Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
JENSEN
My nerves buzz all the way home. Surprisingly, it’s not from shooting two of the Caudills’ men.
No, that felt good, like revenge. It’s from the way she looked at me when she lifted her head, eyes burning, face flushed, breasts heaving.
Della is a wild thing, on the cusp of self-discovery.
I’m not sorry to be the man she’s discovering herself with.
We go back to the house. I glance over my shoulder the entire time, but nobody else follows us.
“Do you want help with the…blood?” she asks, climbing out of the truck.
I shake my head. “No. Go inside.”
She obeys, leaving me parked under the tree. Flies buzz over the bloody truck bed. I make a slow circle to double-check there isn’t a hose before I go to the barn, searching until I find two water tankards.
My horse, Godspeed, loiters in the barn. I take him out of his stall, tie the tankards together, and sling them over his back. We head down the hill to the creek. In the shadow of the pawpaws, I fill them up and secure them to his back so they don’t slide off on the way up.
When I get back, she’s out of her dirty clothes and in that blue sundress. It’s tight, clinging to her body, and she wears it without a bra, pink nipples just visible. Her eyes narrow as she watches me haul the water into the truck bed and wash it out.
“You hungry?” she says finally.
“Yeah,” I say, not turning as I hang the empty tankards back over Godspeed.
“Alright,” she says. “I’ll start dinner when you get back.”
I turn to go, but she lets out a low whistle.
My dick twitches, thinking about getting her into bed later.
For right now, I drop Godspeed’s reins and come to the edge of the porch.
She gives me a playful smile. I reach out, pushing my hand under her skirt to grip her thigh, and pull her to the edge.
“Give me a kiss, baby,” I say.
She leans in and kisses me, even though I’m still bloody and coated in dried sweat. If that didn’t stop her sucking my dick earlier, it won’t stop her giving me a kiss. I slide my hand up, touching just below her naked pussy.
I’m gonna miss her the minute she’s out of sight.
Her eyes follow me as I take Godspeed back down the ravine to get more water.
I’m filling the jug when I see a flicker in the mud.
Crawfish, lots of them. Della would like that.
Working quickly, I scoop them up one by one and take my handkerchief out, making a bundle to tuck under Godspeed’s makeshift harness. Then, we head back up the hill.
She’s sitting on the steps, bare feet in the sun.
“What’s that?” she asks when I hold the handkerchief out.
“Crawfish,” I say. “You can make them up for dinner so we have some meat. Think we’re all out of pork belly.”
She lifts it. “This is a lot. Thank you.”
I open my mouth to thank her too, but then I shut it. How can I articulate what I feel when she makes a meal for us? The last time a woman cared enough to make me food was when Holly was feeding me in exchange for my body and time.
“Thanks,” I push out.
She smiles, scrambling to her feet and going inside. I finish scrubbing out the truck and put Godspeed back in the pasture. Then, I go inside and wash the blood away in the shower. She comes to take my dirty clothes and disappears again.
When I return to the kitchen, she’s at the stove. Everything smells good, like the spices used in jambalaya. Without speaking, she hands me a bowl. It’s crawfish over rice and chopped greens. Spicy, warm, filling. I take a bite and swallow with difficulty past the lump in my throat.
She leans on the sink, eating from her own bowl.
“Can I ask you something?” she says.
I jerk my head.
“What Brothers said about your family…that’s true?”
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s true.”
“That must have hurt when you found out I was Leland’s wife.”
“You ain’t his fucking wife,” I correct. “But yeah.”
She watches me scrape the bowl and refills it without me asking. I swear, it fixes me every time she hands me a bowl of food. It makes all the meals Holly cooked, before she destroyed me, hurt less in my memory.
“What happened?”
“My grandmother, Cherry, was at her trailer,” I say flatly. “I guess Kyle must have not been too far, because he was there too—”
“Kyle?”
“My best friend. I fucked up a job for Brothers because I was on something, maybe drunk. I don’t remember. But I was upset, and I shouldn’t have been working that night. I shot one of the Caudills’ best dealers. They killed Cherry and Kyle in retaliation.”
Her lips part.
“I’m so sorry.”
I shrug, scraping the bowl. “It happened a long time ago.”
“Sometimes, I forget you’re so much older than I am. Everything is…fresh for me.”
“I don’t forget.”
A crease appears between her brows. It’s true.
Ever since she told me she was only twenty-three, I’ve been handling her with a little more care.
She’s got a lot more life experience than the average woman her age, but that’s not a good thing.
It didn’t make a difference for me when I got involved with Holly.
I set the bowl down. She picks it up.
“You still hungry?” she asks.
Hesitating, I consider it. There’s something about being home that makes me want to eat.
I was always hungry until I moved in with Brothers.
Truthfully, I don’t know how I grew properly with how little food I ate as a kid.
Everything after that was transactional.
I was fed so long as I was useful to whoever was paying the bills.
Della…she just feeds me, and it has me starving.
Her food tastes like life. It’s warm, spicy, and it sticks to my ribs.
“There’s plenty,” she says, taking the bowl.
I don’t stop her as she fills it for a third time. This time, we sit at the table opposite each other. She’s still working on her first bowl. I try to slow myself to match her pace.
“Clockface Jesus,” she says.
I glance up. “What?”
“That knot on the wall,” she says, pointing with her fork. “It looks like Clockface Jesus.”
I pause, leaning back. “You go to church growing up?”
She shrugs. “Yeah, everybody did.”
“What church?”
“Baptist,” she says. “Leland’s family is Catholic. It was more of a scandal in the holler that I got pregnant by a Catholic than by a crime lord.”
I laugh, and she smiles. “Funny how that is. And we all end up in the same place in the end,” I say.
“Where’s that?”
“On a cooling board.”
She sighs like she’s thinking about it. “You’re pessimistic. You don’t think there’s anything after?”
Into my head comes all the times I sat in church beside Brothers Boyd and wished I felt the way he did. That was one of the fundamental differences between us. He had hope, whereas I had no concept of something beyond.
I look at her, Della Caudill.
Maybe it’s foolish, but I see something to hope for now. Up ahead, like a light at the end of a dark tunnel.
Her lips part, tongue darting out to wet them.
“You really don’t think there’s anything?” she asks.
“Honestly?”
She nods.
“I think if there is hell, it’s the here and now.”
The house goes silent. She sniffs, staring into my bowl.
“You really think it’s all bad?” she says finally. “I’m not religious, but there’s got to be something good somewhere, don’t you think?”
I remember the night I saw her for the first time in the stockyard. How she blinded me, made me hopeful. That felt like heaven to me, but I can’t say that aloud.
“I don’t,” I say, my voice so low, it cracks.
“Well, I think there are good parts in life,” she whispers.
“Your kid. That’s a good part, I guess.”
Her mouth twitches into a smile, a little bittersweet. “Yeah, he is.”
“We’re animals, Della,” I say. “People aren’t good. We’re conscious, evil animals. We’re not above anything. We’re below it—hell, animals wouldn’t do the shit we do to each other. That’s the only thing that makes any sense to me, after the things I’ve seen.”
Her eyes are huge. I wish I hadn’t said all that aloud.
She deserves to have hope.
“You’re really hurt,” she says finally, voice soft.
“It was a long time ago, Della.”
“Jensen.”
“I did some bad shit. I was the one who hurt people,” I say. “Brothers might seem harmless, but he’s just like any other crime lord. Some of the things we did changed my fucking brain.”
Her throat bobs.
“Brothers said something to me once. He said, ‘guilt is a funny thing. It’ll make you mean if you let it’, and I never forgot that. He was right.”
A tear slips down her face.
“Jensen,” she whispers. “You don’t deserve the things that happened to you.”
“Who deserved them then?” The words come out before I can bite them back. “My grandmother? My best friend? That’s who took the bullet.”
She wipes her cheek and takes a shaky breath.
“I wish Leland thought like you,” she says. “He just hurts people and never stops to think about what he’s doing.”
“Maybe being self-aware is the only difference between him and I.”
She balks at that, shaking her head. “No, you’re nothing like him.”
I’m not sure if I believe that. She gets up, pushing my bowl aside and sitting on the edge of the table. Her hand touches my face. Soft, gentle. She strokes down my temple, along my jaw. Her thumb traces over my mouth.
“You should get some sleep,” she says. “You’re tired.”
I am tired.
We go up to the loft. It’s hot, the air thick with humidity. We both strip, and I sink to my back on the bed. She stands in nothing but the soft darkness of her hair. I don’t move. She leans in, touching the cross on my side. My lids flicker, and my body reacts.
Slowly, giving me the chance to say no, she straddles my body. My brain stays quiet. My body doesn’t revolt; it wants this. I want this, want her.
“Ride me,” I breathe.
She grips me in her hand, guiding me between her thighs.
Her head falls back, exposing her throat, as she sinks down.
We both gasp. There’s nothing in the world but this tiny loft and our bodies, naked from desire and summer heat.
I can’t keep from touching her. She moans, hips working, when I put my hand on her stomach, grazing her scar, then up, to lay on her heart.
She rises, falling, lost in her pleasure, and all I can think about is who we could have been if we’d just been given the one thing denied us both—a choice.