“You done?” Colt asked.
“I’m done.”
“I’ll call you if there’s something to report. Later.”
“Later.”
He flipped his phone shut and threw it on the coffee table. His eyes went to Feb and she was still leaning against the wall, holding her body like she was bracing.
“You still drink rum?” he asked her.
“Just tell me,” she replied.
He threw back the blanket and got up, walking to the kitchen. He flipped on the lights and went to the cupboard where he kept his spirits. Dee drank rum like Feb, he knew he had a bottle and he was right. He pulled it down along with the Jack and grabbed some glasses.
“Colt, seriously,” she said to his back.
“What do you cut it with?” he asked.
He heard her sigh then she said, “I’ll get it.”
He twisted to her. “You mix enough drinks. What do you cut it with?”
She stopped moving toward the fridge, stood still for a moment then headed to the opposite counter. He watched her lean against it but drop her cat.
“Diet,” she finally answered.
He opened his fridge and couldn’t stop himself from saying, “Holy fuck.”
The fridge was brimming with food and beverage. It’d never been that full, not even when Melanie lived there and Melanie loved to cook.
“What?” Feb asked.
“Jackie’s been here,” Colt answered, grabbing a couple of cans of pop, diet for her then he put his back, thinking he’d prefer his bourbon cut only with ice.
He mixed her drink, poured his, dumped ice in, handed hers to her and stood close. She had her back to the counter; Colt had his side to it. She had her waist against it and he rested his hip beside her.
He watched her take a drink, her eyes on the floor.
“Don’t know if I can soften this, February,” he told her the God’s honest truth.
“Don’t try,” she told the floor.
“He did someone you know, in Colorado, guy named Butch Miller.”
Her head twisted around so fast the drink in her hand shook and the ice clinked against the sides.
“Colorado?” she asked quietly.
Colt nodded.
“Butch?” She was still being quiet.
Colt nodded again.
She took another drink, this time definitely a drink not a sip, and her eyes returned to the floor.
“This guy do you wrong?”
She licked her lips, kept studying the floor and nodded her head.
“What’d he do?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“It does, Feb.”
She twisted only her neck to look at him. She was losing it; he could see it plain on her face. “Yeah? Why?”
“It was private, between you two, we need to know. It was public, that’s something else.”
She held his eyes for awhile before she looked away and muttered, “Fuck, that makes sense.”
“What’d he do?”
She moved her neck in a circle then lifted a hand to pull the hair away from her face, holding it back behind her head then, fast and low, she said, “He owned the bar I worked at. We hooked up. It was good for awhile then it turned bad. I took off after it did.”
“How’d it turn bad?”
“He cheated on me.”
“Were you exclusive?”
She dropped her hand but didn’t lift her eyes. “I thought we were but apparently he didn’t agree.”
“Anyone know about this?”
“Me, Butch, the woman he was screwing.”
“Anyone else?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
She looked at him then. “No, I’m not sure. Butch may have bragged about his escapades, she might have too. I didn’t know who she was and didn’t hang around long enough to chat. Just packed my shit and got out. What I saw, she looked like a snow bunny, probably a tourist or a city girl up the mountain with her lift ticket clipped to her parka. I was workin’ the bar, came home because I felt like crap and caught them in the act.”
Jesus, and he thought his scene with Susie that day was bad. No comparison.
“You lived with him?”
Her eyes slid away but he caught the pain that sliced through her face. It wasn’t raw but it wasn’t easy to see either. “Just moved in the week before.”
“Fuck, Feb.”
She took a sip from her drink and said to the floor, “He was a handsome guy who owned a bar in a cool town. He knew how to have fun and liked to do it, obviously with anyone who struck his fancy.” She shook her head. “Even though it felt shit he cheated on me…” she paused, took another drink, shook her head again then whispered, “Butch.”
Colt lifted his hand to the back of her neck and pulled her to him. She didn’t resist, just fell to the side, her shoulder hitting his chest and sliding along it until it was tucked under his pit and her temple hit his collarbone.