Page 187 of Lone Star

The brush of socks on carpet heralded Jenny’s arrival behind her, and she thought the sound had been purposeful, so as not to startle. A moment later, Jenny joined her at the rail of the crib.

“Sometimes.” She and Michelle had long since perfected the art of whispering without vocalizing; they could have entire conversations without the babies even stirring in their sleep. “I don’t even think they look related. But other times I see them together, and I think they look more like brothers than cousins.”

“Yeah,” she whispered back. Jack had Colin’s dark eyes, but it was true; Michelle had noted the same thing on occasion. Something about the arch of their brows and the angle of their cheekbones was distinctly Snow. TJ had her eyes, that Devin Green blue she shared with all her relatives.

Jenny breathed a sigh. “I know they’ll deal with the same stuff we’re dealing with now, one day. They’ll grow up in this club, and it won’t always be safe or easy. I wish I could spare them that.”

Michelle flicked a glance toward her to read her expression – but Jenny stared down at TJ with something like peace in her eyes.

There was a truth known to every woman attached to the MC, a simple one: their childrencouldbe spared. They could pack bags, and load up cars, and disappear. Raise their kids in the backwoods of Montana, and teach them how to fish and birdwatch instead of how to shoot and brawl. How to sell hardware in a family-owned store in some quaint, Hallmark-ready town, instead of how to sell drugs to spoiled rich kids.

They shared a smile of mutual understanding. They would never leave. It wasn’t even a choice, really. And no amount of terror or hardship would lead to regret.

For Michelle, it was a relief to still know that, after today.

“You wanna go take a shower? I’ll look after him if he wakes up,” Jenny said.

“A shower sounds amazing.” She got another hug on her way out, this one gentler, supportive.

A showerhadsounded amazing, though she’d thought she was too tired, and didn’t realize that showering wasnecessaryuntil she stepped under the hot jets in the master en-suite. She felt dirty in a way that had nothing to do with dried sweat and the musky dirt from the bed of a truck. Felt the phantom weight of the cuffs at her wrists and ankles, still.

She stood in the spray long after she’d finished washing, head bowed, watching the water swirl around her pink-painted toes and down the drain. Not thinking; not dwelling or remembering or replaying any part of the day. She emptied her mind. It was a skill, and she’d had years of practice. Another of Fox’s tricks:fretting doesn’t solve anything. You have to learn to let go.

So she did let go. And in the vacuum left behind, she was filled with a wash of calm. Something like peace. It persisted while she turned off the taps, wrung out her hair, and toweled dry. Lasted until she pushed the curtain back and found Candy standing in front of the mirror, wincing as he tried to ease his cut back off his shoulders.

“Wait, wait, wait.” She tucked the corner of the towel firmly into place above her breasts and went to help him. “Let me see. Where did they get you?”

“Arm,” he said, turning his back to her in obedient response to her twirled finger. “And right there–” He attempted to reach back with his opposite hand and touch beneath his shoulder blade, but stopped with a hiss of pain.

She hissed, too, when she saw what she’d missed before, in the dark of the car. A clean-edged slice through the leather of his cut, and, she saw when the muscles of his back twitched, through his shirt, too. She caught a glimpse of pale skin, and dark, half-dried blood. Blood had trickled down the back of his cut; stained his bottom rocker in thin streams.

She helped pull his cut down his arms, another twitch of muscle and a low grunt the only things that betrayed how badly that simple movement hurt. Underneath, his shirt smelled of sweat – the acridness of stress and fear sweat, rather than the clean sweat of riding in the sun, or working hard, or fucking until the sheets were damp with it. There was more blood on his back than she’d expected, enough to have her pulse leaping with worry.

“I’m just going to cut it off,” she said. “The sleeve’s ruined anywhere.” The sleeve was nothingbutblood. Her hands trembled as she reached for the scissors in the drawer, but had steadied by the time she made the first cut. She shunted emotion to the side again, like she had in the shower. Didn’t think about pain, or vulnerability, or the things she stood to lose as she peeled the halves of ruined shirt down his arm, and wet a cotton ball with alcohol; cleaned the puncture in his back.

“It’s stopped bleeding, but this could use stitches,” she said, thumbing at the slice, noting the gleam of subdermal tissues within the wound.

“Tomorrow,” Candy said, tightly; the restraint of pain. “Just pack it for tonight.”

She cleaned it thoroughly, carefully, applied ointment, and gauze, and medical tape. Urged him to lean back against the edge of the counter as she started in on his arm.

This was uglier, though a through-and-through, the hole large enough to glimpse light through when she peeked. It needed irrigating. They had a bottle of sterile saline in the back of the cabinet, and she cupped a clean cloth beneath the exit wound to catch the drip as she squirted the solution into the wound. Repeated and repeated again until the saline came out mostly clear. More ointment, deep in the wound, and plenty of cotton batting and bandages.

As she smoothed down the last bit of tape, she registered the scrape and echo of harsh breathing, and assumed it was Candy’s. She hadn’t been gentle enough; hadn’t taken proper care of him in her attempt to get outside her own head. But when she glanced up, she saw that his brow was troubled, and his mouth closed, and that the staccato pounding of breath was her own, and that she was shaking all over.

And she was very much not okay.

She set the used-up tape roll aside on the counter before the shakes took total control and she dropped it.

“Hey,” Candy said, softly, reaching for her. “It’s alright.”

It wasn’t – but it would be, again. She’d been at this long enough to know that one terrible day didn’t mean she wanted a sea change. But it felt very, very nice to have him reel her in slowly, and hold her, his fingers teasing circles against the back of her neck, beneath the tangle of her damp hair. She rested her cheek against his pec, right over the steady beating of his heart that was the best reminder that they’d both made it, that they were a little dinged up, but on their feet. The familiar smoothness of skin, and the downy softness of his golden chest hair, and the brick-wall hardness of muscle.

“TJ okay?” he asked after a bit.

“Yeah. He’s sleeping.”

Slowly, her shaking eased.

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