Page 9 of Hot Under the Collar

He’d also been on Lynne’s side of this kind of post-one-night-stand communication before. Now he knew how the other side felt. Lesson learned.

He called up one of his buddies to ask what happened with the butterflies and lie about how the rest of his own night went. He knew better than to mention Lynne to them. But when that was done, he was left alone with the memory of last night again. He stared at the ceiling, the taste of her still on his lips, and tried to shake it off.

What he didn’t know yet was how this night would come back to haunt him every year. Worse than any ghost. More like a wolf that couldn’t help but howl at the full moon every time it circled back around.

3

Lynne (Now)

Every morning after Halloween left Lynne feeling like she was hungover. Too little sleep, too much adrenaline, and a splash of regret, even if nothing significant had happened. This morning was no different.

She trudged down the stairs from her apartment above the bar around 10 a.m., still dressed in her sweatpants and comfy pajama shirt from last night. She’d barely managed to put on a bra.

It was freezing in there, which wasn’t right. She knew she’d left the heat on. So with an angry suspicion, she trudged to the men’s bathroom to find the window facing the alley propped open again. A few cigarette butts and ash lined the window sill, right beside a glaring wall sign that read “No smoking per the order of the Walsh County Health Department.” She cursed. As soon as she figured out who kept doing that, she was going to ban them from O’Donnell’s.

She closed the window and returned to the fate of her day. As she surveyed the damage, an exhausted sigh escaped her mouth. The floors needed deep cleaning, the trash bins overflowed, and the incident report about that drunk guy who got in a fight and broke some glass still needed to be logged. Where to even start? At least the margins would be glowing. Nights like Halloween and St. Patrick’s Day kept them in the green—one small consolation prize for the mess she was staring down.

She’d always liked decorating the bar for Halloween—stringing floating candles that hung from the ceiling, a life-size skeleton propped on the jukebox, an LED-lit jack-o’-lantern on every table, cobwebs in every corner. But the problem with being the owner-manager of a small-town bar after a night like Halloween was that you were the only one tying up the loose ends. Every. Goddamn. Time. Gone were the days of clocking out and letting her dad handle the breakdown. He’d been a saint, staying up later than tolerable or getting up early the next morning just so O’Donnell’s would be ready for the lunch crowd on November 1st. But not her. This year she was in charge, and she’d learned enough after Mardi Gras to take the entire day off to recalibrate.

She grabbed the mop and bucket, cringing at the memory of everything that came out of her mouth the previous night. It wasn’t so much that she was in the wrong. Not by any means. Ruby had been manipulative, and Leo wanted to pretend like this was just like every year. She was allowed to feel bitter toward both of them this morning. She’d get over it.

What bothered her, instead, was what Leo had said last night. She’d been so careful this time to map out multiple exit strategies beforehand, from sending Ruby to walk him home to saying something cruel. It had worked before—being cruel. But Leo wasn’t supposed to meet her wrath with warmth.

She surveyed where she might’ve gone wrong as she mopped. She hadn’t given him any mixed signals this year. Hadn’t made a first move. Hadn’t responded to his. But he still got under her skin somehow. Furious didn’t even begin to describe how she felt when he asked what she remembered about his dad. But when she’d turned it around, forced him into a corner with the same question, he met her with kindness—as if he’d cataloged every worthwhile detail about her dad since they’d met. She hadn’t anticipated that. She wasn’t entirely sure what she’d expected him to do or say. However he responded, it was supposed to create a rift between them—an excuse to keep her distance for another full year. But right now, all she felt was blindsided and embarrassed. So much for that plan.

Her mind traveled back to that first and only night they’d spent together six years ago. Yes, he was sexy. Yes, he was well-spoken. It was Leo March. The guy half the town of Autumn Ridge secretly—or not so secretly—had a crush on. But that night, he’d made her feel seen. Not just another notch in his belt.

Lynne was glad she and Leo’s older brother, Mike, had never gone that far in high school. If she’d crossed that line with Mike, Leo would’ve stayed exactly where he belonged—Mike’s little brother. Someone she never would’ve let herself look at that way. But since that boundary never existed, everything was messier now. Harder to ignore.

She remembered wanting to do more with Mike in high school, but it was out of curiosity and because they were teenagers. Being caught making out before either of them had a chance to tell their parents, then regularly skipping classes just to be alone, was about as much drama as her teenage self could muster. Her dad had high expectations for her grades, then he kept her busy with waitressing at the bar as soon as she turned sixteen. So any chance to indulge in more with Mike all but disappeared after that.

Then Mike left for the military as soon as he turned seventeen. She’d never blamed him for wanting to leave Autumn Ridge. As a couple, they’d already been fading instead of glowing up each year.

But Leo was … something else altogether. She couldn’t put him in a box in the past with Mike. Leo always seemed to be waiting in the background. Just one text or glance away from swallowing her entire focus. He was like gravity. Inevitable.

Only one other creature on this earth had ever made her feel as accepted as Leo: her old cat, Mazzy. Lynne stopped mopping long enough to clutch the silver filigree pendant that fell against her chest. Inside the barrel were Mazzy’s ashes. Her dad had found the scruffy, fluffy, cream-colored cat in the alley by their dumpster not long after her mom had abandoned them for some lover in California. Her dad let her name the cat, and she called it Mazzy Star after a band she’d been obsessed with ever since “Fade into You” was added to the jukebox. Mazzy was so beloved by the patrons, they even had a craft beer made in her honor. A blueberry stout.

But Mazzy passed just a few months before her dad fell ill. A double kick to the gut.

Lynne found herself grasping her urn pendant whenever she felt overwhelmed after that. When panic rose, that pendant was grounding and solid. The only person who’d ever watched her close enough to realize she did that, though, was Leo.

This was part of the problem. Truly. Everything she said, did, or thought had a sprinkling of Leo March inside it.

Lynne wiped her brow and grasped the pendant in her hand again as she decided what to tackle next. A shuffling sound came from somewhere down the back hall.

“Ruby?” Lynne called.

No one answered. But Lynne didn’t panic. The building was old, known for unfamiliar noises usually blamed on the plumbing. Or it could’ve been a trash bag shifting. It could’ve been anything.

“Ruby, is that you?” She knew it wasn’t. No one was supposed to be here but her.

She held the mop handle up like a baseball bat over her shoulder, ready to strike, and tiptoed down the back hall toward the utility closet. The door was ajar as usual. The hinge hadn’t properly latched for years. But something felt off about it now—the stale dust that kicked up from underneath. A shadow at the base of the closet shifted, and she heard the noise again. She pulled the door back slowly and peered inside. Nestled in a torn-open cardboard box, beside the collection of fire extinguishers Leo had given her, were two panicked eyes.

Lynne flipped on the light, and a pale, emaciated feral blinked up at her then hissed. It coiled around something protectively as the thing squirmed around.

Kittens. Five in total, busy nursing with their noses nuzzled against mama cat’s furry stomach, then peeling their big, blue-gray eyes up to look at Lynne one by one. The smallest of them mewed, lifted its paw, and stumbled over another kitten toward Lynne. Mama cat hissed and pulled the kitten back by its scruff.

“How on earth…?” Lynne’s voice trailed off as she remembered the men’s bathroom window to the alley, open all night. “Crap.”