“Makeup school? Is that like a college program or something?”
“Not quite,” Jenna said, then went into her standard spiel about the special effects education industry, telling him that while there were some college programs for it, most of them were overly broad. “You can get a bachelors in filmmaking at a handful of universities and colleges, but if you want to specialize in movie makeup and effects, you need to go to a place like I did. It’s expensive, but you end up learning from the people who do this stuff for a living. The FX track I received my diploma inconsisted of nothing but makeup, creature design, and creature fabrication. With the connections I made there, I had a job in the industry before I even graduated.”
“Okay, that explains where you learned how to do the stuff you do, but that still doesn’t answer my original question,” Trevor said. “What made you start down this monster-making path to begin with?”
Jenna hesitated, not really sure how much her brother had already told Trevor about the events following Hannah’s disappearance. And if he didn’t know anything about that, Jenna wasn’t sure how much she wanted to get into it. She liked where the connection developing between her and Trevor was going, and she didn’t want to mess it up by having him think she was mentally unstable or something.
“Art was always my thing when I was a kid,” she said, sipping the iced tea Cindy had refilled for her when she brought the extra serving of fries. She was comfortable enough to reveal this part of her life. “I was drawing before I was five and sculpting by the age of eight. I had no idea exactly how it would work out, but I knew someday I’d make a living as an artist.”
Trevor nodded but didn’t say anything. It was the acceptance in his eyes that allowed her to keep going and reveal a little bit more of herself to this man.
“I’m not sure what, if anything, my brother has told you about the events surrounding the disappearance of our sister, Hannah,” she said softly, raising a brow and waiting for him to respond.
“Not much,” he admitted. “I know that you were there when your sister was kidnapped and that it was very traumatic for you. That’s all he ever told us.”
“That’s enough for the purposes of this conversation,” she said, relieved that Connor hadn’t spilled all her secrets. “Suffice it to say, I had a hard time right after my sister disappeared, for a variety of reasons. I ended up in therapy, trying to find a way to cope with my feelings about that night. Long story short, my art became that coping mechanism. It allowed me to express my emotions without having to talk about them. It allowed me to get everything out.”
Trevor regarded her thoughtfully, as if considering that. “Okay. But what about the creatures in your workroom? How did you get from a mechanism to help you cope with your trauma to that?”
Jenna finished the last of her burger before answering, using the time to come up with the best way to answer him. In the end, she gritted her teeth and went with the truth—or at least a version of it.
“The things I went through with my sister, and everything that happened afterward, left me with a different perspective on the world, I guess youcould say. So now, I draw and sculpt the things I see in my head. I’m sorry if that alarms you or makes you think of me differently.”
Trevor didn’t say anything, but it was obvious from his expression that he was trying to work through everything she’d dumped on him. Jenna held her breath, waiting for him to say something. It was probably only a few seconds before he finally spoke, but it seemed like an eternity to her.
“I don’t know the details, but it’s obvious you went through something at a very young age that nobody at any age should ever have to go through,” he said quietly. “There are a lot of people in the world who would have caved, but you found a way to deal with it and thrive. Why the hell should I ever be anything but impressed by something like that? Even if I do have to turn your creatures around to face the wall so I can sleep in the same room with them.”
Jenna laughed a little, both because he didn’t want her masterpieces to stare at him while he slept and because she hadn’t freaked him out so badly that he wanted to catch the next flight back to Dallas. She counted that as a win.
After that big reveal, the tone of the conversation changed and became lighter. Trevor asked lots of questions about the kind of stuff she’d done in her FX program and how that compared to the work she was doing on movies and TV shows now. Jenna found herself relaxing and enjoying the chance tochat about what she loved doing without having to feel like she was being judged for it. Outside her colleagues and Madeleine, everyone seemed to think there was something wrong with her for the images that came out of her head. That included her brother and their parents, she was sad to say.
“You two leave room for dessert?” a feminine voice intruded, pulling Jenna out of the moment. She looked up to see Cindy standing there with a knowing smile on her face. “If it helps you decide, we just finished a batch of maple bacon doughnuts. They’re still warm.”
Jenna laughed at the expression that appeared on Trevor’s face, which could only be described as enraptured. “I think we can take that as a yes,” she told Cindy. “We’ll take half a dozen with extra maple syrup.”
“Coming right up.” Cindy scribbled a note on her pad. “Will you also be ordering any takeout meals like you normally do?”
From the corner of her eye, Jenna saw the look of confusion on Trevor’s face. She ignored it for the moment, instead nodding at Cindy. “I’ll take a dozen meals. But can you hold them until we’re ready to leave?”
“Definitely. And thanks a lot for the help.” Cindy smiled. “I’ll bring the meals out with the check.”
Across from Jenna, Trevor gave her a questioning look. “Meals?”
“They’re meals for the unhoused,” Jenna explained. “A lot of the restaurants in this area offer them because there are a number of street people who call the back alleys of the Skid Row district home. I always buy meals anytime I’m here, then head over to hand them out. You don’t mind, do you?”
Trevor shook his head. “Not at all. I think that’s really awesome of you. I’d be happy to go with you and help. Do you normally do it on your own?”
Jenna didn’t detect any of the harsh accusation in Trevor’s voice she had when she’d told her brother she was walking around Skid Row at night, but there was definitely concern there.
“Normally,” she said. “But I promise I’m always careful, and I always stick to the most well-lit parts of the district.”
Honestly, very little of that was true, especially the last part, but Jenna didn’t like the idea of Trevor worrying about her. Thankfully, Cindy showed up then with their dessert, which kept Trevor from asking for details, which would have certainly revealed hownotcareful she’d actually been lately.
“Enough about me,” Jenna said as she helped herself to a doughnut, eager to keep Trevor from digging into her visits to Skid Row. “We’ve talked about me the entire day. Tell me something about you.”
“What do you want to know?” he asked, takinga big bite of the bacon-and-maple-syrup-covered doughnut, making little happy noises that were absolutely adorable as he chewed. She couldn’t blame him. The sweet, sugary concoctions were to die for.
“Anything. Everything.” She nibbled on her own doughnut. “Tell me about your family. Where did you grow up? How did you end up in Dallas? How long have you been a cop? How did you end up in SWAT? How long have you and my brother been friends?”
