The Familiar Dark(45)

“What did you do?” Jimmy Ray said, breath hot in my face. “You stupid bitch.”

He expected me to cower, to plead, to placate. Because that was how this worked between us. Him winding tighter and tighter while I frantically tried to keep him calm, keep him contained, not wanting Junie to witness something that would scar her forever. But the world was a different place now, without my daughter in it. And I was a different woman.

I brought my knee up fast and hard, caught him right in the nuts because he wasn’t expecting it, hadn’t even thought to protect himself. Not from me. He let go of my neck, bent in half like someone had cut his strings, and fell to his knees. I shoved away from him, turned to run, and got two steps before his hand closed over my ankle and yanked. I hit the floor hard, landing on my hip, scrabbling for something to grab. My free leg shot out, foot slamming into his nose with an audible crunch, and he released my ankle, flopped onto his back, and cupped both hands over his face.

“Jesus Christ,” he moaned. “What’d you do that for?” Said with the plaintive whine of bullies the world over, those who can dish it out but have never learned how to take it.

I used the wall for balance and pushed myself to standing. I yanked my towel off the floor and wrapped it around myself again. “Because you deserved it,” I told him.

Surprisingly, he didn’t argue with me. All the fight seemed to have gone out of him with that one kick, his nose sitting sideways on his face. I wondered if that was all it would have taken, years ago, to end things between us. No long drawn-out fights where it was my face bloodied and bruised, no blow job in Land’s car to make Jimmy Ray finally disappear. It might have worked. Or I might have ended up dead and dumped in the woods somewhere, Junie left to be raised by Cal or, God forbid, my mama. Second-guessing the past wasn’t going to do me any good. All I knew for sure was tonight, this moment.

I watched, warily, as Jimmy Ray shoved himself up to sitting, leaned his back against the wall. “Can I get a towel?” he asked.

I went into the kitchen, gathered some ice in a dish towel, and brought it back to him. He wiped the blood off his face and then tipped his head back, pressed the ice pack to his nose with a groan. “Damn, girl,” he said. “You got me good.”

I slid down the wall and sat beside him, legs out in front of me and crossed at the ankle in deference to the towel I was still wearing. “I didn’t blow up Matt’s trailer.”

Jimmy Ray glanced at me. “Yeah, I figured that was a long shot.”

“But you thought you’d break into my apartment and strangle me anyway?”

“I was pissed,” Jimmy Ray said with a shrug. “Got cops crawling all over my place. Besides, if I really wanted you dead, you’d be dead. Your mama be damned.”

I turned to look at him. “What’s my mama got to do with it?”

“Back when we was together, your mama used to give me what for. Told me if I ever went too far, she’d use my dick as fish bait.”

I stared at him, momentarily speechless. Sure, when I was a kid, Mama had lit into anyone who’d wronged me. But as an adult, I thought she’d stopped caring even that much. Once, when she’d seen one of the black eyes Jimmy Ray had given me, she’d told me I’d gotten myself into that mess and I had to get strong enough to find my way back out. It had never occurred to me that she’d given Jimmy Ray any kind of warning.

“What?” Jimmy Ray said, amused. “Why’d you think that broken wrist is the worst you ever got? Hell, I was a little worried about that one, to be honest. Thought maybe my pecker was a goner.”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing for you that strangling me didn’t work out.”

Jimmy Ray reached over and grabbed my hand, squeezed it just this side of pain. “I’m not fucking around, Eve,” he said. “I got some affection for ya. God knows why because you’ve been a thorn in my side more often than not. But that affection goes only so far.” He dropped my hand, gestured to his face. “You pull something like this again? Or something like what happened out at my place tonight? Your brother’ll be fishing bits of you out of the river. Tiny bits. And your mama can go fuck herself.” He held my gaze. “You understand?”

“Yes,” I said, because I did. I’d used up all my chips with Jimmy Ray. And he wasn’t the kind of guy to give you a loan. “I honestly don’t know what happened out there tonight. I wanted to talk to Matt, that’s all. He was messing around with Junie’s friend Izzy.”

“So you figured you’d sneak onto my land?” Jimmy Ray shook his head. “For someone who didn’t want to be strangled, you got some kind of death wish, Eve.”

I shrugged. “Sounds about right.” I straightened the towel across my lap. “You got any theories about Matt?”

“I got no fucking idea,” Jimmy Ray said. But the slight pause before he answered, the hiccups between his words, made me think he probably had at least a sneaking suspicion. “He sometimes cooked up meth in there, I know. We’ve moved on to heroin. Bigger market these days.” He spoke about his drug trade like he talked about the weather or what he’d had for dinner. Something ordinary, a given. “But Matt liked meth, for himself. Maybe he got sloppy. Blew himself to bits. He always was kind of a dumb fucker.”