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Colt smirked. “Sugar, everyone knows that sardines is just seven minutes in heaven, outdoors edition.”
Great. Just great. “So everyone will know what we were doing?”
“No. I just wouldn’t worry about the others. They’re probably all drinking back by the trucks already.”
Jenna massaged her temples. Just as they walked through the tree line and saw the bonfire, she saw that Huck, Lily, and Ryder had all returned. Sebastian must still be looking.
“Hey? You all right?” Colt asked.
Jenna kept her eyes forward, concentrating on her steps, because if she didn’t, her shaky knees would cave and she’d collapse.
It was the second time he’d asked her that that night, and for the second time she wanted to say no. No. She wasn’t okay. She and Colt had sex. Again. But it wasn’t the act that was unsettling, it was the intimacy.
Why was it that every time she gave in to him, felt his hot skin against hers, she also felt him buried to the very soul of her?
Her feelings were getting worse.
She was falling for Colt. No, she’d fallen a long time ago. So why did she look into his eyes while he made love to her and feel more distance than the last time?
“I’m fine.” Jenna never thought herself a liar, but in that moment no other word would fit. It wasn’t only about losing face or reputation anymore. She was playing a dangerous game with a man whose boots never stayed one place too long.
The next time Colt left, and leave he would, he’d take her whole heart with him. And right then, with the night wind blowing, Jenna knew that Colt McCade had ruined her for other men.
Chapter Ten
Jenna rapped one fist on the trailer door and clutched an envelope with cash in the other. The sound of stumbling was followed by Miranda yanking open the door.
“Hey, little girl,” she slurred and it took a moment to stand up straight. The smell of old food, mildew, and whiskey drifted so thickly from the trailer Jenna could almost feel it like a film on her face.
“It’s two o’clock in the afternoon, Mama.”
She examined her. Mascara running down her eyes and wrinkly tank top and the same skirt she’d seen her in yesterday. Too many times she’d tried to get her mother to quit drinking. And too many times she’d gotten the crap beaten out of her for trying. Now that she was an adult, Jenna learned to make her encounters with her mother quick.
“Yes, it is.” She pulled a half-smoked cigarette out from her bra and lit it. Purposefully blowing smoke in Jenna’s face, she said, “I don’t need you coming here to tell me my business.”
Jenna coughed and waved a hand to clear the stench. “Yeah, but you do need me for money, so here.” She handed Miranda the envelope. “I already caught you up on rent and dropped the check off to your landlord myself. That there is twenty dollars.”
“That’s it?” she growled and ripped open the envelope. Her mother really was a mean drunk. “That’s not enough to—”
“Get some shampoo or dish soap if you need. It’s plenty. And here”—Jenna bent and picked up the brown bag full of groceries and handed to her—“this should last you a bit.”
Miranda looked at the sack like it was some kind of alien object. “You think you’re so much better than me, don’t you?” she said in her low, raspy voice she reserved for when she was really pissed off. “You think that you always know best, don’t you? That’s what they taught you in that fancy school, isn’t it?” She scoffed and shook her head. “Well, I see you. I’ve watched you try to run and pretend you’re better than what you are. But you’re nothing more than this.” Cigarette between two fingers, she opened her free arm and gestured to the trailer. The same trailer Jenna grew up in. The same trailer her mama would probably die in.
Jenna’s entire chest felt like it was going to cave in on itself. Her mother affirming the very things that terrified her the most. “It doesn’t have to be like this, Mama,” Jenna whispered. “I’d help you if you let me.”
“Fuck you and your help,” she spat. She was nearing her boiling point. A sight Jenna knew well. It was right before the fists came out. Time to go.
Jenna turned and walked back to her car.
“Jenna-Jayne!” her mother yelled after her, but she kept walking. “You ungrateful brat! I ask you for one thing and you bring me this shit!”
She got in her car at the same time she saw her mother drop the groceries, the sound of what was probably the jar of jam breaking on impact.
Leaving the trailer and her mother behind, she tried, like she did every time she came back, to not look in her rearview when she drove away.
…
Colt had driven to Diamond’s graveyard and had been sitting in his truck, right outside the gates, since dawn. It had been a week since the bonfire—and their revised version of sardines—but he still couldn’t get her out of his mind.
