I lifted my hand in a conciliatory gesture but Morrie shook his head.

“You spill now or you spill when Mom and Dad get here. Your choice but it’s been too f**king long. We all let it go too long. We shoulda made you spill ages ago, before Pete –”

“Stop!” I shouted.

No one talked to me about Pete. No one.

Not Meems. Not Jessie. Not Mom and Dad.

Not even my brother, who I loved best of them all which was saying a whole helluva lot.

I thought that’d work, it had worked before many times. Everyone knew I couldn’t talk about Pete.

But it didn’t work. Morrie moved fast. Before I knew it he had his hand curled around my upper arm and he gave me a shake. It wasn’t controlled, it was almost brutal and my head snapped back with the force of it.

My breath started coming fast but thin. Morrie got Dad’s temper which could flare out of control, though neither of them ever hurt anyone who didn’t need to get hurt. I got Mom’s which also could flare out of control but we were women and our hurt came from words rather than actions and those, unfortunately, lasted longer.

“What the f**k happened?” Morrie was in my face. “What made it go bad? What made you do what you did?”

“Let go of me Morrie.”

“Answer me, Feb.”

“Let me go!”

Another shake and my head snapped back. “Answer me!”

“You’re hurting me!” I yelled.

“I should knock some f**kin’ sense into you!” he yelled back.

I made a noise like I was going to vomit, it was involuntary and it sounded nasty. Then I wasn’t breathing anymore, not even thin, useless breaths – nothing, no oxygen.

Morrie’s face changed and he let me go, stepping back. He looked whipped, injured, the expression hideous on his face, the knowledge of what he’d done and what he’d said attacking him.

“Baby Sister,” he whispered but I shook my head.

He couldn’t go back to beloved big brother now. Not after that. Not after that. No way. No f**king way.

“I’m moving in with Jessie,” I announced, turning away.

“Feb, don’t. You need to be protected. You need someone lookin’ after you.”

I turned back. “A couple of hours in, Morrie, fine job you made of it.”

He flinched, his head jerking back with the weight of my blow. Just as I said, my anger came out in words and they hurt far worse than my arm was stinging just now.

I nodded my head to the bar that separated his kitchen from the dining area. On it, probably doused in coffee, was the list I spent most of the morning writing.

“Give that list to Alec, he wants it.”

I left it at that. I had to. And I walked away to pack.

* * * * *

“You’ve got a nerve,” Pete’s Mom, LeeAnne, said in my ear.

“LeeAnne –”

“I’m not giving you his number, you bitch.”

“This is important.”

“Nothin’s that important.”

“Someone’s dead.”

LeeAnne fell silent and I lifted my gaze to Meems and Jessie who were both crunched into Meems’s back office at the Coffee House. Both of them were watching me, both of them looking pissed and harassed, both of them knowing what this cost me and both of them wishing they could pay the toll instead of me.

“Her name is Angie. Evidence came out last night that she was murdered because of something that happened between her and me. There’s a possibility that anyone who…” Christ, how did I say this? LeeAnne was a bitch, the worst mother-in-law in history, but still, good manners prevented me from saying it straight out. “Anyway, anyone who didn’t get along with me might be in danger.”

“You’re poison,” LeeAnne spat, “always were.”

I didn’t get that, even from LeeAnne. She was a bitch but she’d seen me in the hospital and she knew her son did that to me.

She knew it wasn’t me who beat the shit out of Pete. It wasn’t me who came home that f**king, shitty, awful night and attacked me far worse than any of the times before. Times which could be brushed away as too much drink or what Pete called “our passionate but volatile relationship” (I thought it wasn’t much the first and too much of the last). It wasn’t me who tried to rape me, who I had to fight back, scared silly, losing the fight, only somehow to escape and drive over to Morrie’s house.

It was just me who happened to pick a time when Alec was at Morrie’s. And it was me who was battered, bloodied, my clothes torn, barely able to hold myself up, having performed a miracle by driving myself there in one piece at all. And it was me who Alec took one look at, turned to Morrie and said, “You see to her, I’ll see to him.” And it was for me that Alec drove straight to my house and nearly beat the life out of my husband.

“Please, LeeAnne, give me his number,” I said.

“Still can’t see right out of his left eye, my boy,” she countered.

I didn’t doubt this was true. Alec did a number on him. Detached retina, amongst other things.

It wasn’t more than he deserved. He’d done a number on me. We were both in the hospital at the same time.

I got out earlier.

Pete got out and left town. He didn’t press charges. This was likely due to Morrie, Dad and a variety of other townsfolk making this Pete’s only option.

I wasn’t going to say I was sorry.

I was sorry. Very sorry. So sorry it had seeped into my soul. But not sorry for Pete Hollister.

Having had a very long time to look back, Pete had always been an ass**le. But he’d been a good-looking one. Not as good-looking as Alec but with Alec lost to me, Pete would do. And I needed someone. Someone to fill the hole Alec left. No, it wasn’t a hole. It was a wound. I couldn’t close the wound so I needed someone to numb the pain. Or take my mind off it. Pete did that, he was good at it. He delivered his own brand of pain in order to succeed wildly in this endeavor.

What I was sorry about was the fact that Alec hurt Pete and I knew he’d hate himself for doing it instead of hating me. And I was sorry that I put him in that position. It was the only one he had, he and Morrie had been looking after me so long they didn’t know how to do anything different even if things had changed between Alec and me. And I was sorry that he saw me the way he did, beaten, not his February, never to be his February again. She was gone like he told me the Alec he was once was gone. Pete had beaten her out of me. I answered to my name but I didn’t know who February was any longer. I’d spent nearly two decades trying to figure it out but never could. The only thing I knew was she wasn’t the girl I used to be.