Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
DELLA
I can’t sleep after our conversation at the table. My heart is tender, thinking about Jensen, about Landis. Every day I can’t hold him, breathe in the baby shampoo scent of his fine hair, is pure torture.
He’s my baby. I need him within arm’s reach.
And yet, if I let myself think about it, I’ll break into a million pieces.
I’m getting damn good at not thinking.
The moon is so full, it’s as bright as early morning.
Jensen lays on his back, sheet pulled to his waist. I toss and turn beside him and think a lot about what comes next.
There’s a pull in me that tells me to trust him.
But the other part, the rational side of my brain, doesn’t trust men, not after my experience with Leland.
Then, there’s a third voice that tells me I don’t have a choice.
Brothers got me this far. Now, it’s time for me to let Jensen take over.
I’ve gotten further with them than on my own.
He’s breathing evenly, deeply. I glance at him. His hand rests on his stomach, perfectly still.
I ease to my right side, laying my arm beneath my head. “Jensen.”
“Hmm?”
The sound is a low hum in the dark. I love his voice, all the husk to it. That deep, brittle rasp always sends a tingle down my spine.
“Who was the woman?” I whisper.
Silence.
“What do you mean?” he says finally.
I reach over and trace the cross tattooed on his ribs. He doesn’t move, but down beneath the sheet, there’s a twitch, then a slow lengthening.
Jensen is an enigma, a dark underbelly, a mind so quick that it keeps up with mine. But he’s also slow decay, like a body left in a field. Yet, I see that he’s fighting with everything he’s got, trying to bring himself back to life. In that way, we’re one and the same.
“Who did this to you?” I whisper.
“Nothing was done to me,” he says.
I lift my head. He doesn’t move, so I sit upright and slide my naked body over his, straddling him. He’s hard beneath me, separated by a sheet so thin, I feel the hotness of his arousal through it.
“You are a liar, Jensen Childress,” I say.
“So are you,” he says.
That’s not true, but it pokes a hole in my accusation right away. I bend over him, brushing his mouth with mine. He tastes like a man, all flesh and blood and strength that scares me if I think about it too hard.
And yet, it’s my weakness, my downfall.
“Tell me,” I breathe. “What was her name?”
“Holly,” he says quietly.
“Who was she?”
He clears his throat, a hand on my waist. I straighten, his body smooth between my thighs.
“She was Kyle’s mom,” he says. “I was eighteen, she was about forty-five. We had a relationship that lasted a few years.”
My stomach sinks.
“What did she do?” I whisper.
He releases a short sigh. “She was part of Brothers Boyd’s drug operation, a honeypot for drawing men in, getting them in so deep, they couldn’t get out. She pulled me in, and I had nowhere to go. So, I stayed, and then Brothers swooped in.”
My chest aches for him. “What happened to her?”
“The Caudills killed her when they killed my grandmother and Kyle.”
“I’m so sorry,”
He lifts his hand, flipping it. “I was so brainwashed, I had her initial tattooed on my thumb. Took most of that shit off with a power sander.”
“What the fuck?” I whisper.
He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. It was almost twenty years ago.”
It does matter, and we both know it, or he wouldn’t have reacted like that when I told him Brothers sent me to find him.
I touch his chest, right where there’s a smattering of hair between his pectorals.
It rises, then falls slowly, but below his skin, I know he’s hurting.
It’s so strange that our deepest wounds are rarely visible.
“Does it matter?” he says finally.
I wet my dry lips. “If it matters to you, then yes.”
“It did,” he says. “But I think about it less now.”
It sounds like there was more to that sentence. I wait, but he doesn’t speak.
“Why?”
His palm slides up my bare thigh. “You’re a talker,” he says.
A snarky remark comes up my throat, but I swallow it back.
Truthfully, I’m not all that much of a talker.
I was quiet for the entire four years I was married to Leland.
It wasn’t until I laid eyes on Jensen in the ring that I felt like I had something to say.
Maybe because there was finally someone who wanted to listen. Now, I can’t fucking shut up.
“It’s my turn,” he says.
“For what?” I frown.
“Asking you to be honest.”
“There’s really nothing you don’t know already,” I say, shrugging. “Leland is an asshole.”
His touch is gentle, patient, like he’s trying to soothe the truth out of me.
“If that were the case, baby, you’d have told me already,” he says.
My throat tightens. There’s a raw ache where my heart sits. He lifts me off his lap and sets me against the pillows. Then, he disappears down the ladder. His footsteps sound on the lower floor for a moment before he reappears with a bottle of bourbon in his hand.
“Here,” he says, handing it over.
“Trying to get me drunk?” I ask, brow arching.
He shakes his head. “Let’s play a game.”
“A game?” I whisper, wrapping my fingers around the cold glass.
“Every time you want to lie, take a drink,” he says. “The more you drink, the more the truth’s gonna come out. Either way, we’re both fucked, baby.”
I stare down at the open bottle. The top must be downstairs on the counter. I can smell the faint scent of alcohol.
“The cross tattoo,” I say. “What is it?”
“Goddamn,” he says, and he takes the bourbon and drinks from it. “What did Leland do to you?”
I take the bourbon back and have some, shivering as it burns down to my stomach.
“What did Brothers do to you?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says. “It was something to do with a job he sent me on. I remember before and the morning after, but not what he said to me that night.”
“Were you drunk?”
He nods, a quick jerk of his head. “I think so. Now, why did you really marry Leland?”
I meet his pale eyes in the dark. He doesn’t back down.
“He got me pregnant,” I whisper. “I was scared. He told me I couldn’t do it without him. My baby is a Caudill, so he wasn’t willing to just walk away.”
A muscle flickers in his jaw. “How did you get pregnant?”
I shrug, unconsciously sliding into my default defense mechanism. “Sex. You know, how it usually goes. We’ve talked about this.”
“Della,” he says, voice low.
I take a drink, even though it’s not my turn. “What?”
“Tell me the truth.” His head is cocked, pale eyes boring into me.
I sniff, trying to ignore the lump in my throat.
“It was a stupid mistake,” I say, waving a hand.
“We’d been sleeping together for a few months, he’d always used protection.
That night, I thought he was wearing a condom, but he wasn’t, and he thought I thought that was fine.
We got our wires crossed, and I ended up pregnant. ”
I wipe my cheek, quickly so he doesn’t see.
“Della,” he says again.
I look up. His face is raw, just all naked in the darkness.
“If you could swing at him right now, would you?” he says.
My mind goes back to that night, just weeks after Leland and I met.
The confusion, the sinking sensation in my stomach like I was being pulled into an undertow.
The tingling shock that kept me from speaking the racing thoughts in my head.
The denial, the grief, the slow erosion of anger I never allowed myself to feel.
And yet, with Jensen, right here, I think I can.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Would you?”
His lids flicker. “I don’t know,” he says. “But what happened to me is different.”
I shift closer until I’m in his lap. He takes the bourbon and has a drink. His arm slides around my waist, pulling me close. Our breath mingles, sharp with liquor.
“Let me hit him for you,” he breathes.
I hear it in the distance.
A shattering.
The ending of one part of my life and the beginning of another.
I fall in love with him, all at once. My arms slide around his neck and our mouths meet.
Hunger courses through my veins, drowning out all the pain.
Distantly, I hear him set the bottle aside.
Then, he’s lifting me to the pillow and laying me down.
Eagerly, I spread my thighs, and he puts his body down between them.
I shouldn’t love him.
We barely know each other.
And yet, I have never known anyone as visceral and beautiful as Jensen Childress.
He’s complicated, damaged, and so damn stubborn.
But from the moment I laid eyes on him, I’ve become more myself than I’ve ever been.
I don’t have to try to speak my mind. It just tumbles out.
I never think about making myself different for him.
We just fit together, like two broken pieces of one whole.
But more than that, he’s offering me a choice, something Leland never gave me.
Revenge.
Or walking away.
I pull back, his taste on my lips. “I just want Landis,” I whisper. “Then, I never want to see Leland again.”
He doesn’t speak. I run my hand over his warm, bare chest. His body feels so good, strong and firm. The corner of his mouth turns up, and he bends down to kiss me briefly.
“What was that for?” I whisper.
“You’re a good woman, Della,” he says. “You’ve got a quick tongue but a good heart. Better than he ever deserved.”
His compliment makes my cheeks heat. “You seem to like my tongue fine when it’s in your mouth,” I say.
He kisses me again. God, he makes my toes curl.
He pulls back. I lay my hands on his warm sides and run them over his skin.
One hand skims the raised cross. I trace it softly with my middle finger.
Slowly, his cock hardens against my lower belly.
His eyelids flicker, like it’s pleasurable and a little painful all at once.
“Jensen,” I whisper. “Tell me.”
“It’s like a gang tattoo,” he says roughly. “I had to get it when I joined Brothers’ operation.”
I touch the vertical line. “Does he have one?”
“Yes,” he says, voice grim. “We all did.”
“A cross is a little…hypocritical. It doesn’t make sense, the way he is with church,” I breathe. “Brothers says one thing, but he does another.”
He shifts off me, sliding to his back. I roll onto my side, still resting my fingers on the cross. He doesn’t seem to mind.
“Brothers is all fucked up,” he says finally. “He’s from one of those real fundamentalist sects, snake handlers. He lied, told me he was Baptist for a while. He’s not religious, not the way you’re thinking.”
“Then why?” I whisper.
“I think he acts out his past,” he says. “Maybe he hopes he can rewrite over what’s already been written.”
“But he doesn’t actually believe all the things he talks about,” I muse.
“Brothers Boyd is a deeply fucked up person,” he says flatly. “Maybe I’m the same.”
“How do you mean?”
He shifts, then he sits up and reaches for the bottle, but he doesn’t drink.
“The pain, the rough shit, that’s what she did to me,” he says. “It was consensual, at least insofar as it could be. But it really messed with my head.”
My heart hurts so badly, I can’t move. Deep inside, I sense a part of him that speaks to the denial in me. Neither of us want to be victims. And yet, here we are, all wrapped up in our pain, naked in the sheets together with nothing but a shared bottle to dull the memories.
“You don’t have to do it,” I say.
He lifts his head, face sober. “I want to do it. I like hurting you when you enjoy it. And I like it when you hurt me.”
I push the sheets from my thighs and spread them. He sets aside the bottle and lays back down between them. Our lips brush, breath melding.
“Then hurt me,” I whisper. “All you want.”
“Why?” He reaches one hand between our bodies. The head of his cock slides into me, stretching me, filling me with familiar heat.
“Because,” I breathe. “It makes me feel like a woman.”
He understands a lot, but not those words. I don’t expect him to, but that’s alright. He doesn’t know he’s letting me rewrite the past every time he gives me a choice. He’s allowing me to open myself up in my own time, on my own terms, with a man that I’ll never have to wash away in the river.
His stomach ripples as he thrusts, grinding hard enough in me that pain throbs deep inside.
“A woman,” he repeats, barely audible. “Or my woman?”
My nails pierce his upper spine. “Your woman.”