“Just take a minute and think,” he urged, setting his anger aside.

She closed her eyes, tilting her chin away, pressing more of her weight into her hand at his chest, still not cognizant she was touching him there and he was touching her back or he knew she’d move away. Distance for Feb, since it all went down, was important. Not just with him, with everyone, but he’d noted, and it never failed to piss him off, especially with him.

She opened her eyes. “Mrs. Hobbs’s class. Geometry. Second period.” She shook her head but said, “We had that class together. She passed the note to me then. I think I threw it away.”

It hit him and Colt remembered.

“You fought in the hall,” he said.

Her eyes widened and she nodded. “Pushing match. Angie started it. Mrs. Hobbs broke it up. Shit,” her head jerked to the side, “I totally forgot.” She looked back at him. “Angie was crying and screaming but more crying. She was out of her mind. They sent her home.”

“You were crying.”

That’s what he remembered. He’d seen her eyes red from the tears when she was at her locker. He’d walked her to class. He’d been late to his own. At lunch he’d told Morrie but Morrie had already heard about the fight from someone else. After school they’d made her sit through football practice so they could drive her home. Colt even remembered putting her in his car. She’d been silent. She’d never said why they fought. Feb could be like that, hold things to herself forever, a personality trait she had that was a nightmare he’d lived for way too long. It was just Angie was there one day and the next she wasn’t. Feb had been devastated. Then Jessie’s folks moved to town and Feb and Jessie hooked up, hooking Mimi with them, and Angie was a memory as it was with teenage girls.

“I still don’t understand. Why’s that note back now?” she asked.

He was now going to have to ask her the impossible and tear her up doing it.

“Do you remember anyone from school, anyone from that time, anyone… a teacher, a kid, a janitor, a regular at the bar, anyone, who seemed partial to you?”

The lines came back at her brows. “Partial to me?”

“Interested.”

There it was. The impossible.

Everyone was interested in Feb, then and now. Everyone was interested in the family, Jack, Jackie, Morrie, Feb, their grandparents before they all passed. Susie Shepherd and her wealthy Daddy may have been King and Princess of Diamonds in that town but Jack and Jackie Owens, their son Morrison and daughter February were King, Queen, Prince and Princess of Hearts.

Who knew? Feb may have dozens of sick f**ks following her, taking pictures of her, stealing her notes, going through her trash, building shrines to her. Hell, Colt knew dozens who jacked off to her regularly.

His hand tightened on hers.

“Interested?” she asked.

“Unnaturally.”

“Alec, what are you saying?”

Colt skirted around the issue. “Someone who would take a note you threw away. Someone who would keep it for twenty-five years. Someone who’d mail it to your family’s bar. Feb, someone who was unnaturally interested in you.”

Her whole body jerked, even her hand then it twisted on his shirt.

“No,” she answered, sliding straight into the pit of denial.

“Think.”

“What’s this about?”

“Take time, Feb, think.”

“What’s this about, Alec?”

He pried her hand from his shirt but gave it alternate purchase, forcing his thumb into her palm and curling his fingers around her hand at the same time he flipped the note and showed her the back.

Her hand went to her mouth cupping it, what was left of the color in her face draining clean away. He watched her sway and he used his hand in hers to push her back and down, forcing her into the chair. He let her hand go and put his to her neck, shoving her head between her knees.

“Breathe deep.”

He listened to her suck in breath.

Colt crouched in front of her, keeping his hand at her neck.

After awhile, he asked, “You with me?”

She nodded and put pressure against his hand, lifting up just a little, her neck arching so she could look at him, her elbows going to her knees.

He kept his hand where it was.

“He killed her for me,” she said, her voice hollow.

Colt shook his head. “You didn’t ask him to kill her. He did it because he’s not right in the head.”

“We made up,” she whispered, “Angie and me. It wasn’t the same but we made up. We danced to Buster Poindexter’s, ‘Hot, Hot, Hot’ at prom. You were there. Angie and me started the conga line.”

He was there. He remembered that conga line. He remembered sitting in the back with Jason Templeton who was then a freshman at Notre Dame, both of them watching it and laughing their asses off. He remembered thinking he’d feel stupid, a sophomore at Purdue, coming home, taking his senior girlfriend to her prom. But he didn’t feel stupid. She’d had a blast; Feb always knew how to have a good time and Colt loved it when she did. He remembered the conga line flowing by their table and Feb had grinned at him at the same time she sang the words to the song at the top of her lungs. Then she twisted her neck and looked back at Angie who had her hands on Feb’s waist. They’d laughed in each other’s faces and then Feb, in the lead, always the one who started the party, wound the conga line away.

“I didn’t want her dead, even back then, when we were fighting –”

“I know that.”

She stared him in the eye for a brief moment before dropping her head. “I can’t believe this.”

“Feb, think,” Colt brought the matter back to hand, “anyone back then who took an interest in you, made you feel funny, anyone that’s still around now.”

She kept her head lowered and shook it, her long hair sliding across his hand, more of it falling forward around her face.

Christ, there was so much of it, he’d never seen so much hair, he’d never felt anything as soft.

He took his hand from her neck and she lifted her head. She looked at his fallen hand before her eyes found his. They were soft and lost for a moment, telling him only he could make her feel found and he almost touched her again, put his hand back where she needed it, before she straightened, ripping that look away from him.

He wanted it back, so much he felt that weight shift in his gut and the flash of anger at her for taking it away, keeping him out. Fuck, even now she wouldn’t let him in.