Page 25 of Them Bones

“Who’s your boyfriend?” Cary asked again. It sounded like a threat.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Laney said, schooling her voice into a casual tone, aloof and disinterested. “He’s just a boy.”

“Thatboy –” Cary sneered “is looking at you like you’re a bitch in heat.”

She felt the temperature plummet as Shane cracked his knuckles, but she knew without even looking that he was trying to keep his anger in check. That he was worried about this – about her – and didn’t want to play it wrong.

“It’s nothing, Cary,” she said, waving a dismissive hand around. “He’s been helping Dustin at the bake shop, hanging around a bit…”

Cary’s face was mostly in shadow, but his eyes were locked on Shane. Trying to control her panic, Laney stepped forward and put her hand on his forearm. “It’s nothing, Cary. Just some Halloween fun, it’s nothing.”

She was screaming silently at Shaneplease understand – please understandas she tugged Cary towards the house, completely ignoring Shane as if he were a dead houseplant.

“Tell me what you’ve been up to. I’ll steal some of Dusty’s candy for you, ‘kay?”

She flinched as Cary raised his hand, but he just fingered the collar of her leather jacket.

“I missed you,” he said to her.

“I missed you too.”

She was a good liar.

SHANE

Shane had never felt so uncomfortable in his entire life, and he’d been in some damned uncomfortable situations.

There was a strange assortment of folks ranging from their early twenties to their sixties littering the furniture. An excessively busty bleached blonde dressed like a slutty sports referee was perched on the knee of a guy with a white beard in dirty jeans. A brunette riddled with track marks and sporting a matte, vacant stare was sitting in their kitchen, absently scratching her forearm, wearing a white tank top and an angel halo. Everyone was nursing a beer, and the house glimmered with the blue haze of pot.Be Here Nowcrackled from a radio, the station coming in and out of focus. Nobody cared.

Laney was sitting on the floor, a beer in hand, propped up against the liquor cabinet. Cary had pulled up next to her on an ottoman, his elbows on his knees, hands loose between his legs as they talked quietly.

The scene wasn’t unfamiliar to him, that wasn’t what was making him uncomfortable. What was bothering him was how every man in the joint was painfully aware of Laney. He could see it in their tight expressions, in how they all avoided lookingover at her and kept glancing at Cary, like they were afraid to be seen checking her out. Like they were afraid in general.

Inside, out of the shadows, it was easy to see why. Cary was built like a football player with the face of a movie star. He had thick blonde hair, cropped short on the sides and in the back, and startlingly green eyes like Laney’s, only… mean.

He could see it, plain as day, the meanness in him. There was something cold and ugly lurking behind that face and it had Shane on edge. As if he hadn’t been already.

A leggy Indian girl in a tiara, a red bikini, and a beauty pageant sash that saidMiss Barebackswathed into the room on teetering stilettos, her eyes narrowing on Cary and Laney. She stalked over to them and squished onto the ottoman behind him, spreading her legs and planting them on either side of Cary. She snaked her hands around his waist, long nails glittering, and planted her chin on his shoulder.

“Hey baby,” she slurred in a sultry, slightly accented voice. Cary didn’t even acknowledge her, just kept talking to Laney in that low murmur that Shane couldn’t quite make out.

It wasn’t lost on him that the men freely ogled the beautiful bikini queen despite clearly being Cary’s girl. Frankly, it was hard not to. She was stunning with her dark skin and dark waves swinging down her back, thick eyebrows arched over dark lashes and full lips… She was dripping with exotic sex appeal, the kind of woman you were more likely to find in a penthouse centrefold than a house party. But whatever rules applied to allowing the visual perusal of his girlfriend clearly didnotapply to his sister – she appeared to beentirelyoff-limits for ogling, which was difficult with her dangerously petite body all wrapped up in leather.

Someone thrust a beer into his hand.

“You best be wiping that look off your face, boy,” mused an older guy with curls to his shoulders, more grey than brown, anda bushy red beard. “You don’t want to be starting no shit with Cary, tonight. He’s itchin’ for a rough and tumble, and I don’t mean with Sarita.”

It was the guy from the photo in Laney's room.

Shane fisted the beer, his knuckles white, and chugged half the bottle. “I don’t want trouble,” Shane mumbled, rolling his neck.

The man snorted. “You’re in for all kinds of trouble, you keep lookin’ at little Laney like that.”

Shane scrubbed his face with his hand and stared up at the ceiling. “I know that, old man. Believe me.”

The guy chortled and stuck out a gnarly, weathered hand. “Name’s Jerry.”

“I know. I'm Shane.”

---