Chapter 21 - Lowyn

Collin comes down the stairs just as I'm pouring my coffee into a travel mug. "Mornin', peaches."

He's wearing flannel pants and no shirt, his hair all messy and tousled, and he's got a sexy shadow on his jaw. It still feels like a dream to me. Him being here. Living here. Us being back together. Acting so natural, like we were never apart and this is just how our life together shook out. "Would you like a cup of coffee, Collin?"

"Sure. Not gonna turn that down. You're off to work?"

"I have a meeting this morning with Sassy Lorraine."

"About the dognapping?"

"No." I laugh as I pour him a cup of coffee. "She's trying to revive her career and we're discussing a deal about how McBooms can help her do that, seeing as she's kinda vintage." I hand him his cup, trying my best not to get lost in those eyes of his. "What are you gonna do today?"

He looks around, frowning. "Where's Mercy?"

"Oh, I let her outside. I told her to stay in the yard, and I watched for a few minutes to see if she would do that, and she did. So then I told her to sleep on the porch."

He turns into the hallway to check on her, then comes back a moment later. "She's still there."

"Do you wanna come to work with me? It's gonna be real boring. But if you don't have anything to do, you're welcome to hang out."

"Amon and I are going into Revenant today. I think I'll stop by the compound too. Check on my house and see how it's coming."

I smile at him, but inside I'm a little bit panicky. I like him here. And if his house is done, he won't have a reason to stay.

"I'll come by in the afternoon, though. On my way back from Revenant." He walks over to me, slipping his hands around my waist, then leans in and kisses me on the neck. "Yesterday was fun."

"It was."

"But Jim Bob is up to something and I'm gonna need to figure out what it is."

"Sounds like a plan."

"All right." He pulls back a little. "I'll let you get to work. See ya later."

I grab my purse, kiss him on the cheek, and reluctantly leave.

I don't usually drive to work, I walk. It's only a couple blocks over. So five minutes later I'm there, greeting Rosie in all her classic Valerie Bertinelli circa 1976 glory. High-waisted bell bottoms, a tight cropped sweater in orange and yellow, and wooden clogs that make my feet hurt just looking at them.

"Wasn't yesterday the best?" Rosie says, beaming a smile at me.

"I have to admit, it was a pretty fun time. But…" I frown here.

"But what? What do you possibly have to complain about?"

"What Jim Bob is up to, for one. He just had a change of heart?"

"You know how he is," Rosie says. "When he thinks things are not going his way, he resorts to manipulation."

"Obviously, but what is he doing with Collin? Why even bother winding him up like that on Saturday if he knew damn well that it wouldn't even matter on Sunday?"

Rosie cocks her head at me. "Didn't it matter?"

I let out a frustrated breath. "Rosie. If you know something?—"

But that's as far as I get. Because the bell over the front door rings and both she and I turn our heads to look in that direction.

"Ladies." Jameson Grimm pretends to tip an imaginary hat.

I sigh again. He is the last person I want to see right now.

"Hi, Grimm." Rosie chirps out her greeting to Grimm in the same bubbly tone she uses on everyone. "You should've danced with us yesterday. You should've scooted in and been partners with Bryn. That would've been fun."

The funny thing is, Rosie really means this. She likes Grimm. Hell, I'm pretty sure everyone likes Grimm. Everyone but me. I don't hate him, it's just… he and I… we share secrets. And these secrets bond us in a way that might've been OK when it all started nine years ago—almost to the day, funnily enough—but is no longer OK now.

Grimm looks at me, probably picturing himself dancing in our group yesterday. Putting himself in Ethan's place as Bryn's partner. But then he kinda blinks his eyes and shakes his head a little, pulling himself back to reality. It's his turn to sigh. "Rosie, do you mind giving me a moment with Lowyn?"

I put up a hand. "That's OK, Rosie. We don't need a moment. I'm real busy, Grimm. So whatever it is, it can wait."

Grimm glances at Rosie with that look he gives, one eyebrow raised, but eyes kinda narrowed at the same time. It's not a threatening look. He's really not that kind of man. But it is a look that says, Don't make me ask you twice. And it works, most of the time.

It works this time for sure. Because Rosie says, "I'm gonna go organize shit over there," and then clops off in those clogs of hers.

As soon as she's across the store, pretending to be busy flipping through cassette tapes over by the jukebox, I look Grimm in the eyes. "What do you want?"

"Why do you always talk to me that way?"

"What way, Grimm?" I ask this just to be difficult. And this is exactly what he's referring to, so it comes out passive-aggressively bitchy.

"Look, I'm not tryin' to be a dick. I've left you alone. I don't interfere in your life?—"

"Can you get to the point, please?"

He stares at me for a moment, like he's runnin' scenarios through his head. He blows out a breath. "OK. I'll get to the point, I guess. But there are two of them so I would ask that you let me make both of them before you throw one of your Lowyn McBride tantrums and walk out."

I scoff. "You're not gettin' off to a real good start here, Grimm."

"First of all"—he holds up a finger to indicate ‘one'—"I know things about Collin. I know where he's been and some of what he's been doing, and this is just a friendly warning."

"Since when are we friends?"

He pauses and I can practically hear the insults running through his mind. But he's far more in control than I am right now, because he holds them all in, pretending I didn't even speak. "He's not the guy you think he is."

"You know that how?"

"I'm on the board, Lowyn. I've been to all the meetings about Collin Creed over the past seven years. And I've been filled in on the ones that came before that."

I don't know what this means. I didn't have any idea that the town board had been keeping tabs on Collin through the years.

When Grimm and I were closer a while back—we dated a little, nothin' serious—but when we were closer, he told me a secret. He said he had to tell somebody, so it might as well be me. I was the most trustworthy person he had ever met, that's what he said. So I do know a little bit about how the towns are all connected. But he never once—not once—told me anything about Collin.

This burns me a little. Because at that particular time in my life I was dyin' for information about Collin. I would've wanted to hear all of it. Any of the bits and pieces would've gone a long way to settle my soul. So learning that Grimm had details like that does not paint him in a good light. In fact, it makes me dislike him more.

"OK. So what?" This is the best I can come up with because other than the stories Collin's been telling me about his time away, I really have no idea what he's been doing.

"So he's… well, the easiest way to put it is that he's a really dangerous man, Lowyn."

Is this a surprise? Not really. I saw Collin Creed, with my own eyes, kill a man when he was eighteen years old. "Are you trying to say he's gonna hurt me, Grimm? Because that's just stupid."

"Considering the secrets you and I share, and taking into account the kind of man Collin is, and has turned into over the years, don't you feel like all this leads up to someone gettin' hurt? Because I sure do."

I force myself to stay calm and think this through.

Grimm and I do share secrets. I have one of his and he's got one of mine. His secret is about how the towns work and how they're all tangled up with the government. He learned his secret from being on the town board.

My secret is about Blackberry Hill and I learned about it from first-hand experience.

But I only told Grimm about that place because he brought the name up first.

It was a moment of weakness, in my opinion. And then I resented him for knowing that secret. It all goes back to how I don't want people to know me. How people don't have the right to know me.

Not without my permission.

And this is the real problem. I actually gave him this permission and I should not have.

If Grimm truly wants to know why I'm confrontational with him, this is why. He's got my secret I would like to take it back.

But I can't.

"What's number two, Grimm? I really am busy."

"He's gonna find out, Lowyn. Because your secret isn't really a secret. Lots of people know about it. And if it's not a secret, he's gonna find out."

"OK." I'm starting to shake a little. I mean, I knew this. I've been living with this lie—secret, whatever you wanna call it—for nine years. And of course, Jim Bob knows my secret because he's part of it. And if there's one thing I know about secrets around here, it's that they don't exist. Not really. When you get a secret in Disciple you tell someone real fast. So I know that Jim Bob told someone. I never had confirmation, not until now, but I always knew he told someone. He would've had to. It's too big not to. "Is that it, Grimm?"

"If you don't tell him, I will."

"Is that a threat? Are you threatening me?"

"I would call it an opportunity, Lowyn. Not a threat."

"You need to?—"

But I am cut off by the jingling bell over the door. Grimm and I both glance in that direction.

"Hi, there, Lowyn!" Former one-time country music star Sassy Lorraine waves enthusiastically. But she must really know how to read a room, because her smile drops almost immediately. "Did I interrupt something?"

Grimm says, "Yes."

But I say, "No. We were just finishing up." Then I look at Grimm. "Please see yourself out, and thanks for stoppin' by."

He lets out a long breath, looking me in the eye one last time. "I mean it, Low. You tell him, or I will."

Then he tips that same imaginary hat at me and turns away, tippin' it again as he passes Sassy and opens the door, leaving all the tension he created behind him.

"Well," Sassy says, "I don't know what that was about, but it was a thing, wasn't it?"

I exhale, gather myself, force everything Grimm just said out of my mind, and smile at Sassy. "It was nothing. I'm so glad you're here. We've got a million things to discuss. Let me introduce you to my assistant."

Then I walk over to her, offer her my arm, and escort her over to Rosie. Who immediately takes over, chattin' a mile a minute, so I can pull myself together.

I have always known that this loose end would come back to haunt me. I've always known it.

But it has been so long now that I guess I just… believed, maybe, that there would be no consequences for what I did on the one-year anniversary of my mama's birthday after her death.

The original get-drunk day. The very first one-night-stand day. The day I made the biggest mistake of my life.