Iron & Bone (Lock & Key #3) (37 page)

On the whole, his clothes were arranged neatly. It was pretty darn impressive. I kept all the things I’d brought over tucked in a tote bag in his closet. I didn’t want to make any sort of mess or create visual disorder in here.

Something hard slid against the wood of the drawer, and I peeked over the edge of it. A small photograph in a simple brass frame. A woman and a boy with very short hair.
Oh, those eyes.
They both had the same incredible large, luminescent green eyes.

Boner and his mother. It had to be.

She was beautiful. Dark hair, slender face, pale skin. She stood behind him, her arms wrapped over his chest, her face pressed against his. Same heart-stopping, sincere smile. A huge smile. Boner’s arms were raised and wrapped around his mother’s neck. Eager for her touch, delighting in her affection. He was gloriously happy.

My ribs squeezed. What had happened to this boy?

It wasn’t that Boner didn’t smile or laugh or enjoy himself, he did. Outwardly, he seemed very content with his life, but this sort of beaming, excited joy was not the man I knew. The man I knew was careful, guarded, his soul reined in, not on display. Here, the joy was positively electric.

I chewed on my lip. I was supposed to be putting clothes in his drawers, not inspecting his personal items.

I put the frame back in the bottom of the drawer, and my fingertips brushed soft suede. I pushed back the shirts, and pulled out a black suede pouch with small round bead-like shapes inside it. I tugged opened the silken drawstrings on the pouch and drew out a long necklace with a series of dark red stones. I held it up, and two chains dangled in the air before me. It was broken. This was a Roman Catholic rosary. But there was no cross pendant hanging from it. The cross was missing.

I fingered the end of the rosary.
Was it his mother’s?

There was a violence in the missing cross and the broken chain. My imagination was running away with me. Maybe this was just some trinket he’d picked up somewhere?

But no. I’d seen his house. There were no frivolous or sentimental objects, no decorations anywhere. Boner wore jewelry, but it was always silver chains or leather cords with small charms like a snake or his One-Eyed Jack skull. This was an authentic rosary, too, not one of those trendy-necklace type ones.

I tucked the rosary back into the pouch.

“What are you doing?”

I pivoted at the sound of his voice, my lungs pinching in my chest.

“Oh! I was—I did some laundry, and I was just putting it away for you.”

He filled the doorway, staring at me, his hair full around his face ending just past his shoulders, his dark brows forming a ridge over those green eyes, his lips pursed under his mustache.

Heart-stoppingly beautiful. Heart-stoppingly threatening.

“Laundry?” His deep voice snapped at me. “I don’t want you doing my laundry. You don’t have to do that shit for me. Been doing it all my life. Don’t have to have a woman do it for me.”

“Actually, I, uh, went shopping, and I got you a few new T-shirts. I washed them, and I was just putting them away for you. I wanted you to be surprised when you got dressed.”

“Oh. ” His lips twisted, his jaw set. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

“What’s in your hand, Jill?”

Shit.
The suede pouch was in my grip. I held it up. “I found this. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

He quickly closed the distance between us and plucked the pouch from my hands.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“Bone, it’s obviously not fine. You’re—”

“I’m, what?”

“Is it your mother’s?” I asked. “The rosary?”

His face darkened. “Yeah, it was hers.”

“It’s missing the cross.”

His eyes leveled with mine, and I braced. “I ripped it off her hands in her coffin, and the cross got torn off.”

My breath caught.

That sharp-edged honesty, that unmistakable frankness was as an iron bell clanging loudly. An ugly, jarring sound, but it was truth, and it had to be told.

“The stones are lovely. Are they garnets?” I asked.

“Yeah, garnets.” His shoulders dropped. “She loved that deep red color. It was her favorite.” He tucked the pouch in the drawer and slammed it closed.

“What was your mother’s name?”

“Maria Angelica,” he said slowly.

The slight lilt in his pronunciation skipped through me.

“That’s beautiful.”

“It is. She was beautiful, too.”

For a moment, his face had a faraway look to it, his tired gaze drifting before returning to me. The need to wash the sorrow off him came over me.

But how?

His face remained grim. I’d pissed him off with my questions. I shouldn’t have been such a Curious George.

He shifted his weight.
“I was on my way to see you. Sy and Bear are gonna be watching over you. I’d put you on lockdown, but that isn’t going to work too well with Tania being out of town again. No daycare or classes for Becca for a while. You don’t do any driving. The boys will. You need to take Rae somewhere or go to the supermarket, call Alicia. She’ll organize something with the old ladies.”

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Just do as I said.” His voice was firm, cold.

“I will.” My lungs contracted. “But—”

“You need to trust me.”

“
YOU’RE NOT HUNGRY
?” I stared at his full bowl of black bean chili I’d made for us. It was untouched, the melted grated cheddar cheese on top looking more like melted plastic.

“Huh?” Boner turned to me.

“Since when are you not hungry?” I put my empty bowl on the small table to my side of the log bench where we sat on the front porch of his house the following day. The red-orange sun sank on the horizon in the distance.

“I drank too much coffee today. Bothered me.” Boner rubbed a hand back and forth across his stomach, right over his scar.

We had managed to get another night to ourselves to spend at his house, and this time Becca had come with me. She was already asleep in her new crib upstairs. We’d managed to get her to sleep without a problem even though I’d thought that, since she was in a new environment, maybe she’d be anxious about it. She’d had an active enough day, exploring the house, enjoying the staircase a bit too much for my liking, and coloring nonstop.

“Becca loves that room.”

“That’s good ‘cause it’s hers.”

“I think she liked the stuffed baby elephant most of all,” I said. “Pony must be very jealous and lonely tonight on the floor by himself.”

He let out a sigh. “Yeah, poor Pony.”

Boner remained distracted this evening, even distant.

“Are you okay?” I asked, lightly touching his thigh.

He took my hand in his and squeezed. “Enjoying the quiet with you.”

His other hand smoothed down over the new T-shirt he wore, one of the tighter cut ones I had bought for him. A few dark springs of hair peeked over the V-necked opening on his chest. I wanted to slide onto his lap and kiss him there, but something in his mood was different, and a sudden sense of awkwardness stopped me from making such an impulsive move.

“How early do you have to leave for your run tomorrow?” I asked.

“Before six.” His thumb rubbed over my hand.

“How long will you be gone for this time?”

“Few days. Depends.”

“Is there something you’re not telling me?”

His gaze settled on me like a heavy snowfall. “Plenty.”

Forthright, yet oblique! Gah.

“I don’t mean club business. I feel like something’s upset you. Was it me finding the rosary?”

“No.”

“Well, you’re keeping something from me.”

He took in a breath and released it. “I don’t keep shit from you.”

“Okay.” I swallowed the old insecurities down my throat like thick cough syrup. “Except for one thing.”

It’s now or never.
“Who is she?” I asked.

“What? Who?”

“I’ll show you.”

I let go of his hand and headed inside to the bookcase, Boner following me. I grabbed the Neruda and held out the scraps of poetry to him.

His face visibly hardened.

“I found more,” I said. “All over the house. Tortured verses—
beautiful
tortured verses about a woman. A woman you’re still clinging to.” My voice barely above a whisper, I said, “She’s everywhere, Bone. You’ve surrounded yourself with her.”

“I haven’t written in a long time.” He brought his palms to his forehead and took in a breath. “Those are…fuck.”

“Tell me. Why can’t you tell me?”

His hands dropped from his face. “It’s Inès.”

“Your cousin?” I spluttered.

“Yeah, my cousin.” His voice was heavy, caustic.

I held his dark emerald gaze, my heart shrinking. “Oh.”

His tongue swiped at his lip.

“Tell me,” I breathed.

“After I killed her dad, Inès and I took off, but we had nowhere to turn but the drug dealers I’d been working for. I had no choice. We would’ve gone into foster care or a home, detention center, something. Us getting separated—there was no way that was going to happen. The dealers helped us lay low, even planted evidence to get the heat off of us in the murder investigation.

“We camped out in people’s basements, in warehouses, and trailers for weeks on end. We finally got our own place, this tiny shit-box. We were working, bringing money in.” He stared into the distance, his jaw set. “I thought we were so lucky.”

It slammed into me like a brutal January wind on the plains. “You were in love with her,” I said.

“Yes.”

“You—”

His eyes flared. “She was my first cousin and my best friend, but being together was the only thing that made sense to us and the only thing that kept us whole—at least for a while. There was no wrong or right. We never discussed it. It was the way it was. It was a given.” He let out a deep exhale. “It was fucked up, and we both knew it in the back of our minds, but there was no stopping it.”

“You loved her.”

“I loved her.” He pressed his lips together.

A simple statement of powerful fact, undeniable.

“But she was sick,” he said, his voice dropping.

“Sick?”

“Bipolar. She used to have these dramatic, unpredictable mood swings. Ridiculously happy and excited about life one day and then sad and anxious the next. She’d be making grand plans for us at all hours—not eating, not sleeping. Then, the next day or the day after, it would crush her. She suddenly couldn’t make a decision about anything, not even something simple like if she should close her closet door or leave it slightly open. One day, smiling, and later on, a crying jag, distant, irritated with the world, irritated with me. She wouldn’t eat and wouldn’t take her meds most days. I got her what I could, tried to keep her on some sort of schedule, but that never worked, and that wasn’t good. Then, she started using.”

His shoulders scrunched up, and in that fleeting movement, the strain of the burden he’d been carrying pressed in on me.

“What happened to her?”

“Men were always noticing her, thinking she was older than she actually was. She was pretty and real tall. She used to do some modeling.”

My stomach rolled at the controlled tone of his voice.

“Depending on her mood,” he continued, “she’d either hate their attention or want more of it. Same went for me. She’d either push me away or couldn’t get enough of me. It made me insane. My not being around too much because of work only made things worse.

“She started doing crazy shit. Once, I caught her fucking a guy from our neighborhood at our apartment. We got into a fight, and she left with him. Then, she came crawling back a couple of days later, begging for my forgiveness. I was furious but more relieved that she was okay. It got to the point where I just didn’t care about much else, other than if she was okay.

“A few months later, it happened again, but this time, she was fucking the dealers I worked for. They ran a gang, and I owed them for everything, for covering my killing my uncle, for making me the man I’d become. She packed up her stuff and took off with them. She was done with me. I got into a fight with them over her in the street.” He rubbed over his middle, my eyes following the sudden movement. “She knifed me, and they took off. I ended up getting arrested on a trumped up assault charge, and I got thrown into juvie.”