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.”

He watched her lips part slowly, like the skin didn’t want to separate, before she said, “Really? How weird.”

“Not weird when you know what I know.”

“What do you know?”

He ran his hands down her ass then up her back and around her ribs, the sides of his thumbs brushing the undersides of her breasts. Colt just wanted to touch her, remind himself she was real, this Feb sitting astride him, gazing at him, her face gentle, her hands warm. But his cock jerked when her lips parted again, this time in a different way, just as her eyes grew soft. She liked his touch a lot and she didn’t guard against showing it. Colt liked both knowing she liked it and that she wasn’t afraid of showing it.

He moved his hands down to the tops of her thighs. He wanted to fuck her but he wanted to fuck her when he knew Jackie was asleep, Jack was still at the bar, he had this shit out and he never had to speak of it again. She looked at him like that again he’d fuck her on the couch.

Therefore, his hands stopped moving and he kept talking. “I got there, he took one look at me, put his hands up and said immediately ‘I’ll tell you everything, Colt,’ I didn’t hear him, wanted to beat the shit out of him, that’s all that was on my mind. He backed up, tryin’ to calm me down, his Dad got between us, another farmer, that’s when Morrie got in, got me out, we were into it in the parking lot when Sully got there.”

One of her hands moved from his neck to his jaw then it lifted and she smoothed one of his eyebrows. Then both of her hands dropped to his chest.

Through this she didn’t say a word. She wanted it to help, he knew and it did, just not much.

When her hands settled, Colt kept talking. “Sully had called Chris and Chris got there fast. By this time I was calm enough to share what we’d figured out and Sully talked me into going with Chris to Frank’s for coffee. I went and Morrie and Sully went in to talk to Craig. They came to Frank’s after, relieved Chris and told me what they learned.”

“What’d they learn?”

Colt shook his head. He still couldn’t believe it even hearing it and repeating it, he couldn’t believe it.

“Craig couldn’t wait to talk,” he told Feb. “They barely got him in the office before he split wide open. Sully said Craig called it ‘livin’ under a thundercloud’.”

Her head tilted and she muttered, “I don’t get it.”

“He isn’t surprised about Denny, not in the slightest, Feb,” he informed her and he watched understanding dawn as he continued. “Says he was gonna come into the Station that day anyway, he’d heard about Denny, Marie, Amy, all the shit’s been goin’ down. He knew it’d come out and he didn’t want that shit to stick to him.”