Page 67 of Jensen

This feeling is something Leland would never understand, something he never wanted to understand. But Jensen understands.

Heknows the Jesus clock isn’t just a clock. It’s the distant memory of being a kid in these hills. The getting by but barely. It’s scraping together pennies to get an ice cream from the cooler in the dollar shop. It’s my hair standing on end, wondering if I’m going to hell every Sunday morning. It’s a hot gravel road leading to a two-bedroom at the end of it. It’s becoming an adult and realizing everyone older was so broken, all the time, just barely holding it together. It’s being on the other side of that and seeing it all with grown up eyes.

Somebody coughs outside, breaking the spell. He blinks, wiping his sweaty face with his palm.

“You take the bed,” he says.

He’s drawing a line in the sand. I understand, but it hurts. Numbly, I start pulling off my boots and jeans. The chair scrapes across the floor, then hits the door as he jams it below the knob. I slip out of my bra, leaving me in my shirt and panties. I’ve never been able to sleep in my clothes, otherwise I would. I crawl beneath the covers, not looking at him.

“Della,” he says.

I lift my head. He’s standing at the end of the bed.

“We’ll get your kid back,” he says.

I’m so close to tears. “Thank you,” I whisper. “Please sleep with me.”

He doesn’t move.

“Sleep with you?” he says finally. “Or sleep with you?”

I start to speak, but he leans his knee on the bed. Cowed, I slide to my back. He moves his body over mine, and his mouth dips. Hot breath skims over my lips, but he doesn’t kiss me.

“That clock on the wall,” he says. “We had one like that when I was a kid.”

We’re not alone in the room anymore. Jensen’s ghosts are standing all around us, watching how our mouths almost touch. I lay my palm on his chest. It’s hot and damp.

“I feel something for you,” I say. “Nothing changed for me.”

He doesn’t speak.

“Please sleep with me.” I push the sheet down and take his hand, pressing it to my chest.

He looks down at where his palm sits between my breasts. Then, he pulls back. “I’m not sleeping tonight,” he says. “You sleep. I’m going to sit in that chair and make sure no one comes through the door.”

He withdraws, tapping the lamp to turn it out. The chair creaks. My eyes adjust slowly as I sink into the musty sheets. He sits in profile—his head is leaned back, one knee cocked, one leg extended.

There’s a gun in his hand, rested on his thigh.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The clock is the only sound in the room. I watch him until I can’t stay awake any longer, and he never moves from that chair.

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.