Kathy sits on the porch, seemingly in a semi-trance-like state again.Great.So she knows too. And fucking Darla didn’t stop to think how that would undo Circus’s work regulating the woman so far.
I backtrack into the house and holler up the stairs again. “Big man!”
It takes a few beats, but Circus opens the bathroom door, towel around his waist, black ink covering nearly every inch of his torso.
“Your woman needs you.” I thumb to the porch behind me.
Darla stands idle just the other side of the parlor entry, our eyes locking as I turn for the yard again. “Any idea where she went when you jumped to conclusions?”
Her mouth twitches. “The trees.”
I don’t fuck around.
Stones crunch beneath my boots, mud pushing into the tread as I cross the yard to the path through the woods. The air still has bite, dimpling my exposed arms. Fuck knows what Jenna has on or if she’s warm enough. She better not get sick from this.
“Freckles?” I pass the cabin, turning my head side-to-side to scour the shaded stand of pine. “Where you at, girl?”
Silence greets me. Silence and a fucking noisy bird to my left.
I follow the squawking. The damn thing sounds panicked, and if she’s near its safe space, then that’ll be why.
“Jenna!”
A small section of fallen brown pine needles lies smooshed into the soft ground, pushed to one side as though something, or someone, cornered hard. I scour the ground for another footprint and find one leading right. The marks grow closer where she presumably slowed down, my heart hammering harder the nearer I get to both the bird and Jenna.
“Freckles.” I squint a little at the stubby bushes that grow amongst the older trees. “Make this easier for me, huh?”
“No.”
Gotchya.I veer left and move a couple of yards across from where I’d been. And there she is—in all her desperate glory, kneeling on the damp ground, hair a fucking nest against her shoulders, hands pressed against her knees.
“Let me guess,” she sasses. “Your coffee is cold now?”
Goddamn it, but I can’t help but smile. “No coffee today.”
“Pity.” She sniffles. “I could use another one. Or a cigarette if you have one handy?”
“Quit smoking.” I close the gap between us and offer her my hand. “They don’t fix anything.”
“Says you.” She sets her palm in mine and pushes to her feet. “Who narked on me? Kathy?”
I wipe the remnants of her tears from her cheeks with my thumbs, one side at a time. “Darla.”
She makes a humph in her throat and turns the other way, searching the ground. “I got a little emotional.” Jenna bends to retrieve something out of the debris. I look away to stop myself from staring at the appetizing swell of her butt. “Sorry.”
She presents me with the burner phone—at least, what’s left of it—dumping the pieces into my waiting hands.
I stare at the scraps on my palms. My lips twitch.
Jenna lifts her head to meet my eye.
Her mouth trembles.
And we laugh. Hands wrapped around the broken phone, I fucking laugh with her at the absurdity of the moment.
“I’m probably going to prison for murder,” she says through her giggles, “and here I am worried about a thirty-dollar fucking phone.”
My humor swiftly dies. “You’re not going to prison, Freckles.”
