For You(138)

“She gonna be awhile?”

“Probably.”

“Want coffee?”

She looked at him, tipping her head back, her eyes hitting his before she clipped, “No.”

“Get up, Cheryl. There’s a place a coupla blocks away from here. I’ll buy you a coffee and you’ll want a brownie from there. At least a cookie. You can call your Mom and tell her to pick you up there.”

“So, what? You’re Mr. Nice Guy?” she snapped.

Colt shook his head and said, “Same guy done us both wrong. I thought least we could do since we share something like that, somethin’ neither of us wanted to share and it was neither of our choice, we could share a great coffee and a fuckin’ good brownie. That would be our choice and, trust me, it’s worth the walk.”

He saw her jaw work as she clenched her teeth through making a decision.

“Better’n sittin’ around here,” she finally mumbled as she stood, hitching the purse on her shoulder.

“Place’s called Mimi’s Coffee House,” Colt said as he passed a Sully who had his brows raised and his eyes on Colt. “Call your Mom. Just a couple blocks up from the Station.”

Colt walked by her side as they made their way out of the Station and down the sidewalk. She called her mother as they went and he listened as she drew out the conversation with her Mom in order not to have to speak to him. She flipped the phone shut just as they hit the counter where a wide-eyed Mimi stood. Colt had already shaken his head to Meems in order to shut her up. He needed her ribbing him about February right then like he needed a hole in the head.

“Caramel latte, a large one, and one of those turtle brownies,” Cheryl ordered.

Mimi nodded and smiled then she looked at Colt. “Regular for you, Colt?”

“Right, Meems.”

“Take a load off, I’ll bring ‘em out,” Mimi told them.

Colt led Cheryl to a table at the window not wanting her near Feb’s place or the scratches that declared it so. Cheryl had enough to deal with, she didn’t need to see that Feb belonged in a warm, welcoming coffee house with a proprietress who smiled and made orgasmic fucking brownies though he suspected she already knew if she watched any of the tapes. But she didn’t need to know the fact that Feb belonged in a place like this so much, her name was etched into the furniture.

Cheryl sat with a view to the street. Colt sat with a view to the door.

They were silent until after Mimi left their order on the table and walked away.

“I know you think I’m a moron,” Cheryl told Colt, her mouth hard, her eyes though, now on him, held hurt.

“Trusting someone nice to you doesn’t make you a moron. It makes the person who fucked you over an asshole,” Colt replied.

She jerked her eyes from him and looked out the window.

“Feds talk to you about protection?” Colt asked and Cheryl didn’t acknowledge his question so he went on. “Denny’s behaving erratically, Cheryl, be good for you to take your son and disappear for awhile.”

“Got a friend in Ohio, he doesn’t know about her,” she muttered, eyes at the window, “already called her.”

“Good,” Colt said and leaned forward, took out his wallet, pulled out a card and slid it across the table to her before he put his wallet back and leaned back in his chair. Cheryl eyed his card but didn’t touch it.

“You take that card, Cheryl,” he said quietly and her eyes came to his but her body didn’t turn to him. “You find another man, you call me. I’ll run a check on him, see he’s clean.”

She rolled her eyes, not like Feb, not with humor at the foibles of the world, but with disgust, before she shook her head twice and said, “Right.”

“Cheryl –”

She turned bodily to him and wrapped her arms around her chest, grabbing her biceps, protective again but her voice was fuelled with acid. “I know what he did. Denny,” she spat out the name, “killed folks. You think I’m gonna find another man? You’re fuckin’ crazy.”

“I know it won’t seem like it now but you’ll find a time when you change your mind.”

“Bullshit,” she hissed, voice quiet but both furious and terrified, leaning toward him. “He’s been around my kid! I been fuckin’ a murderer!”

Colt leaned forward too and said, just as quiet but with no fury or terror, just force, “No, you thought you were fuckin’ me.”

“Makes it better?” she asked, brows going up, disbelief filling her face. She thought he was nuts.

“Yeah. It does.”

“You that good?” Now she was sarcastic.