“Daddy,” Mary says, breaking my trance, showing me her coloring book. “Look!”
“And me!” Cole lifts his book, dropping a bunch of coloring pencils to the floor. “Look me first.”
Despite the gruesome message on my door, the worry and the splitting headache, I grin at them. “Awesome job, guys.”
They grin back at me.
“I love it,” Octavia whispers.
“What?” I turn back toward her.
“How you respond to them, so much more than before. You know… they love it, too.”
They do? I look properly at my kids and find twin gap-toothed smiles directed at me. Warmth rushes through my chest.
“Thank you, Tay.” The words spill out of me without thought. “This is all you.”
A slender arm slips around my hips and she leans against me briefly. Too briefly. “You’re welcome. But it’s mostly you.”
The kids fall asleep soon after, and I gather the coloring books and pencils from all over the covers, doing my best not to wake them up. As I turn off the lights, my phone buzzes, and I frown as reality slams back in.
It always does, dammit.
The cops are here to see the cat and knife, and yeah, it’s time I told Octavia about it.
She takes it more calmly than I expected, although her face drains of all color.
“Holy crap,” she whispers and insists on coming outside to see, although she gets even paler when she does.
It goes quickly. The two cops, not the same ones who came when Cole went missing, remove the cat from the door and bag it, as well as the knife.
“Does the cat mean anything to you?” one of them asks, a huge black guy who could easily deck me with a flick of his fingers. “Does it have any special meaning?”
“The kids love cats,” Octavia says, her voice shaky.
The guy shakes his head, because this means nothing.
Or does it?
Something is nagging at me, but for the life of me I can’t fucking figure it out.
The last message asked what’s most precious to me. And that’s my kids. And my kids love cats. Cole followed a kitten when he went missing.
Kids. Cats. Precious. Who you left behind.
What the hell could the point of all this be? Except give me an ulcer, that is. Why the riddles and the little scares?
Then I have to remind myself that a psycho doesn’t have to make sense. Because by now it’s pretty clear this isn’t a prank played by kids.
At least it’s clear to me, and I hope the cops see it that way, too.
I call the security company, and they tell me the issue seems to be at my end. Maybe damage to the camera? Or a technical problem.
Someone will come by tomorrow morning to check the cameras. No, they can’t come tonight. Busy, busy. Closing up now. See you tomorrow.
Christ.
Either I’m just that unlucky, or the psycho is cleverer than any of us give him credit for. And although I’m unlucky all right—losing your wife so young isn’t a good fucking sign of fate being on your side—something tells me it’s the latter.
The cops leave with their gruesome booty, and Octavia grabs her coat from the hanger, preparing to go, too.
And I don’t want her to.
I’m at her side, taking the coat from her hands before I even realize what I’m doing. “Tay…”
She lets me, her eyes uncertain. “What is it?”
What am I doing? I don’t need her to hold my fucking hand. I’m a big boy. “It’s just that…” I lick my suddenly dry lips. “You wanted me to talk. To you. More.”
Way to go, Matt. That was real eloquent.
But her eyes clear. “Yeah, that was one of my conditions. You’re already better with the kids, so I didn’t want to push you today.”
“You’re not pushing me.”
But maybe pushing is the only way to get me going, like a broken-down truck. I’ve been stuck in one place for far too fucking long. Stuck inside my mind.
Inside the past.
Push me, I want to say. Shove me headfirst into the present. Into the future.
But like always lately, the words get stuck in my throat. I pull back. Away. Sinking into my mind, my breathing doing that funny thing again, my lungs struggling to pump inside my chest.
I expect Octavia to lose patience, grab her coat from me and go.
But she doesn’t. She always keeps surprising me.
“What do you need?” she asks me, her voice low, her eyes seeing right through me. She lifts a hand to my face, stroking my cheekbone. “I’m here. Just tell me.”
She makes it sound so easy.
“You’re like Emma…I whisper, “And you’re not.”
How many times did I think that since I met her?
Countless. In my wake, in my sleep, in my dreams.
“How so?”
I hesitate. But if it means she doesn’t leave right away… “You’re older than your years.”
She makes a face, her eyes luminous, her mouth quirking. “Older?”
Fuck, she’s pretty. “Strong. Determined. But not broken.”
“Was she broken?”
No. Never.
“Tell me about her. Now is the time.”
I can’t. Fuck, I can’t even breathe. If she’d just stay a bit longer…
She lowers her hand, slips it into mine. “Are you okay?” She tugs me toward the sofa, pulls me down, and I sink into the cushions gratefully. “Talk to me?”
Yeah. A light push. “I’m so fucking sorry,” I manage. “For the other night. And everything. I keep fucking up.”
“Matt.”
“I lost Emma… and it’s too soon. I’m not there yet. Fuck, I’m barely human. You of all people know it. I’ve been selfish. Rough. Not careful enough. With you.”
And would you look at that? Until now I could barely string three words together, and now I can’t shut the fuck up.
“You were fine,” she says. “The other night, in the kitchen? I… I liked it.” Her cheeks turn red, splashes of color that make the blue in her eyes deepen.
And that admission right there, it eases the weight on my chest, letting me breathe again.
“Look,” she says. “I should have told you I’d never done it before. And I’m an adult. I consented. I wanted it. Just…”
“I fucked up. I hurt you.”
“You did. But I’ll live.” She quirks another tiny smile, and I put an arm around her, unable to stop myself. She gasps, then relaxes against me.
“I fucked up. I’ll keep fucking up. My mind… isn’t in the right place. Not yet.”
Maybe never. And she needs to know this, because I’m gonna kiss her. Not sure I can stop myself, not when she’s so close all I can smell is warm, sexy woman, her tits pressing into my side and my arm circling her delicate back.
“I understand,” she says softly. She’s leaning closer, her arm snaking around my back, the other up my chest. I’m so fucking hard, I think my pants will explode at the crotch. “I’m not a virgin anymore. And I just…”
My mouth is on hers before she finishes her thought.