Snow in Texas

Chapter Twenty-Two: Jenny

Twenty-Two

Jenny

"Do I care about you?" she echoed, caught off guard. She closed her journal and set it on the nightstand. "Where'd that come from?"

Colin was in a state of agitation she hadn't seen before. He wasn't worked up, per se, but his dark eyes were too big, glinting in a strange way. He seemed detached, somehow. Stuck in his head.

"Do you?" he pressed.

Jenny frowned. She had a feeling this was Candy's fault. So many things were. "Do you want an honest answer? Or a flattering one?"

He made a face like he was insulted. But then anxiety tweaked his handsome features. "Honest."

"You sure?"

"Just tell me."

She sighed. "Colin, I don't sleep with men I don't care about. Does that answer your question?"

He didn't answer, instead came to sit on the foot of her bed, feet braced apart, brow furrowed.

"Okay. You're starting to freak me out. What's wrong?"

He massaged the knuckles of one hand with the fingers of the other. Clean knuckles; he hadn't been fighting. Large, knobby. Capable of devastation, if he chose to use them that way. He gathered his thoughts for a moment and said, "I think I'm afraid of your brother."

She hadn't been expecting that. She snorted. "Look, I know he gives you shit, but he really doesn't care about my sex life."

"That's not what I meant."

"Okay." Jenny waited.

After a moment, he said, "He made a man wet himself tonight," voice thick with disgust...and with doubt. "I didn't realize it at first, but then I smelled it."

This was going to take a while. Jenny shifted so she was sitting beside Colin, cross-legged on the mattress, studying the side of his face. "Well." How to keep this from being insulting. Hmm. "He does run an outlaw biker club, babe. He does some scary stuff. Kinda comes with the territory." Not to mention it was expected of him.

Colin shook his head. "No, I mean..." He sighed. "I made this kid piss himself once. A long time ago," he added quickly, darting her a glance. "I was in middle school and I was...well, anyway, I was a shithead. But that's all I was." He turned his head, so he could see her face. "I was a shithead, and thought it'd be fun to scare this kid. And I did. And I laughed." Shame marred his expression, a deep sadness.

Then he seemed to snap out of it. "But I knew what I was doing. And all I was doing was messing around. I didn't want to hurt the guy. I wasn't going to."

Ah. It was becoming clear.

"It's one thing to pretend you're gonna hurt someone," he said. "It's a whole other to know you're going to, if it comes to that."

Jenny stared at him.

"Candy went out tonight ready to kill a man if he didn't get the answers he wanted. And yeah, there's a guy or two I'd like to put a bullet through. But just a scrawny kid..."

"You guys interrogated Pup," she guessed, and he didn't have a good enough poker face to keep from confirming it with a look. "Was it bad?"

"You know I can't tell you anything about it."

She smiled. He was starting to have more club-like responses to things. Which was good...except they needed refining. "Yeah, you can," she said. "Do you think the guys follow that no-talking rule to the letter?"