Page 120 of Jensen

His eyes glitter. “I didn’t bring you home to use you,” he says. “I want you back, Jen. Come home, take this city with me.”

There’s a clock ticking somewhere. The sound drags me back, to my mother’s trailer, to the motel in Harlan. It’s making it hard to think.

“You were meant for this,” he says.

I wasn’t, though. It was the path I was spit out onto, a boy with nothing but the need to fill his stomach, to feel love. That path led me west. It made me into a calloused man, and that man doesn’t have it in him to forgive anymore.

In my head, we’re standing in the summer heat, beneath the oak tree. I toss the gun back onto the bed. He takes a step closer. I surge, and this time, when I swing my fists, I’m better than him.

He takes it, head whipping to the side. Blood spreads over his cheekbone. Then, instinct kicks in, and he’s hitting back. My lower spine collides with the edge of the bed. My already-bruised body sears. I vault to my feet just as he comes at me, catching me in the chest. Fuck, he’s still strong.

I turn on him, vision red.

His hands rise in surrender, palms out.

“Stop, Jen. Stop it.” He clears his throat, jaw twitching as blood leaks from it. “She went of her own accord. I just facilitated it.”

“Of course, she went,” I breathe. “He’s got her son.”

“What was your plan? Tell me how you were going to get her son back from Leland. Because you can admit it—you have no cards.”

“I was going to go in there and take the kid,” I say. “And run.”

It sounds pretty stupid now that I’m saying it out loud, but I’ve done this kind of thing out west before, and it worked. But that was with the Sovereign Mountain boys, with Deacon Ryder, sometimes Jack Russell. Here, I’m at a disadvantage. But I can shoot a quarter in the dark, and I can fight like hell in the pit. I could have done it. It just would have taken some figuring out.

The anger drains out of me. Being fucked over by him is a broken record at this point. That’s all he’s ever done.

“Look at me,” he says.

I drag my eyes up. He’s shining with sweat, scuffed up.

“You killed Pat Pretty,” he says. “Not me. I didn’t drive you west. I would have kept you safe.”

“I would never have been in that trailer if it weren’t for you.”

“And you’d never have been here if it weren’t for a couple thousand other things,” he drawls. “Time to face up, Jen. You can’t keep blaming me for what happened to Cherry.”

My chest is tight and cold. “So who’s fault is it?” I whisper.

“Matthew and Leland Caudill. They killed your family. They killed my brother.”

“So, what? So I help you take them out, you get all the Lexington territory unopposed,” I snap, taking a step closer. “You get everything you wanted, and I just have to help you, or I lose Della?”

His eyes glint. “Not everything I wanted.”

The air is heavy with the last twenty years of my life. I’m hollow, like the empty place left by the man who fathered me and scarred by the man who stepped into that space but failed to fill it.

“What do you want from me?” I manage.

He lifts his hand. “Just for you to know…I never meant to hurt you. Everything I told you in the diner was the truth.”

My eyes sting. Maybe it’s sweat getting in my eyes.

“So you want me back because Jem’s gone?” I spit. “Swap out one warm body for another, huh?”

His face stays the same, but his tongue flicks the inside of his cheek. The light goes out in his eyes, and he’s behind walls again. Finally, he clears his throat.

“I promised Della I’d get her son back,” he says. “I will, with or without your help.”