gave him what he wanted. Others were from Jackie, not many. They were older photos when times were good between them all but there were only a few. He knew Jackie wanted him to remember the good times with Feb but she didn’t want to cause him pain.
Feb surprised Colt by grabbing the frames or looking at them on the wall and reminiscing, sometimes she’d do it with a smile, sometimes she’d laugh. She didn’t hold herself guarded. She acted like there was nothing to fear and nothing to hide.
It was her laugh that started him understanding what it was about her jewelry on his counter that made that feeling steal through his chest. It wasn’t Feb’s laughter from days gone by. It was coming more frequent now, it was different and Colt understood the change. It was a new kind of laughter because it was more experienced, worldly, husky, deeper, womanly. It wasn’t the laughter of a girl who took a life filled with laughter for granted. It was the laughter of a woman who knew any laughter at all was a gift.
But it was their conversation about Darryl that made him finally comprehend his feelings about the jewelry.
He’d commented she should let Darryl go, saying straight out the man was a liability.
Feb lined up a shot, her torso bent over the table, her fine ass on display in her jeans. “Can’t do that,” she said and pocketed the three.
“Feb, I see him fuck up all the time. Folks even talk about it. You and Morrie gotta see it more than me.”
She was roaming the table, eyes scanning for her next shot and
she said, “Sure. Still, can’t do it.”
Colt saw her shot the minute she honed in on it and prepared to line it up.
“February,” he said before her full concentration needed to be at the table, “he’s an ex-con and a –”
She straightened, put the bottom of her cue to the floor, her fist wrapped around it. She tucked it to her front and looked him direct in the eye.
“Yeah, Colt, he’s an ex-con and sometimes idiot. Dad brought him in when no one else would take him.” Colt started to speak but Feb kept going. “He’s also an ex-con with a family he’s tryin’ to keep fed, a wife he’s tryin’ to keep from leavin’. He’s an ex-con wouldn’t find a job with anyone else, he didn’t have us. If he found it, they wouldn’t keep him. He’s an ex-con tryin’ to keep on the straight and narrow, somethin’ would be difficult for him to do if we let him go and his life fell apart. He forgets to take out the trash, forgets orders halfway through, misplaces delivery notices he’s signed for. But none of that’s as important as a man who loves his family and wants a decent life.”
Colt couldn’t argue with that and he didn’t. Feb knew the conversation was over, took her shot and didn’t miss.
When she circled the table looking for her next one was when it hit him and he knew.
The kiss on Sunday morning he gave her wasn’t about her rolling her eyes at him, reminding him how she used to be. The kiss that morning was the same. Colt climbing into bed with her last night and having pizza and beer with her now, the same.
He’d avoided the conversation they needed to have because he had no fucking clue why one day he’d known in a dark place in his soul there would be no February and Colt and he wasn’t going to go back there and the next day he was kissing her, flirting with her, giving her the family day she needed to keep her shit together.
Now he knew that feeling that stole around his chest at looking at her jewelry wasn’t about going back to the February and Colt there used to be.
It was about finding the February and Colt there could be.
It was about that jewelry being there when he got up in the morning because she laid it there when she got home at night. It was about the woman she was now, not the girl she used to be. It was about a woman who’d make him toast and pour coffee in a travel mug when he needed to get to work; a woman who’d listen to his day and take his mind off it with a hand on his neck, a bourbon on ice, a constitution that could take the shit he saw everyday and, after, challenging him to a game of pool; a woman who’d pay a man to work in her bar who fucked up just because she knew his life wouldn’t be what he needed it to be if she didn’t; and a woman whose best day was a day with her family and friends around her doing nothing but talking, laughing and being together.
He knew it was also about their history, the fact that the girl he once knew was in there, buried, maybe never to come out again but that didn’t erase the history they shared and the fact that she was Feb.
But it was more about what was happening in the right here and now, who he was and who she’d become and the fact that he liked it.
And he knew, he played it right, he could take the advantage Jack said there was to be taken.
And he was going to take it.
After he beat her game four, she saw him stifle a yawn and her eyes got as soft as her voice when she asked, “How much sleep you get last night?”
He didn’t lie. “‘Bout three hours.”
She took her cue to the rack on the wall and stowed it, saying, “You need your rest.”
She wasn’t wrong but he wanted that rest to come with her in his bed, those two silver necklaces she didn’t take off jingling as she moved. The ones he suspected she never took off. They had delicate chains and from one dangled a chunky, oblong charm proclaiming her a “party doll”, the other one a disc, not chunky, with a heart made out of hammered copper on it, a flower etched around the edges of the heart, the word on it contradicting her other charm, announcing the complexity of the woman wearing them. It said “peace” at the top of the heart.
Colt, however, suspected she let him get away with climbing into bed with her after she fell asleep when she had another load of shit dumped on her finding out Denny Lowe had been in her house but she wouldn’t allow it again when she was awake and had her faculties about her. And in order to play it right, he wasn’t going to push it.
“You goin’ to bed?” he asked and she eyed him, dubious about where he was going with his question.
“Gonna clean up the pizza and yeah, me and Wilson could use an early night.”
“I’ll change while you clean up,” he told her and he felt her eyes on him as he walked away.
He saw the bed made when he hit his bedroom. His clothes from last night, which he’d thrown on the floor, had disappeared. His shorts were in the laundry hamper. He got another pair and noticed her journal, pen beside it, on the nightstand. A book, the title he couldn’t see, on top. Some tub of something next to it. He smiled to himself as that warm feeling swirled deeper through his chest.
She was in the kitchen when he walked out carrying the blanket and pillow that either Feb or Jackie put away in the hall closet.
She eyed the blanket and then her gaze came to him. He didn’t see relief. He saw something else, not disappointment exactly, but close.
She’d turned out the lights in the den and now she left the kitchen, flipping that switch too.
“‘Night, Colt,” she murmured as he flicked the blanket over the couch. She didn’t quite meet his eyes but she wasn’t avoiding them for the same reasons she used to and he smiled to himself again.
“Nice night, Feb,” he replied and her eyes jerked to his, a small movement indicating either embarrassment or the depth of some unknown emotion but it was there. It was solidified when she lifted her hand and tucked her hair behind her ear, self-conscious definitely and maybe even shy. It made the woman Feb was seem almost girlish and Colt liked that too.
She nodded. “Yeah, it was good,” she looked away and finished, “sleep well.”
Colt settled in and Feb closed the door behind her. He listened to her going about her business but even when the noises stopped, the light didn’t go out. Either she was reading or writing in her journal. He doubted it was the journal. She’d think twice about sharing her thoughts with the page now thanks to Denny Lowe, the sick fuck.
Colt’s mind went from Denny to Amy.
Instinct told Colt they were both caught up in this shit with Feb. How Amy factored into it, Colt didn’t know and he couldn’t imagine knowing the little he knew about her. But both Denny and Amy had disappeared, Denny for a murder spree, Amy into thin air.
That morning on his way to Indy, Colt had called Dave Connolly at the bank. Dave said Amy called in sick again and she sounded it. But, Dave told him, she did it through voicemail, left a message on Sunday, saying she was real bad and was going to see Doc on Monday. Colt had asked Dave if Amy had any particular friend at the bank, a customer she seemed to chat with more than others, a colleague she seemed partial to, even if it was just a might.
Dave’s answer was chilling. He said she talked with Angie when she was in sometimes they’d chat for a good long while if they weren’t busy.
Other than that, if Amy was close to anyone, it was Julie McCall.
Colt hadn’t had time that day to stop by Amy’s place, call Doc’s to see if Amy came in or go to the bank to talk to Julie McCall, but he scratched it on his mental schedule to do first thing tomorrow.
On that thought, the light switched out in his bedroom.
Ten minutes later, he was still awake when his phone rang.
He picked it up, glanced at the display, flipped it open and put it to his ear. “Sully.”
“Got the stressor,” Sully said.
“What?”
“Marie Lowe’s next door neighbor is also a close friend. She was freaked when she found out Marie was dead but, even freaked, Chris thought she acted like she wasn’t really surpri
sed. Chris called me in and it took awhile, she waited for her husband to come home from the gym, he wasn’t happy we were there. There were words, they had a private chat, but finally we convinced her to spill.”
“What’d she spill?”
“Part of it we know, Denny Lowe’s a sick fuck in the sex department. Couldn’t get it up when they first got married, honeymoon was a disaster, by the way. She didn’t fuck him before they got married. Makes a case for trying out the goods before you buy.”
Colt clenched his teeth at Sully’s innocent comment.
He’d never had sex with Feb even after all those years together. They’d done everything but the deed and he didn’t let her take him in her mouth and he never took her with his. They slept together and screwed around all the time. He made her come with his fingers, she’d made him come with her hand. He’d had his mouth nearly everywhere on her, same with Feb on him. But Colt had made the decision, a stupid one he thought after she broke it off, that he respected Jack too much to fuck his daughter before he put a ring on her finger. Feb was a hot little piece even back then, she didn’t like his decision but she respected it and gave into it. This left him, essentially, a virgin at age twenty-two, something he didn’t mind in the slightest when Feb was in his life, something that pissed him off royally when she waltzed out of it, went wild and started screwing everything that moved.
Sully took him from his thoughts by saying in his ear, “It came out later when Denny suggested they try things.”
Sully stopped talking and Colt’s body grew tight. “What things?”
“Marie didn’t get it, not at the time, since they were livin’ in Chicago. She wouldn’t get it until about two years ago.”
The warm feeling at his chest evaporated and that weight in his gut got heavier.
“What was it?”
“Role play, Colt. Prepare, my man…” Sully paused, giving Colt time, “he made her call him Alec and he called her February.”
“Holy fuck,” Colt whispered, forgetting the weight in his gut as he felt a shiver creep along his skin.
“Gets worse, man,” Sully said quietly.