For You (The 'Burg Series) (44 page)

Once it settled, my hands glided up Colt’s chest, his neck and my fingers slid into his hair. I went up on my toes and I kissed him, giving him my own promise.

* * * * *

It was late when Colt closed the door behind Jimbo and Jessie, locked it and turned to the kitchen.

February and Jackie were in it, Feb drying a big stockpot with a kitchen towel, Jackie handwashing glasses and turning them upside down in the dish drainer.

At the sight something soothing slid through him, coating the rawness he’d felt all day. It didn’t do much to take the pain away, the pain of knowing what was done to him, to Amy, to Feb and the fact he had a son out there somewhere, but it helped, even just a little bit.

He knew that rawness would remain for a long time. He saw it in the eyes of a lot of people, rape victims who still had it stark on their faces months later while they sat on witness stands. Folks who’d been robbed who he’d see years later and he knew they now had dogs and alarms because that little sign was stuck in their yard warning those who might try again that they’d called Chip to install the system.

He couldn’t handle that now, trying to figure out what would heal the hurt, turn it to a scar, keep him from picking at it. Whatever happened earlier that night, and the shit of it was he didn’t help it by acting like a selfish ass; Feb was slipping through his fingers. She might have said she’d locked him tight but she was ready to bolt. Controlled panic was etched into her face and all along her frame and Colt had to put all his energy toward keeping his woman sane.

“Leave those to drip dry, baby girl,” Jackie said when Feb put away the stockpot and reached for a glass.

“Don’t like to face dishes in the morning,” Feb muttered and Jackie’s eyes moved to him.

He saw she was feeling what he was feeling but hers was double. All her energy was focused on keeping her daughter together and the same went for him. Two of her cubs got cornered under her watch and it tore at her.

Knowing Jackie was feeling that, Colt was struggling with his grip on justice, not knowing which was the better fate for Denny Lowe. Death riddled by bullets fired from the guns of an army of Feds or the rest of his life, rotting behind bars hopefully being gang raped at both ends.

It might make him sick but he decided instantly he preferred the last.

Colt shook his head at Jackie and she nodded. He wasn’t quite sure what he’d communicated to her but he was sure, whatever it was, she trusted it.

He walked to the couch and sat down, needing more than anything to take a load off while Jackie announced, “Welp, cookin’ for eleven people and cleanin’ up after them done wore me out. I’m hittin’ the hay.”

Feb kept drying glasses and reaching up to place them in the cupboard as she said, “You gonna be able to sleep in the midst of garlic smells and lingering paint fumes, Mamma Jamma?”

There it was, another balm, Feb calling Jackie “Mamma Jamma”, her nickname for her mother, something she used to say that also used to make him jealous, not having a mother he could nickname. Then his mother became Jackie and that jealousy slid clean away.

“So bushed, I could sleep while someone was painting around me,” Jackie said back, leaned into her daughter and kissed her cheek. “‘Night, my sweet child.”

Feb’s voice was rough when she replied, “‘Night, Mom.”

Jackie came to Colt, who’d put his feet up on the coffee table, crossed at the ankles and was too exhausted to move as she walked to him.

She didn’t mind. She just leaned down and put her hand to his face and kissed his opposite cheek.

“‘Sleep well, Jackie,” he muttered while she did this, thinking she’d move away but she stayed leaned over him, her hand on his face but her head came up and her eyes went to his.

“You know, long time ago, I looked it up,” she told him.

“What?” Colt asked.

“Your name,” she told him, her voice soft, her eyes on his unwavering and he held his breath, knowing what was coming was going to strike deep and he wasn’t wrong.

“‘Alexander’,” she said, “means warrior, defender. Colton, colt,” she smiled, “well, we all know a colt’s got so much energy, always beautiful little things, strong, fast, all of ‘em gonna grow up to be something magnificent.”

“Jackie –” Colt murmured, forgetting about that rawness. Her words, in that moment, swept it away.

“Can’t say much for your folks,” she whispered, “but in their miserable lives they did one thing right. They made you and after they gave you to this world, they gave you a name that fits. Don’t you think?”

He didn’t answer her and she didn’t wait for him to do it. She patted his face, straightened and walked quickly away.

Colt’s eyes followed her and a memory hit him as they did.

He heard her voice coming at him from a long time ago. It wasn’t soft, it wasn’t a whisper, it wasn’t like it was five seconds ago, filled with so much love, mixed with a mother’s longing to take away a hurt she couldn’t ease. It was filled with anger and determination.

He was sixteen and sitting on the side of an exam table in the ER. His nose was broken, a bandage across it, the cut under his eye stitched, his knuckles wrapped, his eye swollen shut. His father wasn’t stronger than him, not at that time, hard living had worn the strength right out of him and definitely not when he was as shitfaced as when he started it with Colt. But he was wily, he was mean and he didn’t have a problem not fighting fair. Colt gave him a good thrashing but his Dad got his licks in for certain.

Feb was sitting beside him. She’d hooked one of her feet around his calf and she was swinging their legs together. She had his hand wrapped tight in hers, palm against palm, both of them resting on her thigh and he could feel the muscles flexing as she swung their legs together. Her moving their legs jarred his body and it hurt his busted ribs but he didn’t say a word, he wouldn’t have stopped her if he was in agony.

Morrie was standing across from them, his shoulder against the wall, his eyes looking out a window, his thoughts unpleasant.

Jack and Jackie were out in the hall with Hobart Norris, the Chief of Police back then. Jack’s voice was a murmur, as was Hob’s, as was Jackie’s but suddenly Jackie’s voice grew louder.

“I don’t care, Hob, you hear me? Social Services be damned. You go back to that Station, you make your calls and you cut through your goddamned red tape.”

“Jackie,” Hob said, raising his voice too but trying to calm her.

“No, I see you don’t hear me, so I’ll explain. That boy in there’s not goin’ home to those two jackals. I been sending him back there for eleven years, each time it cut me to the quick. I also been talkin’ to you ‘til I’m blue in the face. I’m tellin’ you, he’s not goin’ back there again. You tell me right now he has to go, I’ll tell you right now I’ll pack my kids and my husband in our goddamned car and you’ll never see us again.”

“I’ll take it you mean Colt too when you talk about ‘your kids’,” Hob stated.

“Damn right I do,” Jackie returned, not missing a beat.

“Not a good idea to tell me your plan to kidnap Alec Colton, Jackie,” Hob was trying to joke.

This was not a good idea, Colt knew it, Feb knew it, Morrie knew it. They knew it because they heard it, heard it through something they’d never heard before.

They heard Jackie Owens shout.

“
A sixteen year old boy is black and blue in there, Hob, and you joke?
”

Jackie had a temper, it was lethal but it was quiet. None of her kids ever heard her shout.

But those words bounced around the hall, around the room Colt, Feb and Morrie were in, hell, they were probably heard throughout the hospital.

“Calm down, Jackie,” Hob warned.

“I’ll calm down when
my
boy puts his head down at night on a pillow under
my
roof!” Jackie shouted back.

That’s when Jackie laid claim to Colt at least in any official way. He might have felt like a cub wandering around, having never had a lioness who was there to protect him who was meant to keep him safe. But he wasn’t one. Or he would be one no longer.

“He’s not defenseless, woman,” Hob was losing patience, “you should see what he did to his father.”

“No, I shouldn’t. I did, I’d get the itch to finish the job Colt started,” Jackie shot back, Colt heard Morrie let out an amused snort and Feb squeezed his hand.

Hob tried a different tactic. “Jack, talk to your wife.”

“Why? She’s talkin’ sense, far’s I can see,” Jack said.

“Jack –”

“Cut through the red tape,” Jack interrupted.

“Impossible,” Hob replied.

“Then tonight’s your night to become a miracle worker,” Jack returned.

At that moment Feb dropped her head to his shoulder and Colt forgot about his night when she did, wondering, if he was living with Jack and Jackie, how they’d feel if he asked their daughter on a date.

He didn’t go home to his mother and father’s, never stepped foot over their threshold again. He didn’t know if Hob fixed it or Jack and Jackie just didn’t bother following the rules and he never asked.

Jack took his friends Hal Woodrow and Phil Everly to Colt’s house and he did it because both Hal and Phil were just as big and solid as Jack, they’d get no trouble. The three men packed up Colt’s shit and brought it back to Jack’s house.

Around about the time Colt was six and he was spending more nights at Morrie’s than he was at his own home, they bought Morrie and Colt bunk beds. Colt and Morrie used to fight over who would sleep on top, so they separated the beds, put them both on the floor at opposite walls. Then Colt and Morrie used to fight by throwing pillows and toys at each other from bed to bed. This would turn into a game where they’d eventually laugh themselves sick and Jack would shout through the walls from his and Jackie’s room, “Enough you two!” Then they’d hear Feb giggle from her room and Colt and Morrie would whisper to each other about all sorts of boy shit before they fell asleep.

Him moving officially into that room should have been no big thing, he’d had a bed in there for near as long as he had memories. Even so, his moving into that room was a big thing and everyone in the house knew it, most especially Colt.

He heard the cupboard close, his thoughts came back into the room and his head turned to see Feb running water over a sponge at the sink. He watched her turn off the water and wring out the sponge before she went to town on the counters and he was stunned when the rawness came back. Not that it was back just that Jackie had managed to take it away so soon, even for awhile. And also he was surprised that it didn’t seem so fucking raw anymore.

“Come here, baby,” he called and Feb’s head came up.

“I’ll be there in a sec, just let me finish cleaning the counters.”

She didn’t need to clean the counters. She’d done it while Jackie was washing out the pot and skillet. He had no clue why she was doing it again.

“Feb, no one’s gonna perform surgery on them. They’re ‘bout as clean as they can be.”

“I like to wake up to a clean kitchen,” she told him, still rubbing down the counters.

He let it lie. She liked a clean kitchen? Who was he to argue?

He let his head fall back to the couch and rubbed his face with his hands, thinking he’d never been so fucking tired in his whole fucking life. He left his hands where they were even after he heard the soft splat of the sponge hitting the sink and felt Feb getting close. He only dropped his hands and lifted his head when he felt her moving on top of him.

She straddled him, crotch to his crotch, knees and calves in the couch, ass to his thighs, her hands coming to rest where his head met his neck and having Feb astride him, her hands on him, Colt found he suddenly wasn’t the least bit tired anymore.

“I hate to ask,” she said softly, “but you need to tell me about Craig, babe.”

He knew he did. It fucking sucked and the fatigue slid right back because he knew he had to tell her and he might as well get it over with.

“How much do you know?” he asked.

“I know Morrie got to you and it got physical but everything was all right. That’s all I know.”

Colt nodded and put his hands to her hips then slid them back and over her ass and liking them there, he left them where they were.

“Craig works for his Dad’s farm supply shop, out on 36,” Colt told her, she nodded and he continued. “I was so out of it when I got there, didn’t note it until later, but the minute he saw me come in, it was like he knew.”