Page 75 of Jensen

I nod. Am I?

“Good girl.”

He gets up, depositing me on the bed, and goes to the tiny bathroom in the corner. My fists clench and unclench, sore and bloody. My fingernails feel tacky. He stands in the doorway in silhouette and runs a hand over his face. Then, he turns on the shower and disappears. I don’t move, stunned.

“You coming in or not?” he calls.

His walls are up, good and hard, but he’s still offering an olive branch. Like a cautious cat, I climb from the bed and creep to the shower.

He’s a wavy, tan outline behind the fogged glass. I glance at the mirror. I’m a mess, faint crimson on my cheek where I laid my head against him. I wipe it back, desperate to get his blood off me.

“Get in here, Della,” he says.

Head dipped, I obey. Our eyes meet, and I look away, turning my back to him. His energy is bothering me. It’s…rude and pushy. I think I hear him laugh faintly, but before I can look, he’s got his hands in my hair. I freeze as he starts washing it, working suds into my scalp, then down my neck, over my body. And finally, he washes the blood from my fingers.

I swallow. “Do you need me to clean you up?”

“I washed myself while you were deciding if you wanted to get in here or not,” he says.

“I mean your scratches.”

“No, I can walk that off.”

I stare up at the yellowed wall, a fine crack where it meets the ceiling. “You in the habit of walking everything off?”

“Only way to go forward.”

I let him rinse me clean. We stand there, naked in more ways than one. Finally, I offer him a tiny smile, even though I’m not feeling it.

“At least we did that here and not under the Clockface Jesus,” I whisper.

His head drops back, and he laughs. My heart soars at the first sight of that dimple in a while. Up until now, I’ve found him sexy in a raw, offbeat way. But now, I see he’s handsome, beneath all the wear and tear. He’s blue-collar-backwoods-pretty. My type, it turns out.

“Clockface Jesus don’t factor into this,” he says.

There’s a silence in which I try and fail to figure him out again. He shuts the water off, gets out, and hands me a towel. I watch him dry himself, shaking his hair like a dog. Then, he’s gone back to the bedroom, and I hear him climb down the ladder.

When I step back out, he’s in the kitchen in his boxer-briefs, leaning against the counter and eating his plate of food, scratched up chest and all.

I get back into bed.

I think he might be actually insane.

What does it say about me that I like that?

He eats. Then, he comes back and gets in bed. I’m getting whiplash trying to figure out what’s going on between us, and some of that is my fault. But tonight, we’re in a new place. He fucked me and ate my cornbread, and now we’re going to sleep together like a real couple or something.

“Mind if I smoke?” he says finally.

“Open the window,” I whisper.

He gets up, slides up the loft window, and takes a cigarette from his pants on the floor. Then, he puts the pants on, leaving the belt hanging. His lighter flicks. He inhales and holds.

“You going someplace?” I whisper.

“Mightwalk around a bit after this,” he says. “See the horses before bed.”

“You don’t sleep much.”