Page 81 of Them Bones

She lets him see her naked.

She lets him see her naked.

She lets him see her naked.

It was an evil hymn, a cursed mantra, slowly unwinding his sanity.

All he’d wanted to do was protect her. Keep her young a little longer, keep her… clean. Away from the darkness that had plagued him his entire life, away from the black cloud that followed him everywhere he went, infecting everyone he’d ever loved.

And she’d gone and found herself someone else. Someone worse.

The last place on earth he’d expected to bump into her was an illegal warehouse rave in a shitty part of the city, dressed like her mom, high as a kite, and wrapped around a guy with at least a decade on her.

If it wasn’t such a huge risk to Laney, Shane would have phoned Cary himself to make sure there were no misunderstandings. Make sure Nick’s dickless, disemboweled corpse found its way into a hole so deep it’d strike oil.

Instead, he paced.

His head snapped up when he heard a car coming. He sucked back his joint, the embers burning his lips, and tossed it haphazardly into the bush, charging the gate to meet Jerry.

But it was Cody, in his beat-up Ford Taurus.

Shane interlocked his fingers behind his head and squatted, bouncing on the balls of his feet, so full of anxious energy he didn’t know what to do with himself. As he stood back up, Cody got out of the car, walked straight up to him, and punched him in the nose.

“WHAT THE HELL?” Shane shouted, blood streaming down his upper lip, as he stumbled backward and tripped over the retaining wall he’d fixed for the damn perennial garden.

Cody reached out a hand to help him up.

“What is wrong with you?” Shane asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, blood staining the gauze wrapped around his knuckles.

“What is wrong withyou?”Cody asked, kicking him lightly in the shin.

“Ow,” Shane mumbled.

“You just left her there? By herself?”

“She wasn’t by herself, Dustin was home,” he said, pulling off his t-shirt to staunch the blood.

“Who’s Dustin?”

“Her brother… wait… who are you talking about?”

“I’m talking aboutJenna,ass wipe. You left her and Laura at the rave last night.”

Shane froze. “Oh…” He literally hadn’t thought about her once since he’d gotten into that cab with Laney.

“Yeah,you fucking turd.”

“Is she… okay?”

“She’s fine,” Cody huffed, shaking his hand a little. “Jesus, you have a hard head.”

Shane gestured to his nose, gushing blood. Cody sighed and sat down on the retaining wall. He tossed Shane a black film cannister that rattled.

“To make up for it,” Cody said.

Shane popped it open with his thumb and awkwardly swallowed what looked like some T3s.

“Thanks,” he said.

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