Page 120 of Lone Star

“Okay.” She leaned in for a kiss – he’d thought it would be a quick peck on the cheek, but she went for his mouth, and he cupped her cheek and drew her in closer. Warm slide of lips, and a hint of tongue. When she pulled back, her eyes sparkled with a promise oflater. Because he wasn’t the only one who got off on work. “I’ll just be down the hall at the lounge.”

“There’s a fed down in the parking lot. I expect he’ll be headed up soon.”

“Ah. I’ll waylay him a bit.” The door rushed open, and she slipped out.

When she was gone, and the door was shut again, Fox dragged her chair over closer to the bed and dropped down into it. Put his boots up on the edge of the bed, mindful of the wires.

Fox had never thought of Tenny as a lively person – because he wasn’t. He could play at lively, just like he could play at sultry, or friendly, or dangerous. He could be a bad boy, or a frightened young person, or a stone-faced killer. He could be anything, just like Fox. Seeing him still like this, pale from blood loss, in a hospital gown, with IVs in the backs of both hands, wasn’t jarring. Not the way it would have been to see so many others brought low by injury. This could have been another part; a little makeup, some fake machines, the whole playing-dead routine. Another act for a master craftsman in the art of deception.

But the sight of him like this stirred…something…in Fox’s chest.

With his eyes shut – that treasonous Devin blue – it was easier to examine the rest of him; examine him for what he was. A handsome kid with a devil’s heart, and a brain built by a government.

The wealth of a nation’s secret funding and training slowly giving way to anger, confusion, frustration, hormones, and the grief of displacement.

“She’s gone,” Fox said. “You can quit pretending to sleep.”

Tenny’s eyes snapped open at once, bloodshot, glassy, but he was very much awake, and had been for some time.

“Have a good nap?”

Pain marked his face when he swallowed, and Fox knew it wasn’t an act. He had a feeling he was seeing the real Tenny for perhaps the first time, and wasn’t sure if he was glad of it.

Ten’s voice was a rough scrape, nearly airless. “Does she know?”

“Know what?”

“That you don’t love her.”

Fox sent him his most charming, over-the-top smile, the one he’d flashed at Cantrell earlier in the night. “You don’t think?”

“I know you don’t.” His jaw clenched, which caused his bandages to twitch, and his eyes watered from the pain. He didn’t back down, though, the stubborn sod. “You’re just like me. You don’t love. You’re using her. When she’s no longer useful, you’ll cut her loose.”

“Well,” Fox said, tilting his head in concession. “It does have its perks, you know, the whole steady girlfriend thing. Easier to get laid. Always someone there to kiss your hurts after a long day. It can be tedious, too, don’t get me wrong. Having to have dinner, and drinks, and remember birthdays. Bring her flowers and presents. A whole lot of bother,” he said with a wave. “What do you think she’ll do when I end it?”

The corners of Ten’s mouth hitched up in a cruel little smile. “Cry, probably. Maybe slap you.”

“Probably.” He touched his face, imagining it. She wouldn’t hold back. Would hit hard – if she ever hit him. If she didn’t just curl her lip in disgust and walk away, cool as you please, like she’d already done once before.

Beyond the room’s single, high window, the sky was growing pink. He hadn’t slept all night, but he didn’t feel sleepy; the thrill of it all was still powering him forward, better than coffee.

When he glanced back toward the bed, he saw that Tenny’s eyelids had flagged to half-mast, drugs and exhaustion and blood loss threatening to pull him under. “Reese was furious with me.”

Ten’s brows lifted.

“When I pointed out to him that, in saving your sorry life, he let the shooter escape, he said you were my brother.” Fox shrugged. “I explained to him that I would have let you bleed out. It was the shooter I needed to catch. You’d gotten yourself into this mess all by your bloody self.”

Slowly, those dark brows lowered again, and Tenny’s face went very blank.

Gotcha, you little shit, Fox thought, smirking inwardly. “He was all indignant about it. ‘He’s your brother.’” He made air quotes, and put on a ridiculous imitation of Reese’s clenched-jaw look from before. “But I set him straight. Told him how it was. We don’t care about all that sentimental brother shit, do we? It’s about the job. If someone puts himself in a bad spot, that’s his problem. The job’s all that counts, right?”

Tenny hesitated a moment before he croaked out, “Right.”

“It isn’t like it would have mattered anyway, would it?” Fox continued, plucking at a spot of lint on his jeans, giving Ten a fleeting, disinterested glance – but cataloguing. Oh, he could see it now, that threat of emotion, wilder and more dangerous than it had been in Reese, still so foreign, glittering and poisonous as crystal meth lying out in plain daylight. “You hate it here, and you hate me, and hate Reese, and this club, and all of it, you’re just so bloody bored, right? We’re all incompetent, and your handlers, the people you really wanted to please, are all dead, and you don’t get to assassinate dictators or power brokers anymore, this is all just sopedestrian. A biker club? How far you’ve fallen, oh great Nameless One. Why even bother? Why not just end it all quickly, and go out in the middle of a fight, hm? How much easier it is to just–”

“Stop.”

“–stop caring about what you’ve lost.”

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