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 f**king 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 f**king tired in his whole f**king 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.”