14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

I 'm a simple man. I put in my time at work, but not overly so. I love my friends and family. I thoroughly enjoy the company of a woman who is enjoying said company with me. I relish in the beautiful, comfortable laziness that life can provide. The latter two were currently leaving me in a happy, drunken buzz, though I hadn't drunk a drop of alcohol.

I had yearned to naturally wake, and I did—to a blissfully cold room, lying flat on my back with the heat of Cassie on my front. Her head on my chest, her arm around my waist and leg hitched up to wrap around my nearest thigh, I was holding her while she continued to snooze away. I had no recollection of my dreams, nor did I have any intention of mentioning the drama of everything involving Colton—whether it be 2D, the laptop, or the missing women of Salem. There was no need to speak of it now. With no lives on the line and no urgent notifications on either of our cell phones that I had glanced at upon first awakening, I had deduced that I was going to revel in the now.

In our purgatory.

Cassie would eventually stir, and we would rise from her bed with slow, blissful movements on this quiet Saturday as if it were a Christmas morning. We would go to greet Skylar, who, of course, was still on the couch. We would speak of breakfast. My bare feet would be cold on the tile as I walked back and forth throughout the kitchen to make them both pancakes. It would be simple. It would be happy… and for the briefest of moments, I sincerely thought that was a possibility.

I actually had a shred of fucking hope.

I was holding onto that shred until my phone began to vibrate on Cassie's bedside table, and I removed my hand from her naked waist to blindly reach for my cell. In one glimpse, I saw that it was Luke, and my hope dissipated into the air like smoke, leaving no trace of its previous existence whatsoever.

Trading the grip on my phone from left to right, I begrudgingly began to unravel myself from Cassie. She whined sleepily as I moved, rolled herself over, and stretched as if she were anticipating me to wrap my arms around her from behind. Her hair cascading over her bare back before me made me let out a quiet sigh, and if it weren't for the apprehension that I held over awaiting a call from anyone in our collective found family, I would have just silenced my cell.

I almost did, ever-present nerves aside, because the sight of her was calling to me like a damned siren…but because that would have been foolish, downright dumb, and, above all, selfish, I didn't.

Crawling over her and out of bed before the call could cease its ringing, the moment that my feet touched the floor, I slid my thumb across the screen to answer it. Before I could so much as speak my hello or walk to the bathroom as I had intended, Cassie called to me in a half-asleep, near-slurred:

"Come back to bed, baby."

What was most definitely Claire's voice shrieked through my cell that I still held in my palm, and I rapidly deduced that it was not just my brother who had rang.

Cassie's repeated use of the endearment—when we weren't even in the throes of passion, no less—was far, far more than welcome. In fact, if I hadn't made it abundantly clear already, I fucking loved it. Now, however, with the other end of the call clearly being on speakerphone, was not the time for her to be using it. The only thing I could be thankful for was that she sounded far from her own usual tone. Though it still maintained the typical deep huskiness that I enjoyed, it held a significant rasp. It was sleep-filled. Content. And, unfortunately for me, because I felt as though I was about to suffer from a stroke , well-fucked. She sounded well-fucked.

I glanced at Cassie, who seemed to be obliviously blinking the sleep from her eyes, and I looked from my phone and back to her with an alarmed expression that I hoped conveyed, ‘Please, dear God, stop talking.'

Claire's shrill, "AH— fuck, TMI!" was so loud that it was able to be heard by both of us, and Cassie appeared to fully wake—thoroughly and abruptly—as she sat at attention and smacked a hand over her mouth.

I pointed to the bathroom, signaling to her that I was going there to take the call, and she let her hand fall as she silently mouthed a frantic, ‘What's going on?'

As rapidly as I could manage, I lifted my phone to my ear and rattled off, "Is anyone dead, dying, or in danger?"

Luke called back, "No!"

My usual anxiety—the one that had nothing to do with my and Cassie's romantic involvement—eased, and I sighed before crooning, "In that case— one moment, please." I pulled it away from my ear to purposefully hit the mute button, and spoke to Cassie in a surprisingly reassuring tone, "I muted myself; sounds like they're fine."

"Who's they? "

"Luke and Claire."

"Okay," she exhaled. "Okay…think, ah…do you think they knew that was me?"

I shrugged. "They heard a woman… not necessarily you." I listened to my phone once more, hearing glass sliding across granite and the murmurings of Luke offering Claire a towel to clean up spilled coffee. I concluded, "There'd be a touch more screaming if they knew, I think."

Cassie grumbled, "Probably…just—just don't say anything, okay?" She anxiously added, "I'm not trying to sweep us under the rug. I—I'm not, really."

I hadn't thought that in the least, but the reminder that her opinion had thoroughly changed on burying any of our feelings still made me feel shockingly light.

"This is far from a rug-sweep, Cas," I replied gently. "You think I want to up and announce that I was in your bed when we haven't even had a chance to talk about us? Of course not."

Her shoulders sagged in a quiet relief. "Talk about us later?"

"Talk about us soon," I corrected.

Cassie gave me a small smile, and it appeared as though she were about to speak once more, but a loud buzz sounded from the side table. Her focus was pulled to her cell, her grin waned, and she told me :

"It's Liam."

"His timing is impeccable," I said in an exhale. I gestured once again to the bathroom. "I'll take the bathroom; you stay out here?"

She nodded in agreement, picked up her phone, and answered it, "Hey, what's up?"

Walking the few steps to the bathroom, I rolled the door closed, strained my ears for a beat to ensure that Cassie's voice was relatively inaudible, and finally re-tapped the button to unmute the call.

As casually as I could, I said, "Good morning, brother."

"Hey," he spoke slowly, "bad time?"

"There have been better times for you to have me on speakerphone," I remarked. "Hi, Claire."

"Ah—hi, Jay." Her voice came out in a squeak.

I chuckled, "What's going on, guys?" My mild amusement at their timid responses immediately fell away when I heard Luke audibly take in a loud breath, and let it out in a ragged sigh. I pressed, "Guys?"

"It's Colton."

What felt like an electric shock ran through my body as my brother spoke his name in disdain. My body froze, and I questioned, "What about him?"

He replied bitterly, "He called Claire from an unknown number. He'll be at Henry's in an hour. "

"I thought you said that no one was dead, dying, or in danger?" I retorted in a snap. "You let me put you on mute?"

"No one is dead, dying, or in danger," Claire argued.

"Oh, by all means, take my question literally!" I mocked, my voice coming out in a hiss in an attempt to keep the volume at a minimum. "Ya probably should have led this call with: Colton's reappearing in broad fucking daylight to a public establishment! You made it sound like everything is fine!"

"This is to plan," Claire reminded me. "Everything is fine. Broad fucking daylight shouldn't matter to someone who is keeping up the appearance of having nothing to hide, and that public establishment doesn't open for another two hours." She added with gumption, "Luke and I are scheduled to open today, Garrett's not even on the work calendar until tomorrow, and Henry's out of town. Colt said he has the laptop. This is a best. Case. Scenario, Jay." Claire stressed, "No one is dead, dying, or in danger."

The details of the situation sank in, albeit slowly, due to my disbelief and subsequent hesitant relief, and I quietly responded, "Oh…I… okay. Where—wait—how'd he get out of 2D?"

"He hung up pretty damn quick; he didn't say."

Luke noted, "Not out the front door, obviously. Liam's been watching his camera. He said he didn't see him on any of the footage."

"Right, the camera," I muttered, considering for the briefest moment that Liam—and Zoey, Claire, and Luke, if they had discussed it—had known that I had been home very little as of late.

It didn't matter. Not now, anyway.

After a short pause, Claire spoke, "Colt's going to want to pick your brain about whatever he's involved in."

"Yeah, yeah," I sighed. "I'll be there soon. I don't really know that much, but my, ah—my friend might. I can give him her number; don't worry, it'll be a later thing."

It was the only workaround I could think of to keep Cassie's means of work in the dark. Thankfully, both of them murmured their agreements and had no further inquiry. However, I could only assume that they had realized that I was in bed with my friend who works at Gas Lamp. The dots there could only be so hard to connect, after all, and they left me feeling rather torn. The relieved half of me knew that, despite the severity of our current situation, the rumor would spread. Naturally, the entire group would be on my side for arranging to speak with Colton at a later time because bringing another person into the mix with the situation with 2D would be alarmingly dumb. Our two problems—if we were to deem them as something as trivial as that—would remain separate, and Cassie and I could speak with Colton as we saw fit.

It was good. It was a good thing. Really.

But the other half of me—the romantic that was still reeling over the second night that we had spent together—was both disappointed and guilt-ridden. The nature of the way I had fallen right into her was just as I had anticipated it could be— hard and fast— and the intensity of my feelings for her was only snowballing with every kiss. Every sigh of her against me. Every look into her warm, brown eyes. Truthfully, if the timing were right and our lives less chaotic, I would have already been contemplating if we should announce our seeing each other to the group and, more importantly, her brother because I wanted her. I wanted her hand in mine at Henry's, my fingers toying with hers atop the bar. Double dates with Luke and Claire. Jesus—dinner with Liam and Zoey, even, once the dust settled from the dropped bomb that is our relationship.

There was no uncertainty about it.

I wanted her publicly.

And I knew without a doubt that, for several reasons, that couldn't happen right now. Shouldn't happen right now. My brow furrowed in dismay at the notion as I stared at my phone in my palm after Luke and Claire's quick goodbye, and I moved to roll the door back into the wall. Cassie was already up and dressed, having thrown on her same clothes as the night before.

Her eyes whipped to me, and she murmured, "Good morning."

Her hair was not the usual straight, shiny drape that fell over her shoulders, wavy with a halo of frizz. The right side of her face was pinker than the left due to having rested on my chest, and the area underneath her warm, brown eyes was puffy. Though she was reflecting my own anxious anticipation, she still offered me a slight smile with a drowsy, trusting gaze.

Goddamn, she was a sight to behold.

"Good morning," I returned quietly, placing a hand on my hip as I asked, "You got somewhere to be?"

"Yeah…I have a feeling we both just got invited to the same party."

A corner of my lip pulled up, but only just. "That we did."

My clothing was on the floor before me, still in a heap from when I had stripped to join her in the shower. I stepped into my jeans, and just as I was pulling them over my hips, she noted:

"So…Colton's back. "

"He is."

"With the laptop."

I hummed in agreement and snatched my shirt from the floor. "And he'll want to talk to me—and by me, I mean you," I pulled my head through the neck hole, put my arms through the sleeves, and smoothed the fabric over my abdomen, "about the MIA girls at Gas Lamp."

"Is this when we debrief about my work so you can do the talking for me?" Cassie pursed her lips, and then muttered, "Sorry you're a middle-man."

"Ah-ah." I waggled an index finger in the air. "None of that. I'm in the middle of it regardless because I want to be, right?"

Cassie exhaled, "Right."

"Anyway, we, ah…" I hesitated. "Don't need to debrief."

She squinted. "Why not?"

I spoke with an upward inflection, "Because I told Luke and Claire that I was going to let Colt meet up with my, erm, friend himself?"

"Oh." Her pretty face turned to an expression of relief, but it only lasted for so long. Her freckles warped as her nose scrunched up in distaste, and she repeated, "Oh."

"Yeah…"

Cassie rapidly and monotonously deduced, "They think you're fucking a stripper. Great. "

"I am fucking a stripper," I returned. "Though I don't care for that phrasing—"

"Jay!" Cassie threw her head back as she whined, "They're gonna know!"

"About your job or about me?" I asked with a single high brow.

She huffed out a breath, looking at me pointedly. "Job. Probably have to keep us under wraps, right? The timing is…" With a soft roll of her eyes, she bitterly chuckled, and I understood her sentiment without her having to explain further. I nodded in agreement, knowing just as well as she did that there was simply too much going on to even consider saying or hinting at anything about us. "Forget the bad timing of it all; they may think that you have a stripper girlfriend. And it's not me."

My mind stuck on a single word, everything else fell to the wayside, and I felt my head tilt as I questioned, "Girlfriend?"

Any frustration she had seemed to melt away, and she smirked at me as she bit her lower lip.

"Well, unless you're a very good actor or I'm bad at reading the room…" Cassie whispered dramatically, "And I'm not bad at reading the room." Stepping toward me, she reached forward to grasp at my shirt, pulling me into her as she looked to me and wrapped her arms around my waist. " I had assumed that this was not a no-strings, casual fling. Y'know—off of context clues."

I found myself smiling as I draped an arm over her shoulders.

"I'm not usually a no-strings man, Darlin'." I attempted to smooth the frazzled pieces of her hair, tucking the strands behind her ear. "You make me feel especially…stringy."

Lowering my head, I had said the last word against her lips.

She said a wispy, "Stringy, huh?"

I nodded. "Very stringy."

"Good," Cassie replied quietly. "Me too."

We were attached at the mouth, then, and it could have been argued that it was either of our doings. The gentle, soft movements, along with the tightening in my chest at our verbal acknowledgments, had me immediately yearning to walk her back to bed. To strip our clothes, bury ourselves under the covers, bury myself in her, and murmur in her ear that she was mine as our bodies worked us up to ecstasy.

There was no time for that, though, and we both seemed to come to that realization with a disappointed exhale as our lips parted.

"Meet you at Henry's?" I breathed .

"I'll be right behind you," she murmured. "Have to drive Sky home; she said her apartment maintenance would be by at some time today."

"Mmm, right," I replied. "I had told her I'd cook you both pancakes. I'll have to apologize."

Cassie chuckled. "Another time, baby."

I flexed my fingers that had wound their way around the back of her neck, kissed her deeply, and allowed ourselves a last, brief moment before we willingly left our purgatory.

Colton was late.

As Claire had reminded all of us, he hadn't set an exact time to arrive—a simple, ‘I'll be there in an hour,' was all that she said was given—but as it was approaching fifteen minutes over that allotted hour, late was the descriptor that we were all using. Despite Claire's insistence that his inevitable return was good news, the passage of time made us all restless, and the anticipation for Colton to arrive was palpable amongst us.

Zoey was far from her usual boisterous self, staring at the wood grain of our table and seemingly stewing in her own emotional hell. Liam was beside her, taking turns between carefully examining her expression for traces of distress and snapping his dark eyes to the entrance.

Cassie had sat next to me, as per usual. Upon the mention of the word late, she began to occasionally check the time on her phone, glance to her brother, and then fidget with her fingers in her lap under the table. On the third iteration of this, I blindly reached for her hands with mine, finding her scratching at the edges of her cuticles, and her motions stilled when I squeezed her right palm. I avoided looking at her, and she did the same, but the interlacing of her fingers through mine and quick exhalation through her nostrils showed me her silent thanks. My heart skipped as her grip remained strong, and both of our pulses secretly thrummed in time beneath the wood.

Claire seemed to be the least concerned of us all—an elbow on the table, she was simply resting her head on her hand as she watched Luke with an expression of sympathy. My brother was the only one not sitting in his usual spot, his feet tapping along the hardwood of Henry's as he walked in front of our table and back.

"This is a set-up," Luke murmured. "This has got to be a set-up."

Claire sighed loudly. "It's not a set-up."

He stopped in his pacing for a moment to look at her pointedly. "All of us gathered in one place? Waiting for him to show up with potentially incriminating shit on us? He's gonna bust in with the cops and get us all fucking arrested."

She sagged further into her seat, head thrown back as she let out a none-too-patient groan. "Colt hates cops, and he has no reason to blindly fuck us over. I know you're anxious, baby, but you need to try to take a breath—"

The front door swung open so quickly that the bell chime had a near-angry appeal.

All of our heads whipped to the entrance, Luke's pacing halted directly in front of our table, and he exclaimed:

"Where the fuck have you been?!"

Colton stood stock-still in front of the door as it clunked shut, holding what appeared to be the infamous laptop under an arm by his side. He squinted in Luke's direction, cocking his head to the side so far that his inky hair left the right side of his face and hung from the roots.

"What ever happened to hello?" Colton retorted snippily. "How are you?" He turned an about face, gave the door a quick once over, and flicked the deadbolt shut. As he faced us once more, he griped, "Thanks so much for risking your livelihood for us, Colt—it means a lot." Colton stomped his way toward the bar, past Luke, who was now appraising him with crossed arms, and began to wave his free hand about as he complained, "No, don't bother with any of that! My shoulder did get fucked when I rammed the closet door, by the way." He gently set the laptop down on the bartop and rotated his right arm in a circular motion as if to test his shoulder's mobility, grumbling, "Stupid, goddamn keypad lock."

Colton took his seat with a shocking amount of grace, inhaling a long, seemingly cleansing breath and letting it out with an audible exasperation. Claire was the one to respond:

"How'd ya get out of 2D, Colt?"

She spoke with a lackluster sigh, and it wasn't until that very moment that I realized that Claire wasn't concerned . Yes, her eyes had bounced around the entire group, lingering on Zoey and, most often, Luke, care and worry held within her gaze…but she wasn't concerned about Colton in the least. It was as if she knew, without a doubt, that he would return. That he had the ability to avoid the police and snake his way back, and the only caveat to that was time.

It was a blunt reminder of her past, and I wondered how often she had been placed in a similar position to lead to this level of trust in him to skirt the law.

He glanced at her, and his frustration eased, if only slightly .

Colton shrugged with his unwounded shoulder. "Fire escape through the window outside of the kitchen. Just glad I found it quick enough."

I nodded, and so did Claire and Zoey, for the Milkovich's apartment was a reverse layout of 2A—their old apartment and my current abode—and we were more than familiar with it. We all knew that the building was dated, and the old metal fire escapes attached to the outside brick were still the only means of fleeing from a blaze within. The ladders were rusted—janky—and I could almost picture Colton hanging from the bottom step, dangling before he dropped to the snowy ground and sprinted off into the distance.

"Are we gonna talk about this shit?" Colton flicked a hand toward the computer.

I felt all of our bodies stiffen, and we looked at each other before Claire began to reply, "You agreed to not question—"

"Oh, we are so past that," he chuckled sardonically to the ceiling. "Jesus Christ, guys. You had no sense — no goddamn sense—no fucking clue to. Warn. Me?!"

Luke sharply began, "Hey, we didn't know about the alarm—"

"Oh no-no!" Colton exclaimed, waggling an index finger in the air. "That was an assumed risk—a shitty one, but still assumed. I didn't give a second thought to you knowing about the alarm, and I still don't think you did because I'm pretty damn good at sniffing out lies. But the room?" He paused. "The. Fucking. Room?"

We all fell silent for a beat, and I glanced to Zoey to find that the color had drained from her face. Liam placed a hand between her shoulder blades, tearing his eyes off of her to glare at Colton as if he had no right to mention it.

With a clenched jaw, he nearly spoke through his teeth, "Why does that even matter?"

Colton blinked several times over. "Why—why does that matter? Ya didn't think to mention the empty torture chamber? It's the one thing that y'all seemed to know about in the whole damn place."

Zoey's elbows hit the table, and she groaned as she held her head in her hands.

Liam snapped, "Watch it," with such bite in his direction that Colton's head flinched backward.

Claire consolingly murmured across the table, "Zoey?"

"I'm fine, Claire," Zoey returned with significant grit in her voice.

While Cassie and Luke simply held their tongues, bleak expressions all around, I watched Colton. Head tilted to the side, his expression was slowly turning. His irritation—or, perhaps, anger—at our unforthcoming dispositions melted away as he first took in Claire's concern for her friend. What seemed to be morbid curiosity came next, but I couldn't have been certain of that, for it was remarkably fleeting. The final emotion that lingered was a dawning realization that seemed to punch him in the gut, and his face blanched.

"Fuck," Colton whispered, his attention on Zoey as he softly spoke, "I thought that maybe you had, I dunno, beef with a neighbor or something… then, I saw the room…I—I figured you were just putting your nose somewhere it didn't belong or something. I—"

"We aren't telling you what happened," Liam snapped.

"I connected the dots. You don't need to tell me what happened," he murmured, shaking his head as if he were sad to say it. "Listen…I told you that there are women going missing."

"Yeah," I took my turn to speak because I assumed his words meant a swift change in direction to the current threat at hand. A somber shift with an unnecessary reminder that he desired information from me. "Prostitutes, exotic dancers—"

Cassie squeezed my hand, and Colton interjected:

"Right— usually— but not everything in life is one hundred percent," he replied quickly. "My point is that I told you guys all of that. That women are being taken—going missing—in and around this town. I told you that…and you had no thought to mention that Zoey could be one of them and that our shit could be related?"

A hollow pang hit my gut.

Cassie's nails bit into my palm.

Luke's arms hung limply by his side as the gears visibly cranked in his mind.

Claire pushed herself to sit up straight.

Liam simply squinted as if he weren't sure of the insinuation of Colton's words.

Zoey's head whipped to Colt's, her hands still upright as if she weren't sure of where to place them.

Everything had occurred simultaneously, and we all stared at Colton with wide, dumbstruck eyes because, for whatever reason, none of us had considered that the hell we had endured could be entwined with his. I closed my eyes as my head swam with the notion, and I forced myself to focus on the aggressive thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump of Cassie's pulse beating with mine against our palms as I waited for the inevitable chaos to unfold.