Paint It Black

by Michelle Perry

  My stomach twisted at the thought of Angel lying there helpless. Even though one of us was always with him, how hard would it be for someone to get to him?

  Cougar sighed. “I told Bill to pass around the word that there are extra copies. I don’t know what else to do.”

  Abby bounced over to the table and grabbed my hand. “Play with me, Mama.”

  “Just a sec, honey. Cougar and I are talking—”

  Cougar smiled and ruffled Abby’s hair. “It’s okay. Let’s play.”

  Moments later, I found myself sitting in a race-car simulator that nearly gave me whiplash when Abby’s car slammed mine into the wall. Cougar laughed behind me. “Drives like her mother.”

  After getting annihilated in a Space Invaders game, I begged for mercy and something I could actually play. Abby and I challenged Cougar to a game of foosball.

  “You girls don’t know who you’re messing with.” He slipped his leather jacket off his broad shoulders and tossed it in our booth. “I had one of these babies in my basement when I was a kid.”

  “Is that right?” I winked. “Well, let’s see what you got, big boy.”

  Cougar opened his mouth like he wanted to say something more, then clamped it shut again and grinned. We scored the first point, but then he scored the next two.

  “Time-out,” Abby said, then moved around the table to stand by Cougar.

  “Hey!” I protested. “You’re abandoning me?”

  “Sorry, Mom.” She shrugged. “Your defense stinks.”

  Cougar snickered while I pouted. They finished trouncing me and gave each other a high five. Our pizza still hadn’t arrived, so we drifted through the crowd to the Skee Ball lanes. Skee Ball, I could handle, but even here, Cougar showed me up. He found the sweet spot and sank four 100-pointers in a row. The winner light flashed above the machine, and it spat out a row of tickets that he gave to Abby to redeem. She returned with two pink plastic leis.

  Cougar took them from her. She giggled when he dropped one over her head and planted a resounding kiss on each of her cheeks. When he draped mine over my head, he grabbed my waist and pulled me close to whisper, “Wait’ll I go to the hospital tonight. I’m gonna tell Angel I lei’d Necie. If that doesn’t get him talking, nothing will.”

  I laughed and pushed him away. “You’re awful!”

  He wagged his eyebrows and flashed those perfect white teeth.

  Our waitress nodded at me while she moved through the crowd, holding a pizza tray near her ear. Cougar squeezed the nape of my neck and helped me hustle Abby back to the table to eat. She ate most of two pieces, then begged to be excused. For the first time, I thought about Grady sitting at home, probably drunk and angry. Might as well let her have fun while she could.

  I motioned her on. She smacked a kiss on my cheek before heading back to the Skee Ball lanes.

  Cougar grabbed his third slice of pizza, cast it another dubious look, then took a big bite. “You know,” he said. “The scary thing is, I’m thinking this ain’t half-bad.”

  “Told ya.”

  He watched Abby while he chewed, then swallowed and sipped his water. He surprised me by saying, “I used to think I didn’t want kids, but they’re kinda nice, huh?”

  It took me a moment to manage a reply. “What’s nice about them? They abandon their mothers for stinking at foosball.”

  He smiled, and suddenly I was very conscious of the knee that brushed mine beneath the table. “You know what I mean.” He nodded at Abby. “Look at her. She’s beautiful, and so damn smart, just like her mother. It must be nice to look at some little person like that and see yourself.”

  Speechless, and more than a little flustered, I sipped my Pepsi without comment.

  He stole one of Abby’s abandoned crusts and munched on it while he stared into space. “Of course, that kind of thing can bite you in the ass, too. I think my dad looked so hard for himself in me that he didn’t want to see anything else. I think my worst fear in life is turning into my father.”

  Ha! Tell me about it, I thought. It occurred to me how very little I’d thought about Barnes in the past few days. When Barnes looked at me, what did he see?

  Cougar insisted on buying. He handed his Visa to the girl behind the register, then placed his hand on my hip when he reached around me to scrawl his name on the slip and snag a peppermint. When the girl said, “Have a nice night, Mr. and Mrs. Stratton,” he smiled and said, “You, too,” without bothering to correct her.

  Abby held his hand while we walked to the car, and it gave my heart a funny little twinge to see them like that. Again, I wondered if I was reading more into the situation than there really was. Cougar was a flirt— everyone knew it—just a harmless flirt. But lately he didn’t feel so harmless at all.

  He fastened Abby’s seat belt, and she chattered to him all the way back to the DEA office. It was snowing again. I felt like I was back in the asteroid game again and had to struggle to keep my eyes from straying to the dizzying pattern of flurries striking the windshield.

  “You getting out?” he asked when I slid into a space in short-term parking. “I was going to give you one of those tapes if you’re not in a hurry.”

  “Sure.” I threw the car in park and again thought of the scene that was probably waiting for me at home. “No hurry at all.”

  Again, Abby ran ahead. She threw her arms wide and pirouetted in the drifting banks.

  “Watch this,” Cougar said, and stooped to grab a handful of snow. He packed it between his hands and hurled it at her.

  “Hey!” she yelled when it struck her in the back. “Who did that?”

  Cougar pointed at me, but Abby took one look at his face and knelt to make her own snowball. She lobbed it at him and missed by a foot. “Mama, help me!” she cried.

  Together, we converged on him. He batted off my attempt, but one of Abby’s missiles hit him full in the face.

  “Hey, this isn’t fair,” he said, dodging the snowballs we hurled at him.

  “Tuck, help me!” he yelled, and I turned just in time to catch one between the eyes. I heard them laughing while I sputtered and brushed the snow from my eyes.

  The war was on.

  Drawn by the commotion, Linda and another agent joined the fray, providing Abby and me with some much-needed assistance. I hurled a one-two at Tucker and turned to find Cougar grinning at me. He hefted a cantaloupe-sized snowball in his hands. I feinted left, then right, and ducked when he lobbed it at my head. With a screech, Abby charged, flinging snowballs as fast as her little hands could form them. I turned to run and Cougar grabbed me around the waist. As if I weighed nothing, he picked me up and ran, using me as a shield. Both Abby and Tucker pelted me until I couldn’t see. I was laughing too hard to breathe.

  Cougar’s iron grasp around my waist loosened for a second and I wriggled free. He chased me around the side of the building. My Keds slipped on the grass, and he launched himself at me. We went down in a flurry of arms and legs and rolled in the wet snow, trying to rub the slushy mess in each other’s faces. Cougar pinned me in seconds flat. His eyes twinkled in the glow of the streetlight, and he flashed me a triumphant grin.

  I was conscious of so many things in that instant: the cold, wet snow beneath me; his warm, hard thigh between mine. The sweet, coconut-lime scent of his aftershave. His smile faded while he stared down at me. My pulse leapfrogged when his fingers tightened around my wrists, and he lowered his head.

  He stopped just shy of kissing me, his mouth hovering above mine. His peppermint-scented breath came in warm, tantalizing puffs against my face.

  “Grady is a lucky son of a bitch,” he said, an instant before Abby and Tucker raced around the corner.

  “Get them!” Benedict Abby shrieked, and suddenly I found my face shoved against the warm skin of Cougar’s neck. He clasped his hands around his head and shielded us from their attack.

  Snowballs struck his back with a dull whup-whup-whup, but I was barely conscious of the sound while I br
eathed in the heated scent of him. My lips pressed against the throbbing pulse in his neck, but I couldn’t pull away, couldn’t move at all from the crush of his big body. Then the laughter faded. Abruptly, Cougar rolled off me and sat on the ground. He stared at Abby’s retreating back while I struggled to sit up.

  My knees wobbled when I stood. Feeling suddenly awkward, I stretched a hand down to help him.

  He shook his head. “Go,” he said with a wave. “I’ll be around in a minute.”

  “But it’s cold.”

  “Not cold enough,” he mumbled, refusing to meet my eyes.

  His brusque tone disturbed me. Unsure of what I’d done to annoy him, I grabbed his arm.

  He shook off my grasp. “In a minute.”

  “But—”

  Finally he looked at me. The corner of his mouth quirked. “Geez, Neese. Give a guy a break.”

  I stood there, frozen by the bitter wind and the strange expression on his face.

  He gave me a pointed look that was part exasperation, part pure mischief. “I’m afraid I might embarrass myself.”

  “Oh.” Like a dummy, I stared blankly at him for a moment before it sank in. Of their own volition, my eyes flew to his crotch, and my breath caught when I saw the bulge there. “Oh!”

  He laughed when I jerked my gaze away.

  “Well, there go my hero points.” In a deep, grave baritone, he said, “I am but a man.”

  I forced a chuckle, though I was too shell-shocked to do much more. I was glad for the biting wind, another excuse for my red cheeks. I gestured toward the front. “I’m just going to …”

  He laughed again when I fled.

  A truce had apparently been called around front. Abby sat between Linda and Tucker on the front steps. The other agent was gone. The slight lift of Tucker’s eyebrow made my face burn. He grinned at Linda, and she ducked her head, taking a sudden interest in her boots.

  “Where’s Cougar?” he asked.

  I avoided his eyes by pretending to dust snow off my jacket. “He’ll be around in a minute.” Glancing at Abby, I said, “You ready to go, kiddo?”

  She kicked at the snow in front of her. “Aww, do we have to?”

  “Yes, ma’am. You have to take a bath and get in bed.”

  She sighed and used Tucker’s leg to push herself to her feet. “Bye, guys.”

  “Bye, sweetie,” Linda said.

  Tucker stood and ruffled Abby’s hair. “Make your mom bring you back to play again.”

  Abby took my hand, and we walked toward the car.

  “Hey, you guys leaving?”

  I turned toward the sound of Cougar’s voice. His face was half-hidden in the shadows as he leaned against the brick building.

  “Yeah.” I plucked a strand of damp hair off my cheek. “Abby has school tomorrow. But thanks for dinner.”

  “You’re welcome. I guess I should be getting to the hospital anyway. Talk to you tomorrow. And see you later, brat.”

  Abby waved, and I hurried her along to the car.

  She fell asleep in no time. I sighed, thinking of how grouchy she’d be when I woke her to give her a bath.

  A few minutes later, I pulled into the garage and went around to get her out. A light winked on, and Grady opened the back door. I didn’t know what to expect when he started toward us.

  “Here.” He took her from my arms. “I’ve got her.”

  He carried her up the steps. I took it as a good sign when he didn’t stagger. Maybe there was hope for a calm discussion yet. I didn’t smell liquor on him.

  “Hey, baby,” he said, when she stirred in his arms. “You’re wet.” He glanced at me. “You’re wet, too. Where have you been, besides Fat Daddy’s?”

  I was about to ask him how he knew that when I realized I was still wearing the pink lei.

  Abby blinked up at him and yawned. “We had a snowball fight, Daddy. It was so cool. Cougar hit me, but I got him back.”

  Grady looked at me again with narrowed eyes. “Cougar? You’ve been with Cougar?”

  I shrugged off my coat. “I had to go by the office. We ran into him.”

  “We beat Mama playing foosball,” Abby said, and I did a mental wince.

  Grady stood Abby on the kitchen floor. The muscle in his jaw twitched, and his hands balled into fists at his side. “So you had dinner with him, too?”

  “Don’t even start,” I said, and patted Abby’s behind. “Get upstairs, honey. Mama will be up in a minute to help you with your bath.”

  She nodded and kissed us both before moping up the stairs. I could almost see the tension rolling off Grady’s back before he turned to face me.

  “So I read it wrong?” He cocked his head. “It’s not the vegetable, then. All this time, you’ve been sleeping around with Cougar.”

  I threw my keys on the kitchen counter. “Don’t be stupid, and don’t try to make this about me. You’ve got a problem, Grady.”

  He laughed. “Damn straight, I’ve got a problem. It’s you. It’s always been you. Sometimes I wonder what my life would’ve been like if I’d never met you.”

  “Oh, so you wonder that, too,” I said, and shouldered past him. He grabbed my arm and spun me around.

  “Don’t walk away from me.” Before I could react, he seized the pink lei around my neck and twisted his fist around it. He steamrolled me backward and slammed me into the wall hard enough to knock the air from my lungs.

  CHAPTER

  7

  Inexplicably, he kissed me, even as he tightened the cord around my throat. His tongue invaded my mouth as I fought for my next breath.

  I balled my hand into a fist and swung. The blow landed solid on the side of the head. He staggered, loosening his grip, but he didn’t let go. He pressed his shoulder into me to block my arm. “What’s the matter? Are my kisses not as good as Cougar’s? In what other areas am I lacking?”

  Spots danced before my eyes, and self-preservation took over. I rammed my knee as hard as I could into his groin.

  Grady screamed and fell to the floor, curling into a fetal position. I stood over him, gasping for breath and massaging my burning neck.

  “Mama!”

  I glanced up to see Abby standing at the top of the stairs. Grady scuttled back and leaned against the wall.

  “Get in your room,” I said. “I’m coming.”

  “But, Daddy—”

  “Daddy’s fine,” Grady rasped. “I just fell.”

  “Abby, go!” I said in my don’t-mess-with-Mom voice.

  She turned and ran back to her room.

  “Necie—” Grady said, and I whirled.

  Angry tears stung my eyes. I pointed at him. “Stay the fuck away from me.”

  Without waiting on a reply, I ran upstairs to check on my daughter.

  I paused outside Abby’s bedroom door, trying to compose my face into some mask of neutrality, but inside I raged. How dare he treat me that way? He wasn’t even drunk!

  I plastered on a smile and twisted the knob. Abby had stripped to her underpants. She stood at the foot of her bed, gazing at me with huge, sad eyes. My smile faltered, and I hurried across the room to take her in my arms. As I held her small, warm body close, I knew that something had to give. Things between her father and I had grown steadily worse. I couldn’t live like this. I couldn’t let her live like this.

  “Is Daddy okay?” she asked in a small, quiet voice.

  “Yeah, baby. He’s okay. Let’s get you in the tub.”

  She moved toward the adjoining bathroom. I glanced at her bedroom door, then doubled back to lock it behind us. I felt a little annoyed with myself for the apprehension I felt, but I could no longer predict what Grady might do.

  After shampooing Abby’s hair, I left her to do the rest herself. I thought about packing our clothes and leaving, but where was I supposed to go, a motel? Besides, why should I be the one to leave? Let Grady go home to his mother. She’d welcome him with open arms.

  I pressed my ear to her bedroom door, but
heard nothing in the hall beyond. I eased open the door and peered into the hallway. No Grady jumping from the shadows. Feeling stupid, I hurried down the hall to our bedroom.

  He probably was sitting in some bar somewhere.

  My heart thudded while I snatched some clothes from my dresser and closet. This was how far we’d come. I couldn’t believe I actually feared Grady, but here I was, worrying about the gun in my purse downstairs.

  Back in Abby’s room, I locked her door behind me again and sat on her bed until she came out of the bathroom. I thought about telling her not to open the door if Grady knocked, but how could I tell her that?

  I popped in one of her favorite movies and kissed her cheek.

  “Hey, babe. I’m going to take a shower and then I’ll come watch with you, okay?”

  She nodded, and made no comment when I picked up my shirt and shorts and headed to her bathroom. I washed myself with bubblegum-scented soap and thought about my next move. Tomorrow, after I took Abby to school, I’d tell Grady to pack his things. Tomorrow I’d tell him I wanted a divorce.

  A divorce.

  I stood under the pulsing hot spray and wondered why the thought didn’t upset me as it once had. I wanted to care. I wanted to feel something, but it was like I was hollow inside. Dead. My only concern was how to explain it to Abby. Whatever Grady and I did or said to each other, I didn’t want her caught in the cross fire.

  I toweled my hair dry and dressed, then joined Abby beneath her Strawberry Shortcake comforter. She scooted over to make room for me, and I saw the questions in her eyes, but still she made no comment. I set the clock and cut off the television and lights. She was asleep in minutes, but rest proved more elusive for me.

  The next morning, I pulled on a pair of jeans and kept on the same shirt I’d slept in. Abby got out of bed without her customary protest and dressed quickly, as if she sensed my anxiety.

  When I opened her bedroom door, my heart skittered when I found Grady lying in the hallway in front of it. He was snoring. I pressed a finger to my lips and lifted Abby to my hip. Cautiously, I stepped over him.