A Good Man
2. Honest
"Did you kill them?"
"No, damn it," Kenny snapped, "If I ain't killed 'em the first ten times you asked me, why the hell would I 'ave killed 'em now?"
There was the briefest of intermissions as she studied him. Her lips parted audibly.
"I'm just supposed to believe that?"
He skirted the corner of his eye almost incredulously. If not for the slumbering bundle in her arms, they'd have been crossed taut across her chest. She was blunt in her accusations. Her pupils fixated across the center console on him. Scenarios and supposition flicked through her eyes as she regarded him with evidently very little. Her mouth reamed across her face in a stolid bow.
He hiked a brow at her and made an obnoxious noise from the depths of his throat. "Yeah, that's pretty much exactly it."
"Kenny if you killed those people, I deserve to know."
"I actually agree with you on that one," he relented, "But I ain't got nothin' to tell you."
"Kenny," she glared a little more pointedly.
The acridity of her expression corroded away at his peripheral vision. He gnashed his teeth in frustration. His brow sank and he searched the road for a stray condolence.
"Jane."
Her eyes met his. The sleepy iridescence of a rising sun caught the height of his eye. She watched the color unfurl under daylight, shades of green and brown fusing and bleeding and being swallowed whole by shadow as the sun disappeared behind the treeline. He hugged the steering wheel a little tighter. His eyes narrowed. He challenged her next words.
She loosed a breath and adjusted the sleeping baby in her arms. "I'm gonna ask you this one more time: Did you kill Arvo and Mike?"
"I already answered you all across the state line, but okay, let's fuckin' go again."
He felt the intensity of her stare chip away at his arm. He rolled his eyes and sighed, shifting to rest his arm on the console. She flinched perceptibly away as he moved. He looked at her with something like amazement and hurt scrawled across his features.
"Oh, Jesus Christ. Jane."
"What?" she bit back at him, defensive.
"Why're you pullin' this shit? You know I ain't gonna hit nobody."
"I don't know that," she let the silence flood in through her open window, tasting the aspersions on her lips. "You beat up Arvo and Carver pretty good."
Kenny's shoulders hiked against his neck and he smothered the wheel with calloused flesh. Like rusted metal in the foot or a blade against a wayward finger, memory trickled through his every vein. It seized his hands, made him rigid. It swept through him, a breeze through the attic window.
Jane watched the transmutation of his face. Something like regret heavied the air.
"Alright. I got a question for you," he wagered a little gently.
She maintained her stare, this time hooking her brows upward. Her scowl abated, and her expression softened a modicum.
"Did we kill Bonnie?"
"What? Why would you even -"
"Did we kill Bonnie?"
"No! God no! We -" she panned her gaze back to the road. "We didn't."
"Then I didn't kill Arvo and Mike."
There was an active silence between them. She shifted on her throne of tentacles, constantly interlocking and sliding on a bed of toxic slime. She smeared her palm across her face. AJ's scent - untouched by filth of any kind - was a welcome haven from the uncertain lump in her stomach. He widened his little mouth and sighed before snuggling a little deeper into his blanket.
Jane turned away from him, too.
Kenny grinned at the precious gasps and descended happily into the quiet as the boy's breathing found rhythm. His knuckles slacked against the steering wheel.
"You love them?"
He glanced at her. "I'm sorry?"
"Clem and the baby. Do you love them?"
He reached up and adjusted his rearview mirror. His brow knotted as he traced the bruises littering his fingers, and his heart emptied as he watched her tiny frame rise and fall with shallow breath.
"More than anything."
His eyes lingered with her there, in the backseat, but he found the road again. Somehow.
A/N: Fun fact(s): This chapter was written entirely via cellphone. Also, the chapters aren't necessarily going to be in chronological order. Once I'm done, I may arrange them that way, but for now, I'm having fun with it. In accordance with that, you can see there's been something of a leap between last chapter's conclusion and this one.
"What the fuck happened to Bonnie?" You may be asking. Not to worry, I swear I have a plan! I really do have the story mapped out, and I intend to cover all of my bases. I need closure and I will write until I don't need it anymore. Feel free to ask questions in your reviews, perhaps some things you'd like to see answered through the story. I'm unopposed to taking requests, so I implore you to share your thoughts!
The response to the first chapter already blows my expectations high and above anything I would've assumed, and I thank all of you who read and reviewed, favorited and followed. Your feedback is astonishing and invaluable, thanks so much. I hope to hear from you all again!
Disclaimer: I don't claim ownership of anything or anyone, save for my words.