Page 29 of Them Bones

“Your mom?”

Laney shook her head. “She lives with boyfriends. She used to shuttle us around with her, but it got old, for them. They keep her around longer without us taking up space. When I got older…” she flushed “Ma didn’t want me there. Around them. Anymore.”

“Defineolder.”His voice was deadly.

“Eleven.”

“JesusfuckingChrist, Laney!”

“Nothing happened!” she whisper-shouted. “Nothing hasever… happened. Not withanybody.Never.”

“It didn’t occur to you at any point in the past month to mention that this is yourpsychoticdrug-dealing older brother’s house that I’ve been crashing in without permission?”

She wasn’t sure how he’d put together that Cary was a dealer so easily but didn’t ask.

Laney didn’t know what to do. She could handle shitty teachers and principals. She could handle ogling men. She could handle assholes at school. She could handle Ma, and Cary’s friends, and she could even – to some degree – handle Cary. But she hadnoidea how to handle Shane.

She wanted to wrap her arms around him and pull him close. She wanted to tell him that Cary would leave in a few days. She wanted to taste him, feel the hardness of his body wrapped around hers, crawl under his skin and wear him like a fucking coat until she knew he’d never leave. But she knew she couldn’t touch him. Not now, not like this. He was too pissed off, too upset with her and with Cary and with himself…

“Honestly Laney, part of me gets him.” There was coldness in his voice that made her shudder. “Every male north of Eagle Street had their eyes on you tonight. It was… a problem for me. You’re still so young, and you need to be protected. But you’re not… you’re not a kid, anymore. People are going to notice you. Men. Theyarenoticing you. He doesn’t like it, and neither do I.”

“I can’t help that men notice me,” she spat. “What am I supposed to do, huh? I weardouble-xsized men’s shirts for godssake. It wasHalloween.Did you evenseewhat Cary’s girlfriends were wearing? I covered myself from neck to toe! What else do you expect me to do?”

“You can cover yourself up all you want, it won’t do you any good.”

“It certainly didn’t with you, did it?” she snapped. “What would have happened tonight if we hadn’t been interrupted?Huh?”

He put his hands on his knees and pushed himself up off the ground. Standing in the dark, his face a shadowy silhouette, the moonlight barely streaming in through her tiny basement window illuminating his profile, he stared her down – chest heaving. She felt small. The smallest she’d ever felt in her life.

“A moment of weakness.” He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “It won’t happen again.”

“Shane,” she said frantically, “I don’t even really know why we’re fighting! I didn’t…”

But he turned and walked away.

Look how easy it is for Cary to win.

Cary always won.

SHANE

Shane should have been shivering, but the boiling hot rage bubbling under his skin was generating its own heat and he couldn’t feel the chill. He wanted to claw his insides out. Just carve out his guts like a pumpkin.

The sound Laney had made when he walked out on her, this quiet, tiny, broken sound he’d never heard anyone make before, was ringing in his ears.

He doubled over behind the dumpster and vomited.

He was totally and completely at a loss. A very stupid part of his brain was screaming at him to go back, knock Cary’s dick in the dirt, and do things to Laney that he really shouldn’t have been thinking about doing.

The rest of him was torn between worry and the kind of rage he didn’t know could be contained by a human body.

He’d believed Laney when she’d talked about her mother’s boyfriends and saidnothing had ever happened.But he had no idea what to think about her relationship with Cary.

There was a violent, predatory edge to the way Cary moved in her presence, pumping out pheromones that literally screamed to every guy in the vicinity that she washis.He’d expected some kind of social filter. Embarrassment, maybe, overthe possessiveness, or even just a sense of self-preservation in a room full of men that seemed like the type to happily dispose of a pedophile for sport. But Cary clearly wasn’t the kind to hold himself back in any way. Whatever anybody thought about it, they kept it to themselves. It didn’t help that – despite her tiny size – Laney looked about twenty-five in that getup. Nobody was thinking about protecting a kid, everybody was thinking about –

He vomited again.

Like a bitch in heathad played on a loop in his brain the whole evening. To keep himself from walking into Cary’s room and caving in his skull with a brick, he’d gripped the edge of the air mattress so hard it had begun to deflate. It wasn’t until he’d heard the lusty, exaggerated cries of Salina or Satira or whatever her name was on the other side of the wall that he finally slipped downstairs to talk to Laney about it.

---