Page 44 of Lone Star

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Candy woke before dawn. He lay for a long moment in the faint silvery light, listening to Michelle’s deep breathing, keenly aware of how little area she took up on the mattress. She’d never felt so small and fragile to him; vulnerable and breakable. When he thought of someone trying to run her off the road – to frighten her? To kill her? – his hands tightened into fists. Tension stole through his entire body, and, finally, carefully, he slipped away from her and out of bed to keep from waking her. She’d been exhausted when he found her last night, fast asleep on the sofa, curled up protectively around her belly, brow creased with worry. Not a peaceful sleep; she’d looked like she was in pain.

“I didn’t want to wake her,” Jenny had said, but Candy hadn’t been able to let her sleep, not when she looked that miserable.

He tiptoed around the bed, now, headed for the closet, and glanced back toward the bed, peering at her face through the gloom. She still looked troubled, hand curled in a tight fist on top of the sheets. Her expression wasn’t slack and soft like it should have been, tension evident in her brow, and jaw.

That was his fault. That was because terrible people were doing terrible things in his city, and he hadn’t put a stop to it yet. Didn’t even knowhowto put a stop to it.

For one dark moment, standing in his underwear in the chilled morning air, he felt devastatingly helpless. Useless.

Give yourself some credit, he imagined his dad saying.You can’t fix everything all by yourself all in one day.

But this was his old lady. This was personally unforgiveable.

He turned away, dressed, and headed for the main room, and the door that led out onto the little back porch where Jenny used to sit and drink wine in the evenings, when she’d lived her.

The scent of coffee on his way through told him someone else was up – a welcome bit of nostalgia stealing over him. It could have been Colin, but somehow he knew it wasn’t, a suspicion confirmed when he pushed through the propped-open door and found his sister sitting curled up in one of the two chairs that overlooked the vast, shadowed sweep of the back ten acres.

Jenny wore a thick down jacket over a flannel robe that looked like it belonged to Colin; a pair of those ugly, but warm tug-on boots. She held a steaming mug between two hands, and had left another, full, black, sitting on the arm of the second chair.

She’d been waiting for him.

Candy picked up the coffee and sat, taking an appreciate inhale of the fragrant heat still wafting up out of it. “How’d you know I’d come out here?” It was only half-curious. He thought he knew what her answer would be.

She took a sip from her own mug and sent him a look just readable in the early hint of light: a penetrating, motherly sort of assessment. He didn’t know if telling her she looked a hell of a lot like their mother right now would be received well or not. “Cause this is where I’d come, too, if I was thinking the way you are right now.”

“And how am I thinking?”

“Like an idiot who thinks that if he’d been there last night, he could have stopped all that from happening.”

He shifted in his seat rather than answer.

“Not that you’ll admit it,” she continued, “but, magic fists or not, you can’t stop a truck all by yourself, Candy.”

“I coulda tried,” he said, just to be stubborn, and she snorted.

“Everything’s okay. She’s a smart cookie, your wife. Reacts well in those kinds of situations.”

That was true. “Yeah.” It didn’t make him any less wound up, though. “But what if–”

“Derek,” she said, firmly. She didn’t say it the way Melanie did – and always had; like someone who thought he was silly for letting people call him a made-up name. She said it like she knew him; like she could see through all his bullshit. It was comforting, in its own way. Being known was his favorite part of having a family, blood, and chosen. “You worry about shit less than anyone I’ve ever known. ‘What if.’ You could ‘what if’ yourself to death being attached to this club. What will you do? Go legit? Sell all the guns and open a charity? You’ve spent your whole life making enemies; they won’t stop coming just because you want to bow out of the race.”

He sent her a rueful smile. “When’d you get so smart?”

“I’ve always been this smart, asshole.” She took a sip of coffee, but not before he saw the ripple of doubt that crossed her face. He knew she was thinking of Riley, of her first marriage, and all the mistakes there.

He didn’t call her out on it. Sighed instead, settling back more deeply in his chair. Out across the flat expanse of the back lot, the sun touched the distant hills, a thin ribbon of pink nearly too bright to look at; pale rays like the spokes of a wheel thrust up into the sky from the still-hidden sun.

“You know,” he mused, “we’ve been in deep shit before. Deeper shit than this, really. But every time, I knew who to blame it on. I alwaysknewwho wanted my head on a plate.” He turned toward her, her face looking flushed in that wash of pink light. “Am I losing my touch?”

Her brows went up, gaze sliding over. “What?” She sounded truly surprised.

His chest tightened. Anxiety of that sort – personal doubt – was so foreign that, for a second, he thought he was having a heart attack.

He sighed again and said, “When I told Blue that I was gonna call Cantrell out to your place, he said I’d gottensoft.” The word tasted foul on his tongue.

Her gaze dropped toward his middle. “Uh, not to be that creepy sister, but if anything, I think you’re more jacked than ever. Damn, I hate you for your metabolism.” She pulled her jacket a little tighter across her own middle.

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