Complicated

by Kristen Ashley

“Totally!” Harry Potter exclaimed, jumped toward Hix’s bucket and Captain America followed him.

  Elsa went to Hix (not surprising). Both Reys went to Bets staring up at her in wonder (also not surprising).

  Hix looked at me.

  I’d talked him into doing this. He’d only agreed when I’d allowed him to lecture the kids (slightly) prior to them getting candy. Bets was all in since she said giving out candy alone sucked.

  “You’re the awesomest vampire I’ve ever seen.”

  I turned my head to one of the moms (who was also one of Lou’s clients, I thought her name was Georgina), and smiled.

  My makeup was the bomb. I had pale skin, winged brows, dark makeup around my eyes that gave way to a bright purple and dribbling blood coming down the sides of my mouth. My hair was fabulous and huge and sprayed black. And I was wearing my blood-stained cocktail dress from the night of real terror in my kitchen.

  That night made for a far better memory in that dress than the last time I’d worn it, for certain.

  “Thanks,” I replied.

  “Right, kids, say thanks to the vampire and the sheriff and his deputy and let’s go,” the other mom said.

  The kids cried their enthusiastic thanks. Hix and Bets wandered toward me. And as they left, I heard one child say, “We’re totally coming to this house every year.”

  That made me smile again.

  I loved Halloween. It was my favorite holiday (not counting Christmas because Christmas was in a league of its own). Last year, I’d gone trick or treating with Lou and Maple and some of Maple’s friends (Snow declared she was too old to go with us, she’d done something with friends). It had been great, but I missed handing out candy.

  This was way better.

  I felt Hix’s lips at my ear. “I’m totally fucking you in that getup later, but you’ll have to lose the fangs.”

  Oh yeah.

  This was way better.

  We moved in and I saw Andy standing with the girls, smiling at me.

  “So . . . awesome,” Andy said.

  I smiled at my brother too.

  He was also done up as a vampire. We were taking turns opening the door. And if there was ever a time his scar worked for him, this was it. Even he said so, declaring after I was done with his makeup, “I’m scaring even myself. I’m Scarface Vampire!”

  “It’s getting late, girls,” Hix said to his daughter and her friends. “You wanna go out, the time is now.”

  They looked undecided.

  I knew why. They were having a blast doing our thing with us.

  It was Mamie’s time with her mom but when I talked to Hix about doing this with him and Andy, she’d been around and said she’d wanted to join in. She’d then asked her mom if it was okay and Hope had said yes.

  Mamie had been elated.

  It had been only just under two weeks since Hix talked to Hope, during which nothing had happened, so it showed progress from Hope.

  That made me elated.

  Hix decided for the girls.

  “Next year you’ll be freshmen, too old for this, so pack it in. Get out on the sidewalks, and Mamie, like we talked about, two block radius and you’re taking Greta’s phone.”

  “We got great costumes and totally awesome makeup, we should,” Mamie told her friends.

  “Pointe shoes off,” Hix ordered.

  “Right, Dad,” Mamie said. Then to her girls, “Let’s go!”

  They ran up the steps.

  I slid my fangs out and looked to my brother.

  “It’s up to you and me now, bud,” I told him.

  “I’m in!” he replied.

  The doorbell rang.

  A cacophony of ballerinas instantly could be heard storming back down the stairs with Mamie screeching, “One more time!”

  Hix gave me a look I liked a whole lot, full of sweetness and tenderness and hotness and promise, before he and Bets took off to go out the back and walk around the house.

  So when I turned to the door as Andy rushed to it, I did it smiling.

  I was riding Hix and getting close when his hands at my waist lifted me off.

  He tossed me to the side, rolled me to my belly, pulled me up to my knees and drove back in.

  I flipped my hair to the side (or, with all that black spray in it, it more like shifted to the side), looked back at him and breathed, “I can’t suck your blood like this.”

  He kept thrusting inside me even as he grinned and said, “My blood is all in one area of my body now, baby. But you wanna suck that, I’m good to lie back and take it.”

  “No, no,” I said hurriedly (or more like, moaned hurriedly). “Carry on.”

  His grin turned wicked and his hand slid from my hip down, around and in, and it was then I stuffed my face in his bed and got makeup all over his comforter.

  I didn’t think he minded.

  “I don’t know. That’s all Larry saw. But she’s still with him.”

  It was Monday the week after Halloween. Hix had had his kids back, but that day, they’d gone again to Hope. All of them, including Shaw for the first time since he moved in exclusively with Hix.

  Hope was doing her thing, Hix was doing his.

  And it seemed to be working.

  This meant he could resume Monday Night Football at the Outpost with his buds, Toast and Tommy. He’d brought me. Donna had showed. So had Hal and Ashlee.

  And now he was telling me Larry had seen Mom with Kavanagh Becker getting a coffee at Babycakes.

  I hadn’t heard from her since the Sunnydown incident.

  Maybe this was why.

  “So, you think she got her meal ticket, you made your point you’re not gonna take her crap or let me do it, she smartened up enough to take heed of your official position, and she’s doing what she has to do to try to settle in with this guy for the long haul?” I asked.

  “Been in the woman’s company not even a handful of times, sweetheart,” Hix replied. “Got no clue. You said she’d come and go. It’s been a while. She ever go for this long?”

  I looked to my beer and muttered, “She didn’t keep a schedule.” I looked back to Hix. “Sometimes it would be long enough I’d think that was the end. Then she’d come back.”

  He wrapped his hand around the back of my neck and dipped in close. “Just givin’ you the info on what Larry saw. Keepin’ you apprised. Didn’t do it to bum you out. But just to repeat, she tries any more shit, we’ll deal.”

  I held his gaze and nodded only to have my arm cuffed on the other side and hear Toast say, “It’s Monday Night Football, people. Serious conversations are verboten.”

  “Her first Monday Night Football and the chick is breakin’ all the rules,” Tommy, on Toast’s other side, teased.

  “Shush,” Toast hushed Tommy. “You might scare her off and she’s a chick that doesn’t glare at the plate of nachos like she can make it combust with her eyes or act like she doesn’t want to shove her face in it and eat it all herself. Be gentle with this unknown entity, Tom, she might bolt.”

  “Right,” Tommy said. “Sorry, Greta. You can get serious with Hix all you want. Don’t glare at our nachos and make them combust.”

  Through my laughter I assured, “Your nachos are safe, boys.”

  “No they’re not,” Donna declared, pushing through Toast and me holding a salad plate and commencing scooping half the remains of the nachos on it.

  “Hey! You’re hoggin’ it all!” Toast shouted.

  “I told you to move it down my way,” Donna reminded him, licking melted cheese from her fingers.

  “Then it wouldn’t be smack in front of me,” Toast returned.

  “Betty-Jean, another plate of nachos, yeah?” Hix ordered, and when I looked to him, I saw his eyes on the bartender.

  “Got it, Hixon,” Betty-Jean replied and shuffled to the electronic cash register to put our order in.

  “Stop being logical, Sheriff, it kills the fun of gettin’ up in Donna’s shit,” Toast demanded.

/>   “Oh, don’t you worry,” Donna returned. “I’ll do something else you feel you need to get up in my shit about. Like continuing to root for the Cardinals.”

  “Don’t make me puke,” Toast retorted. “The Cards? This is Broncos country.”

  “It is not. It’s Chiefs country,” Tommy fired back.

  “Dude, give it up with the Chiefs,” Toast advised, turning from me to Tommy. “The Broncs are where it’s at.”

  “You grew up rooting for the Chiefs. You only switched to the Broncs like, four years ago. Where’s your loyalty?” Tommy replied.

  “It’s Seahawks all the way,” Hal put in from down the bar.

  “Yeah!” Ashlee cried. “They have the best colors for their uniforms.”

  “Are you shittin’ me?” Toast asked.

  “No,” Ashlee retorted. “That green is amazing.”

  “Someone shoot me,” Tommy requested of the ceiling.

  “Okay,” Ashlee agreed. “Hal, give me your gun.”

  Hal started laughing.

  Toast and Tommy dipped a shoulder hunched Hal and Ashlee’s way and began to launch in.

  “You’re welcome,” Donna said, and my eyes swung to her. She motioned between Hix and me with her plate. “Carry on.”

  She then went back to her seat on the other side of Tommy and tucked into her nachos.

  I turned to Hix. “Your friends are da bomb.”

  His eyes lit. “Did you just say da bomb?”

  “Yes, because they’re da bomb.”

  He burst out laughing.

  I watched, grinning at him the whole time.

  And when he quit, he dug into the nachos.

  I did too.

  That Wednesday night, I watched Hix walk up my front walk and I did it with more than my usual admiring eye, and not because there was more than usual to admire due to the fact that there was always a lot to admire about Hixon Drake.

  I did it because I could tell by the line of his body and the look on his face that something was wrong.

  I stayed where I was like I always stayed where I was when Hix came to me at night (these being the nights I didn’t go to him, which was most of the time when his kids weren’t with him).

  I was under a blanket with a sweater and scarf on, my tea on a heating pad beside me, my book forgotten on my lap as he made his way to me.

  He bent deep and took my mouth in a quick, wet kiss before he turned and did what I’d trained him to do. Sit and give me his order of what he needed.

  But this time, instead of folding into the chair beside me and telling me he wanted beer, bourbon or food, he collapsed in it and stayed silent.

  He was wearing his sheriff’s shirt, a thermal under it, and a cool brown leather jacket with his badge pinned on the outside of it.

  I approved of his winter sheriff’s uniform.

  I did not tell him this.

  I noted softly, “It looks like a bourbon night.”

  He didn’t turn his eyes from the street.

  He stared at it for long enough for me to get more worried then lifted his hands and rubbed his face, which made me definitely worried.

  “Hixon, darlin’,” I murmured.

  He dropped his hands but kept his eyes to the street when he said, “Faith came in today to ask if there was any progress with the case.”

  Oh boy.

  I hadn’t seen Faith since the murder. Her mom had called to cancel her appointment, which was every six weeks and would have fallen three weeks after Nat was killed.

  It had been way longer than that and she hadn’t been in. I also hadn’t bugged her to reschedule.

  And looking at Hix, I thought maybe I should have.

  “Talk to me,” I urged gently.

  “She looks like hell. She’s lost, I don’t know, least twenty, thirty pounds. Eyes sunk in. Hair a mess.” Finally, his head turned my way. “She needs answers. She needs closure.”

  “I’m sure,” I murmured.

  “That gun was registered. It was also reported stolen.”

  I said nothing because he’d never talked about any case to me, not in any depth, and definitely not Nat’s, so I was surprised.

  “Guy in Kansas reported it stolen the day he came home and found someone broke into his house, this being months before our guy showed in Grant County and did Nat.”

  “Okay,” I said quietly to that when he didn’t go on for a long time.

  “Crazy shit, guy breaks into his house and what does he steal?”

  When it was clear he was actually asking a question, I shook my head but answered, “His gun, obviously.”

  “His gun, all the leftover meatloaf and potato salad in his fridge, and far’s the guy can remember, three candy bars.”

  “That’s very weird,” I murmured.

  “Owner of the gun was cleanin’ it. Left it out on the kitchen table.”

  “Not smart,” I muttered.

  “Nope.”

  “So if he was cleaning it, was it loaded? Or did your guy buy bullets somewhere?”

  “He reports it wasn’t loaded and he also reports his ammo was untouched, though that was in a locked cabinet where the gun should have been. Cops saw no indication the guy went anywhere but the kitchen, got in breakin’ a window on the kitchen door to do it. So the guy broke in because he was hungry. Ate ’til he was full. Grabbed some snacks and the gun on the table and took off, leaving the Tupperware in the sink. Where the guy got the bullets, we don’t know. Anywhere he could get them between here and there, we checked and no one remembers seeing him.”

  “Did anyone in this place in Kansas see him?”

  “That gun turned out to be our murder weapon, the boys in Kansas asked around and even though it had been months, this guy is memorable, so yeah. Our drifter was seen by three people. A kid leavin’ after his shift at a fast food restaurant, a man out walkin’ his dog and a mom in the neighborhood where the robbery took place, goin’ out to her car to pick her kid up from preschool.”

  “So you’ve got him there.”

  “Yep. Though they saw him around at the time of the robbery, no one had ever seen him before or after. So we got proof our drifter is a serious drifter, makin’ his way from middle-Kansas, hundreds of miles to here. What we don’t got is any understanding of the origins of where this guy started drifting. Outside Kansas and Grant County, no one has seen him. But now we got pictures and bulletins out to every homeless shelter in forty-eight states should this guy go lookin’ for another meal or whatever else he might need, and we got everything to nail him. We just don’t have him.”

  “Did they get prints in Kansas?”

  Hix shook his head. “Like the truck here, wiped clean. Gracious guest. Put his Tupperware in the sink and wiped down his prints.”

  Damn.

  I reached out and wrapped my hand around his forearm. “Even if you had him, you couldn’t heal what’s hurting in Faith.”

  “You’re right and you’re wrong, baby. Victims of this kind of thing benefit from a case being closed. An understanding of what happened. Knowing justice was served. It isn’t a miracle cure. That wound will remain open a long time and the scar will never fade. But it helps.”

  I nodded because I figured that was right. He would definitely know.

  Hix looked back to the street. “I need to get this done for Faith.”

  “You’re doing everything you can do.”

  He gave me his attention again. “I know that. First thing I do every morning is open that case file and sift through it, hoping something will jump out at me, a new idea, a thread of a lead. Nothing ever does. But that doesn’t change the fact I need to find this guy and at least put that to rest for Faith Calloway and her kids.”

  I leaned his way and offered what I could, as weak as it was, it was all I had.

  “She hasn’t been in. I’ll call her. If she needs it, I’ll go to her place, do her hair, have a chat, see where she is. Talk to Lou, some of the other ladies, start looking after her
better. I didn’t push things because I don’t know what she’s going through and I thought she’d need some time. Maybe it’s time for us to start pushing things, help her pick up the tatters of life after Nat and find a way to carry on.”

  “Think that’s a good idea, Greta.”

  I nodded. “I’ll call her tomorrow.”

  He twisted his arm in a way he could catch my hand and he did just that, trapping it under his on the arm of his chair with the back of my hand up so he could run his fingers along he insides of mine.

  He did this and he watched himself do it.

  I let him and I let him do it in silence for some time, watching the preoccupation on his handsome face, knowing the thoughts behind that were troubled and frustrated, and thinking that the people of McCook County lucked out that someone who cared this much ran for their sheriff.

  Finally, I spoke.

  “I don’t know what you need from me, Hix, but whatever it is, I’m here. I’ll listen. I’ll get you bourbon and sit with you. A beer. Make you some dinner. All you need to do is tell me.”

  His eyes drifted up to my face. “You’re doin’ it, sweetheart.”

  I gave him a small smile.

  He looked to the street, still touching my hand.

  I scooched my hip against the side of the chair, leaned into him and dropped my head to rest on his shoulder.

  We both sat in the cold, one of the final days we’d have before it chased us inside, and studied my street, letting its peace envelope us.

  Hix’s voice was less tight, not less exhausted, when he murmured, “Bourbon and a warmup would be good about now, babe.”

  I nodded my head still on his shoulder, lifted it up and set my book aside. I grabbed my blanket and cup of tea, got up and threw the blanket over my arm so I could take Hix’s hand.

  He walked me into my house.

  I threw the blanket over the back of the couch and he threw his jacket over it.

  I got him some bourbon.

  And we snuggled in my couch over mindless TV and warmed up before we went to bed, Hix took his time making love to me, and we fell asleep.

  I entered the auditorium feeling anxious.

  It was the night of Mamie’s recital.