Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
JENSEN
My heart thumps in tandem with the Jesus clock.
The minute we stepped into this goddamn room, my eyes fell on it, and suddenly, I was eight years old again, trying to scrape a meal out of the food I could lift from the gas station down the street.
My mother was always forgetting to buy food or spending the money on something else. Hunger makes an impression.
I tap the side of the pistol, staring at the opposite wall.
I never wanted to be here, ever again. The minute I see Brothers, I’m going to let him have it for dragging my ass back. That’s going to be sooner than Della thinks because, while I was relieving myself in the ditch, I was also sending a text.
No hello, how’ve you been since you made me believe you could fill the empty place where I never had a father and then ruined my life? Just a place and a time tomorrow morning.
I’ll drop Della at the location Jack secured for us and the horses.
Then, I’ll give Brothers Boyd a piece of my fucking mind.
I close my eyes, leaning my head against the door. Without meaning to, I sleep soundly until the sun cracks through the godawful paisley curtains.
My neck cracks as I push myself upright. Della is still asleep, a little lump under the covers. I stand, shaking my leg to get the cramp from my foot. She stirs, sitting up, and my lower stomach jerks.
She’s beautiful, hair messy around her face. It’s easy to see why Leland wanted her despite her lowly beginnings. I know because I want her too, despite everything. I nudge the edge of the bed.
“Get up,” I say. “We need to hit the road.”
She grumbles, pushing off the sheets. She’s in a t-shirt and panties, no bra. Her nipples are hard beneath her shirt. I look away, going to pull the chair from the door. By the time I’m done, she’s got her clothes back on.
I leave the key on the pillow, and we get back into the rental truck. She’s blinking in the harsh sun coming down the road, cutting between the mountains. It rained, and steam rises from the cement, the air thicker than cream.
“Let’s get some food,” I say. “Then, we’ll get to the house Jack has for us.”
“Where’s that at?”
“Red River Gorge.”
“Not too far, right?” she sighs.
“Not far. Better than being in that motel room with Clockface Jesus breathing down my neck,” I murmur.
She laughs.
“What?” I say.
She shakes her head. “You’re just…a mess of flavors I wasn’t expecting.”
“That a bad thing?”
There’s a flash of the Della I met in Montana as she smiles, turning to look out the window. “No, I like it,” she murmurs. “You’re different. It’s good.”
I clear my throat. “I’m not angry with you,” I say finally.
She doesn’t turn to meet my eyes when I glance over, but I see her nose twitch as she sniffs. “I know,” she says. “But if you were, I’d understand. You feel whatever you need to feel. I’m sorry for hurting you.”
I’m lighter for hearing that, but I’m not evolved enough to do more than clear my throat and let the subject drop. Usually, I’m good at holding a grudge, but I can’t be angry with her any longer.
She’s not doing anything wrong. She’s just trying to be a good mother, only twenty-three and already overburdened.
It’s not fair—not for her, not for my mother, not for me, or for her boy.
I force my thoughts out of the past. Now that it’s light, I’m soaking in the sight of the mountains, the green, brushy hills that boast foliage so thick, there are places where the sun never shines.
We make good time on the state route, but we’re choked up by all the little towns teetering over the roads.
Most of them are empty, paint peeling on gas stations with flickering signs.
Then, we’re back in the open, and it’s the most beautiful place in the world.
We stop and get breakfast to-go at a tiny diner on the side of the road. Everything is exactly how I left it. The mountains never change.
The house is thirty minutes through the winding roads of the Daniel Boone National Forest. I know these hills, but it’s still a shock navigating the hairpin turns and places where the road is washed out.
It’s about noon when we finally pull off and travel a half mile up a gravel drive.
At the end sits a small, whitewashed house with a porch off the front.
There’s a rusted out car covered in vines by the mailbox. I park next to it and cut the engine.
“This is it,” I say.
She cranes her neck, soaking it all in. I can’t tell for sure, but it looks like her lip trembles.
This is home to her, as it was to me.
I get out, grabbing our things, and step onto the porch. The wood groans beneath my boots. Jack said the door was unlocked. I test it, and it swings in, revealing a tiny lower level that looks almost like the trailer I grew up in.
My chest is tight. Della walks past me, looking around.
“This looks like the trailer I grew up in,” she says.
I don’t say anything. Up above us, there’s a loft with a queen bed. I presume the door just off it is the bathroom. Downstairs has only a kitchen, a dining table coated in dust, and a couch beneath the loft.
“I might clean it up if we’ll be here for a while?” she says.
“Indefinitely,” I say.
My heart is beating sideways. There’s something lodged in my throat that I just can’t swallow. Silently, I set the bags on the table and cross the room, opening the breadbox. Inside is a pistol, a little terrier engraved into the handle.
“Thank God for Jack Russell,” I murmur.
She watches as I take it out and set it on the table. “Who is he? You act like he’s your guardian angel or something.”
“More like the useful devil on my shoulder.” I check the chamber, and it’s loaded. “I’m leaving. You stay here until I get back and shoot anybody who walks up here who isn’t me.”
Her brows crease instantly. “What?”
“I have business,” I say. “Keep the doors locked. I’m going to pull the truck into the barn with the horses.”
“Horses?”
“Jack sent us two.”
I leave, locking the door. She’s confused, but I can’t talk right now, or I might spill more than I should. My stomach is an uneasy void as I get in the truck. The entire plane ride, I wondered how I would feel coming back and seeing him again.
Now, I know—dread and anger.
I turn on the radio. Then, I turn it off. The hills fly by until they turn flat and become road signs along the fringes of the highway. Then, I’m through the outskirts of Lexington and on the west side. The closer I get, the whiter my knuckles go.
The parking lot lets up a puff of dust as I pull in.
I cut the engine and sit in silence for a moment.
I tongue the inside of my cheek, tasting a bite mark.
I think I put it there in my sleep. The windows of the diner are tinted, and it looks like it got a new paint job.
Other than that, everything is just the way I left it.
I get out and walk across the lot through the front door. Inside, the blast of air conditioning makes the sweat on my neck prickle. The interior got a makeover. Everything is clean, shiny linoleum and vintage metal seats.
The waitress behind the counter lifts her hand and calls out that I can sit anywhere. I nod, scanning the room.
My eyes fall on a sloping figure.
Now I feel something else, and it’s fucking grim.
He’s sitting on the left, second from the back row, in his Sunday clothes. No suit, more ruggedly casual than I remember him being. His face is lightly lined, his temples frosted. Age has been kind to him physically, but I see the years in the hooded eyes that turn on me.
I cross the room and sink down opposite him.
He takes the unlit cigarette from his mouth and sets it in his coffee saucer. I can smell him. He’s wearing the same cologne or deodorant. We look at each other. I expected to feel like I’m nineteen again seeing him, but I don’t.
Instead, I feel like I’m back from the wilderness, big enough to face him this time.
“Long time, no see,” he drawls.
The waitress appears. I order a black coffee, same as him. Then, it’s just us again.
I clear my throat.
“Where did you bury them?” I ask.
He clears his throat too. “How do you know I did?”
“Because I know you.”
His lids flicker. “They’re in my family plot.”
“All three?”
He nods.
“How did you know where I was?” I say, keeping my voice low.
The waitress appears and sets my coffee down. They’re still using the same mugs.
“It’s still Folgers,” he says.
“You heard my question,” I say.
He sighs, leaning back in his seat. It’s hard to believe he’s real after years of him living only in my memory. But here he is, flesh and blood, with the same face, the same drowsy existence, like nothing phases him.
“You said you wanted to be a cowboy,” he says. “I looked west. It wasn’t hard to find you.”
“Who told you?”
“You sleep with a lot of women, Jen. One of them was bound to talk.”
“Jesus.” I look out the window. “That’s invasive.”
He’s quiet until I force my eyes back. His expression is soft.
“I still love you like my own blood,” he says.
“I’m disappointed you didn’t die,” I say. “I’m sure you had ample opportunity.”
His face splits into a lazy grin. “Still a funny guy, huh?”
My mind goes back to what I said to Della about her being funny because she’s fucked up. That’s another thing she and I have in common. I take the photograph out of my pocket and slap it down on the table.
“You dropped this,” I say.
He picks it up. “Guess this doesn’t mean anything to you?”
“No,” I say. “And it was pretty low sending it with her.”
“So you like her, though?”
“Don’t talk to me about Della Caudill,” I say.
His grin flashes again. “I thought you might.”
I take a beat to calm down. “Actually, how about you talk about her? Why did you send her to me? You could have done this yourself.”
He shakes his head. “The Caudills are more powerful now. Matthew Caudill is dead, his son, Leland, is encroaching on my territory. They’re backing me into a corner, slowly.”
I study him. Of course, an ulterior motive. “So you’re gonna kneecap him by helping his wife take his son?”
“Yeah, something like that,” he says. “I thought you might want to help, given what the Caudills did to you.”
I narrow my eyes. “You can’t manipulate me the way you used to.”
“I never did—”
I lean in. “Yes, you did,” I say. “We sat right here at this table, and you convinced me it somehow wasn’t your fault that Holly did that shit to me. And I fucking believed you.”
“Everything I said that day was the God honest truth,” he says.
“Fuck yourself.”
“No, thanks.”
“I was a kid,” I manage. “And you…you were old enough to know that.”
He withdraws, leaning back. The unlit cigarette flicks against his thumb. It reminds me of the way Della picks at her nail until it bleeds. Controlled pain.
“I regret that,” he says finally. “If I could go back and change things, I would do it in a heartbeat.”
I can’t speak. There’s so much anger in me right now, I can’t.
There are no words to describe the nights I spent staring at the ceiling and wishing none of it had happened.
I want to go back to before what Holly did changed me fundamentally.
Now, I can’t stop grieving over the man I could have been without her, without Brothers swooping in to pick over my bones when she was done.
“I could kill you,” I say finally.
“I’d be honored.”
Nothing is more frustrating than hating someone who won’t fucking hate me back. Impassive, he flicks his lighter and inhales.
“God, you never stop, huh?” I run a hand over my face.
“Love is a terrible thing,” he says. “I think mine is the worst of it. I’ve never loved anybody who wasn’t worse off for it.”
He must have changed, because he’s right about that. Nobody’s love was more destructive to me than his, except for Holly.
But understanding doesn’t mean I owe him a damn thing. If we weren’t in the middle of a diner with a few dozen people around, I’d hit him with a right hook and walk out with his blood on my knuckles—just because I can do that now, and he can’t hurt me back.
None of them can.
I don’t need anyone, so I don’t owe anyone anything.
I push my cold coffee back and stand. “I’m gonna help Della. You stay out of my way.”
He gives me a slow smile. “You haven’t really changed, Jen.”
“Goodbye.” I tap two fingers down on the table, looking him in the eye. “And don’t fucking call me Jen.”
I turn to leave.
“You’re gonna need my help getting Landis,” he drawls. “Go check out that house and tell me if you think this is a one-man job.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” I say.
I walk out, knowing all my words went in one ear and right out the other. He’s definitely going to contact me again. That’s fine. Today was for me. I needed to get those words out.
All I can think about as I pull out of the lot and drive away is how Della feels like grace, like the first time I’ve been offered forgiveness instead of being asked for it. I wonder if I showed her all my scars, if I told her all the worst details of my past, she would still feel like that.
I have a notion she might.
Della is a sharp woman, but with me, I discovered softness I don’t think she shows very often.
I’m hurt that she was working with Brothers, but I hope she knows I really don’t hate her for it.
She’s not a bad person. She’s a victim. And yet, she let me walk out without insisting I hold her problems above my own.
She likes the bitterness in me. You’re a mess of flavors, Jensen. She said it was a good thing we’re two different people with iron wills, not caring that I’m damaged goods.
My very first relationship, the one with Holly, shaped the way I relate to sex, to love, so deeply. Since then, I’ve never been more to anyone than whatever the person I’m with needs me to be.
I learned to be charming, to be good in bed to earn that five star rating the next morning. But with Della, the minute the masks came off, I cared enough not to show her a false front. To her, I don’t think I’m just a commodity, or she wouldn’t have said those things in the car this morning.
The facade came tumbling down. We fought it out, but neither one of us walked away. And here I am, going back to her like we mean something.
My fingers tighten on the wheel.
Grace.
It hits harder than a right hook.