For You (The 'Burg #1)(20)

“I don’t know, all right?” I was sounding impatient. “Does it matter?”

“How long’s this been going on?”

Apparently, it mattered to Alec.

“Long enough I’m used to it.”

“It’s not good.”

“It isn’t now. Now I need to close off my mind, for awhile, just for awhile.”

He watched me in a way that it felt like he was examining me. Whatever he saw, I could tell it troubled him at the same time it angered him.

Then he reached inside his blazer and brought out my phone. He handed it to me and I took it and then his hand went right to his back jeans pocket and he pulled out his own. When he flipped it open to look at it, his eyes grew hard at whatever he saw then he hit some buttons and put it to his ear.

I looked at him but he kept his gaze steady on the bathroom floor.

Finally he said, “Leslie? It’s Colt. I need to pull a favor with Doc. He’s gotta make time for Feb Owens. She’s having trouble sleeping.” He looked at me. “Yeah? Four? Good. Feb’ll be there. Thanks.” He flipped his phone shut. “You got an appointment with Doc at four.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. I’m not through with you.”

My mouth filled with saliva and I swallowed it down. His face was back to hard, the way it got when I called him Alec and I knew he was displeased.

He didn’t make me wait to find out why.

“You’re not gonna let me in, you’ve made that abundantly clear, but you gotta let someone in. You can’t go on like this, it’ll eat you alive. You’re makin’ your family watch, your friends, and it isn’t right. It isn’t you.”

“Alec –”

“Shut your mouth.”

I shut my mouth mainly because his tone was mean and he was scaring me, I felt the electricity of fear from head to toe. I’d never seen him act this way, not to me.

He’d been angry at me once, really angry, when I broke up with him. But even then he wasn’t like he was now.

“Christ, Feb, talk to Doc, get some f**kin’ help. You can’t deal with this shit, with Angie, with –”

He stopped talking before he said Pete’s name probably because I took an automatic step back. His gaze dropped to my feet and I saw his jaws flex, he was clenching his teeth.

Then he started talking again. “You can’t deal with all this when you aren’t dealing with whatever’s been botherin’ you since way before this shit started.” I opened my mouth to talk but he leaned in and finished. “And no, don’t try to kid me and for f**k’s sake, don’t kid yourself. It isn’t about that ass**le you married and what he did to you. Whatever’s been botherin’ you started way before that and we both know it, especially f**kin’ me.”

I felt winded at his words, the honesty at the same time him still sticking to his f**king lie. He’d never admitted it, he’d never copped to it, he’d acted like it was all me, like he’d done nothing wrong, he made me out to be the bad guy. I never accused him of it but he knew what he did and he never gave the barest hint of guilt or remorse. Now, even after all these years when I should have been over it, way over it, his words hit me on the fly and knocked the breath right out of me.

I still got out a whispered, “Alec –”

But I said no more, not that I had more to say, because he interrupted me.

“And for the last f**kin’ time, stop calling me Alec.” He got close, too close, and his head tipped down so he could stare at me. “You said you called me Alec because that’s who I was to you. I’m not that anymore, whoever that was, I haven’t been in a long time, so f**kin’ stop calling me Alec.”

He didn’t give me the chance to reply. He turned and walked away. I stood in the bathroom, in my tank top and jeans, holding my cell phone in my hand, staring at the door, feeling suddenly bone cold and thinking maybe he was right.

It was time to talk to Doc about what was bothering me.

And it was time to quit calling him Alec because, just then, what was left of my Alec was lost to me.

I’d been hanging onto it for a long time, with my jaw tilts, me calling him Alec.

But I knew it at that moment, I couldn’t hang on anymore.

He hadn’t been Alec in a long time and I had to let him go.

* * * * *

Colt walked into J&J’s late and saw Joe-Bob sitting at his stool, a couple bikers in the back. Colt had never seen them before, they were probably drifting through. The bikers were pulling on beers, playing pool. Angie’s usual table was vacant which it would be this time of night if she got lucky, now seeing it empty made his fists clench.

Jack and Morrie were behind the bar. They were both looking at him after he completed his scan. They were also both moving down to the end of the bar where Colt always sat, around the curve so his back was to the door to the office, his vantage giving him a full view of the bar.

Colt slid onto a stool and Morrie asked, “Off duty?”

“Yeah.”

Morrie twisted, bent then pulled three beer bottles out of a glass-fronted fridge. Jack moved to the shelves, grabbing the bourbon and three glasses. Colt found his mind wandering to what he’d learned yesterday, the insignificant but unknown fact that Feb did yoga. That piece of information had slid into his brain half a dozen times in the last two days, pissing him off because he didn’t know that about her. And it bothered him he didn’t know. What bothered him more was that it bothered him at all.