Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
DELLA
Wrecked by guilt, I let him sink down to the floor with me.
We curl up, backs against the cabinets, and he pours two shots of whiskey.
He’s still in his pants and boots, but he gave up his shirt for me.
It smells like sweat, like the stockyards.
That’s alright. It’s nothing I’m not used to already. And I love the way he smells.
Guilt is a heavy sin.
I take a sip from my glass. It’s alright, not as good as what we’ve got back home, but it puts the fire back in my bones.
“I was thinking,” he says.
“Yeah?”
He’s staring straight ahead at his glass. “I was thinking I’d like to keep seeing you. How do you feel about that?”
The bottom drops out of my stomach.
“Jensen,” I whisper.
He rolls his head to the side. “That’s a yes or a no?”
“I’ve got to tell you something,” I say, fragile, like the husk of my words are all that are left over.
My vision wavers. I have another sip, a bigger one this time. It’s only making me drunker, and I need to keep my wits about me if he throws me out.
I blink hard.
“I need help,” I whisper.
He sits upright, shifting to face me. “What kind of help?”
My lip trembles. “I got a baby, a little boy.”
His eyes flick down. I know he saw the scar from my cesarean. He was just too polite to ask.
“He in trouble?” he asks, voice dropping.
Yes, he’s in danger of growing up under the thumb of the man who destroyed my life. In danger of becoming a monster like Leland someday. And I’m in danger of looking in his eyes and not knowing him.
“His father took him from me, but he’s not in danger,” I push out. “I left him, and he took him from me. I can’t see him unless I go back. He’s a big, powerful person. I can’t win in court against him.”
The strangest expression crosses his face. As soon as it’s there, it’s gone.
“Who’s his father?”
My tongue flicks out, tasting a bit of whiskey on my lip.
“Leland Caudill,” I whisper.
He doesn’t move, not an inch, but his pupils dilate like a bomb bursting. There’s a silence. We’re both tensed. Then, he reaches behind his back, and I surge forward, dropping my glass. It shatters as his hand snaps around my throat, shoving me back against the cabinets.
Click.
He’s got his revolver pressed to my neck.
“Say that again,” he breathes, inches from my face. “Louder.”
The taste of his cum is still on my tongue. Now, it’s edged with fear.
“Leland Caudill.”
The words hang between us. The dark kitchen was cozy a moment ago. It feels so grim now, all shadows and the sober glitter of his eyes.
“How?” he spits softly.
“How?” I whisper.
“How’d he knock you up? One night stand?”
I shake my head, swallowing. It’s hard past the cold barrel of the gun. “He married me.”
“He married you?”
He stands, pacing the length of the kitchen, then turning. It’s a relief to not be at gunpoint, but he’s still standing over me, well over six feet of muscle and anger and betrayal.
“You know Leland?” I whisper.
That wasn’t made clear to me prior to coming to Montana. All I was told was that Jensen had family problems with the Caudills, that he was uniquely situated to help me. Apparently, he’s a talent when it comes to figuring tough situations out. The best of the best.
“I know the Caudills,” he says flatly. “I don’t know Leland well, but I’m pretty goddamn aware of who he is. I just didn’t know he had a wife and a son.”
Silence.
“And I didn’t know I was fucking his wife, a Caudill woman,” he spits.
“I’m not his wife,” I interject.
He turns, gesturing with the gun. “Explain yourself then.”
“Can I stand?”
“No. You keep your ass right where it is, thanks.”
Cowed, I press my back hard to the cabinets. “I divorced Leland, but he won’t let me have my boy. Nobody goes against the Caudills, so he got full custody, no questions.”
My voice breaks. Inside my chest, it’s like I’m peeling back the skin on a newly healed wound. Every time I think about it, I want to sob. Not cry, but curl up in a ball and just sob my insides out.
Landis is my baby.
He needs to be with me.
I bite the inside of my cheek. My thumbnail aches—I’m tearing the skin on it again. His eyes flick down, then up to my face again.
“And Leland Caudill just…let you walk out?” he says.
“I had help,” I say.
He comes close, crouching to get eye level with me. “Who helped you?”
The only set of instructions I was given was to never answer that question. At least, not until I got him back to Kentucky. But that was before I fell right into his beautiful mountain eyes, his arms, and then his bed. Back when he was just a name and a face in a photograph.
“Tell me, Della,” he says.
I swallow, trying to give him the pleading eyes that sometimes worked on Leland. But Jensen is ice cold.
I mumble, trying to get it out.
“Speak up,” he snaps.
I tilt my chin up. “Brothers Boyd.”
Nothing changes, but the entire room goes cold. He’s looking at me like an animal, and I’m trying to figure out if he’s going to eat me. But not in a nice way, not the way he looked at me in the bedroom. No, this is colder than the dead of winter. He could be a different man.
Abruptly, he pulls back. “Come here.”
He takes me by the wrist and leads me out of the kitchen, up the stairs. Panicking, I start rethinking my choice to tell him. I should have stuck to the plan and told him in Kentucky, where Brothers could protect me. Now, I’m being pulled into his bedroom, and he’s shutting the door.
“Clothes off,” he says.
“What?” I whisper, backing up.
He uncocks the revolver. “Strip and get up on the bed. The faster you go, the easier this’ll be.”
The bottom falls out of my stomach. I’m usually pretty brave, but I don’t like what he’s saying.
“Please don’t,” I whisper, dipping my head to hide my tears. “I’ll leave, tonight.”
“No, you’re not going anywhere.”
The tears are coming so fast, I can’t hide them. I sniff, wiping at my face. He mumbles something under his breath, pushing past me to the bedside table. The drawer opens, then shuts.
“Do you need me to count?” he says. “Get up on the bed. Now.”
Miserably, I drag the shirt off. I’m so damn scared, I don’t notice he’s got something in his hand. Leland liked doing this kind of thing, pushing me to a place where I wondered if he was capable of being intimately violent. I look up at him, my lower lip trembling uncontrollably.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Della,” he says quietly.
The bed dips as I crawl up it, sitting against the headboard. His mouth thins, jaw tight. Cold metal touches my wrist, and I whip my head around as he clips a pair of handcuffs around me and fastens them to the headboard.
He turns, taking up the gun, and circles to the end of the bed.
“Alright, baby,” he says grimly. “You better have a real fucking good story to tell me, or we got problems.”
I know we’ve got problems regardless of what I say, so I may as well unload the whole truth, start to finish.
“Brothers wanted me to bring you back to Kentucky,” I say. “I think he wants you to work with him again. He knew I was trying to get away from Leland, and he’s not friendly with the Caudills, so he offered to help. I’m sorry, but I’m so desperate, Jensen. I need help getting my boy back.”
My voice breaks. He doesn’t.
“What do you want me to do?” he asks.
“Brothers said you were one of the most talented men he’d ever worked with, that you had a reason to want to see the Caudills hurt, same as him,” I say. “He said if you can’t get Landis back, nobody can.”
His jaw works.
“Brothers Boyd is the devil’s assbackwards evil twin,” he says finally. “You shouldn’t be fucking around with him.”
That makes me pause. His words are a little funny. Under other circumstances, I might have laughed if he weren’t saying them so seriously. But there’s real venom in his voice.
“What’s he want from you?” Jensen asks.
I shake my head. “Just you.”
He goes a little pale. “So you sold me out, huh?”
“I didn’t know you,” I shoot back.
“And knowing me changes this…how?”
“It changes everything.”
The words burst out, echoing through the room. His eyes widen in a quick flare, pupils retracting. There’s no way he’s going to lie and tell me the last few days meant nothing. Because after meeting him and all the things his touch made me feel, I’m never going to be the same woman.
Neither of us speak.
“How’d you know where to find me?” he asks finally.
“There’s a photograph in my purse,” I whisper. “Brothers gave it to me, along with a list of places I should check.”
He crosses the room, grabbing my purse and emptying it on the chair. The photograph falls out. He picks it up and goes completely still. His lips part as he stares at it, brow furrowed.
“Alright,” he says. He puts the gun back in his holster and shoves the photo in my pocket. “I’m gonna go have a fucking cigarette,”
He walks out, leaving me chained to the headboard. Pain, the worst kind, settles in like a cold front. It aches from my head to my feet.
More than anything in this world, I want my son back in my arms.
But now, I also want Jensen.
I fell so hard and fast, I didn’t realize I’m feeling things for him already, real, gut wrenching things that make me want to cry as he slams the front door.
I could have had this from the start. If Leland Caudill hadn’t seen me walk up to his table in the diner and decided he just had to have me because of some two dollar, secondhand dress that made my tits look good.
If he hadn’t knocked me up and put a ring I never wanted on my finger, I’d have had the opportunity to meet a man like Jensen.
But no, Leland couldn’t keep his hands to himself. For the sin of being desired, I was damned. And now, my heart is ripped in two—one part back in Kentucky with my little boy, and one part sitting all torn up in my chest.
Bleeding out.