Page 100 of Snow in Texas

She grinned, and it felt wonderful. “Am I gonna get the big bro lecture?”

“No.” Seriousness in his voice. “Not after…no.”

The brief flare of humor died in her chest. “Derek.”

“I should never have gone away and left you here.”

“You thought he was out of the way.”

“And I was a dumbass for thinking that. I knew better.” He found the bottle somewhere on the side table and it clinked against the rim of the glass as he refilled it.

“You couldn’t refuse Ghost.”

“Wrong.” He made a buzzer sound in the back of his throat. “Could have, and should have.”

“He’s the president of the mother chapter. He’sthepresident.”

“And you’re my family,” he shot back. “Do you think any member of this club is more important to me than you?”

She sucked in a breath. “Candy,” she said quietly.

“No. Fuck it. Is that not real presidential? Give a shit. I let…”

She stood and moved to sit on the arm of his chair, arm lying along his shoulders. “Stop,” she said, and thought of their mother for a moment. Her beautiful blonde head bent over Jack Snow’s as she kneaded the tension from his neck.“Stop, baby,”she’d always said.“You’ll drive yourself insane.”

God, she missed her parents.

“I don’t care about presidential,” she said. “You can tell me whatever you need to. You can ease the burden.” He needed, more seriously than he even realized, an old lady. There were some burdens you could only share with the person who shared your bed, and Candy had gone forty-four years without that in his life. “But there’s no sense talking about what you could have done differently. It happened. We’re okay. That’s what matters.”

He grunted his disagreement. Then grew contemplative. “I still don’t know how I never saw it, back when we were kids.”

“Saw what?”

“Riley’s evil. It had to be there.” It had been; behind every smile, every seemingly sweet touch, something dark and foul, overtaking him like a vine, choking whatever good there was. “Why didn’t we see it?” He tipped a look up to her, nothing but shadows and shiny eyes in the dim light, and Jenny’s heart grabbed for him. Riley had been his best friend once. She wasn’t the only one who’d been betrayed.

“Nothing traumatic ever happened to the guy,” Candy said. “I mean, look at Mercy. If anyone ought to have been a murdering, wife-raping son of a bitch, it was him.”

“But he’s not.”

“No.”

“He had too much good in him. And something to live for.”

His gaze narrowed. “Riley had something to live for too. And he put it in the hospital.”

She sighed and rested her chin on top of his head, his hair prickly on her skin, his breath warm against her throat. “Are you sorry I did it? You kept him alive for a reason.”

“I’m not even a little sorry. Don’t worry about that. Things might be a little tricky now, with his brother, but we’ll get through it.” It smacked of an overconfident lie, but she let him tell it. “But I’m glad he’s dead, honey. I wish I’d done it a long time ago.”

Silence tightened around them, easy and comforting.

“Are you excited about being an uncle?” she asked.

“Absolutely.”

Thirty-Six

Colin

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