Into the Storm (Signal Bend #3)(45)

“Fuck! Shannon! Jesus!” He froze, his body as taut as a steel cable, deep inside her. And then he collapsed on top of her, pushing her flat onto the bed.

Dazed, sore, and exhausted, buffeted by emotions more powerful than she could manage, Shannon started to cry.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN



Shannon was crying underneath him. Really weeping. Oh, shit. Show pulled out and shifted off her, lying at her side, brushing her wet hair from her beautiful, flushed face, contorted by her sobs.

“Shannon. Hon—are you hurt?” She cried harder but didn’t otherwise respond. “Fuck. What can I do?”

“No—no—no.” She got that word out in gasps, but Show didn’t know what she wanted. So he stayed put, his hand on her face, feeling worried and guilty.

She took a huge breath and held it. When she let it out, she was calmer. “I’m okay. You didn’t hurt me.”

Her voice was little more that a whisper. “I just—I feel so much right now.” She turned to her side, facing him, and smiled. Such a pretty smile. He brushed his thumb over her lips, and then over her cleft chin, like a little upside-down heart. “You didn’t hurt me. That was…I never felt anything like that. It was amazing.”

Relief overtook him, and he grinned, relaxing at her side. “It was. I went a long goddamn time without.

You make it worth it.”

She wrinkled her brow a little and asked, “How long?”

No. Not going to admit that, not lying naked with her. “Long. Leave it at that.”

“Okay. Show?”

“Yeah, hon?” He ran his hand down the length of her silky arm. Her skin was cool to the touch; the room was a little chilly. They were lying on her comforter, but there was a throw at the end of the bed, wadded now by the movements of their coupling. Show sat up and grabbed it, shaking it open and laying it over them both.

“What’s your name?”

He grinned. “Showdown. Showdown Ryan. You know that.”

She grinned back and grabbed his beard. It was a thing she did sometimes, wrapping her fist under his chin. It was intimate, somehow, and he liked it. “Your mama named you Showdown?”

“No. My mama named me Robert, but even she calls me Show.” His smile faltered as he heard what he’d said. “Well, she did. When she remembered. Now, she calls me Robby, like when I was a boy. That’s who she thinks I am, when she knows. Even looking like I do, to her, I’m eight.” He was just chock full of personal talk tonight. He didn’t mind. He felt open and relaxed in a way that was new. What they’d just done, what they’d shared—it blew his damn mind. He felt connected to her. Too early for that, he knew, but true nonetheless.

“Alzheimer’s?”

“They say no. Dementia. Not sure how it’s different. She’s up in a home in Springfield. I see her a couple times a month. She knows her Robby about half the time. Other times she’s scared of me. It’s a crap shoot.”

“I’m sorry. That’s hard. What about your dad?”

“Dead. Almost twenty years, now. Heart attack, about a year after he lost the farm. I moved them in with me, but Pop left himself back on his family’s ground, and he just stopped one day, like a watch running down. Mom started losing her head right about when she lost my pop. She wasn’t even sixty. By the time I married Holly, she was a handful. When Daze was coming up on two, Mom hurt her. Didn’t mean to, just didn’t know who she was. Didn’t even know she was a kid. Beat her with a broom, trying to get her out of the house. Like she was some varmint who got in. Scared hell out of Holly, bruised Daze up pretty bad.

That’s when I put Mom away.” He rolled onto his back, contending with the memory.

“God, Show. Your life. God.”

That was pity, and he wanted none of it. He pushed his arm under her and brought her close, settling her against him with her head on his chest. “Your turn. Been spilling my guts all night. I hardly know anything about you.”

She tilted her head, and he looked down into her eyes. “Well, you don’t have to teach me to shoot. I’m a country girl. It’s been a long time, and I’m rusty, but I learned to shoot when I was a kid.”

He grinned. She always dressed so nicely, was always made up, her nails and hair perfect, that the thought of her shooting cans off a fence surprised and pleased the shit out of him. “You don’t say. What’d you shoot?”

“Remington 30.06. Mossberg. And a Colt.”

“Nice. Nothing semi?”

She laughed. “Uh, no. We were just shooting cans, or animals, not robbing banks. I was okay with a bow, too, though.”

“Good to know. Gotta get you out, see what you can do. What other secrets you got?”

Her smile faded for a second, but then came right back. He caught it, though, and remembered that odd distance that had come up when they were in his house—there was something. But he didn’t push. She’d tell him when she could. Sometimes you needed to keep your secrets. Instead, he asked, “Where you from, country girl?”

“Karville—a little town in the Bootheel. A lot like Signal Bend, except it didn’t have the Horde to look after it. It doesn’t even exist anymore. I mean that literally. The main drag was razed about three years ago.”