Free Bang by Ruby McNally Page A

felt, how he’s healing, if they’ve caught the guy yet. The kid from the stockroom even asks to see the scars.
    â€œYou wanna see my dick too?” Jackson asks, handing over a twenty. By the time he hits the parking lot, he’s dying for a cigarette.
    He lights up outside the SUV, not wanting to ruin the interior. He keeps telling himself he hasn’t really started smoking again, is just sneaking one or two as a pick-me-up, but so far he’s averaged three packs a week since he’s been back on active duty. It takes him about a half-dozen drags before he’s calm enough to call Mari. Her statement is still swimming around his head. He was banking on having a night to forget about it before he had to talk to her.
    â€œI’m sorry to blow off our thing,” he tells her once he’s explained about his father. “I just—didn’t think.”
    â€œYou’re just also a really shitty son,” Mari supplies. She agreed to tag along the second he suggested it, which was unexpected. Jackson guesses the choice to stop hanging out with his family hadn’t really been hers. “It’s cool, I understand.”
    â€œFuck off.” Jackson laughs. He pushes her witness statement out of his mind.
    When he swings by to pick her up the next afternoon, though, she’s the one who looks like she could use a nicotine fix, or possibly a stiff drink and a Klonopin. “I baked,” she informs him, holding up a Tupperware filled with wafer-thin chocolate cookies as she opens the car door. “Or that’s a lie, my mother baked, but.”
    â€œStill counts,” Jackson assures her, hooking a hand around her headrest as he backs out of the driveway. He feels himself softening toward her all of a sudden. With not a little self-loathing, he realizes he expected her to be too ashamed to come.
    She takes a long time to get settled, fidgeting around like she can’t quite get comfortable, setting the cookies on the floor and then her lap and then the floor again. She reaches down to adjust the passenger seat, something he’s never seen her do in his car before—probably, he realizes, because she used to be the one who sat in it most.
    It’s an hour and a half to his folks’ house in Worcester, and Jack explicitly promised himself he wouldn’t let them spend the whole goddamn trip in silence. “Mer’s excited to see you,” he says.
    â€œOh yeah?” Mari asks. She looks pretty as all hell today, her short hair blown out so it’s thick and shiny, these dark dark jeans that follow her every curve. He knows she’s self-conscious about it since the baby but Jack loves her body, her heavy breasts and her round hips and ass and belly. There’s a deep V to the neckline of her slouchy, stripey sweater. “Mer, not Ter?”
    â€œDidn’t talk to Ter about it,” Jackson says carefully, pulling onto the highway. “Doubt if he’s even excited to see me.”
    â€œLiar,” Mari accuses. “You’re his favorite.” She reaches over and turns on the radio, hunting around through the presets before finally settling on the shitty easy listening station she always picks. Jackson likes having her back in his car.
    Mari picks the Tupperware up off the floor again, looking agitated. “Does anyone know that you and I, like—” She makes a helpless motion with her hands. “You know?”
    Jackson turns full sideways in his seat to look at her. “Does anyone know we—” He laughs harshly. “Yeah, Mari, I called my parents right after I pulled out, they were thrilled.”
    Mari shrugs, drumming her nails on the Tupperware. “Not your parents, Jack, I mean like Mer or Ter. I want to know what I’m walking into.” She’s doing that thing with her voice, I’m-reasonable-and-you’re-the-asshole. Jackson grits his teeth.
    â€œNo one knows anything,”