They’d both been rudely awakened by Ginny, who’d been frantic with worry when she’d woken and found that her very pregnant and very emotional daughter-in-law had gone missing.
It was early, the park was still quiet, the sky streaked with the colorful beginnings of sunrise, and all Preacher wanted to do was go back to Joe’s foul-smelling tent and sleep for another hour.
He’d had difficulty falling asleep last night, having spent most of it listening to the devil seated on his left shoulder tell the angel on his right to go fuck itself.
At one point he’d spent almost an hour trying to convince himself that Debbie’s age didn’t matter because of her situation—there was no one in her life to care what she did or didn’t do. If there was no one to care, then what did it matter? Then he’d felt like shit for thinking it and had spent another hour wide awake, telling himself what an asshole he was.
“This ain’t my fault!” Joe protested. “I tried tellin’ Mom that Sylvie just ain’t been sleepin’ good lately and she’s probably off walkin’ around somewhere.”
“You shouldn’t have brought her. What kind of man brings a pregnant woman camping?”
“You try tellin’ Sylvie no! I told her no way in fuckin’ hell was she comin’, and you should have seen her, all pissed off and haulin’ her fat ass up into Dad’s van and givin’ me that look!”
Preacher glanced sideways at his brother. “What look?”
“You know, the look. That fuckin’ look a chick gives you, tellin’ you that you ain’t got a choice in the matter. It’s do or die, man, do or fuckin’ die. That’s the look. I get that look every fuckin’ day. I married that fuckin’ look. That fuckin’ look is gonna kill me.”
Preacher glanced up at the sky and made a face. “Idiot. That ain’t the look she was givin’ you. She was givin’ you the look that said she knew what the fuck you were going to be doin’ up here if she didn’t come.”
Joe fell silent, and Preacher rolled his eyes. It was no secret to anyone who knew Joe that he wasn’t a one-woman kind of guy. He hadn’t been faithful to Sylvia when they’d been dating, and anyone with half a brain would know that marriage hadn’t changed him. If anything, Preacher guessed Joe’s new situation had only increased his brother’s appetite for women—he was probably screwing every piece of ass he could get his hands on.
“I told you not to marry her,” Preacher muttered, shaking his head. “Remember? This is your own damn fault.”
Joe had come to visit him in prison to tell him Sylvia was pregnant, and Preacher had told him point blank not to marry her if he didn’t love her—and that he’d regret it if he did.
But Joe had succumbed to The Judge’s and Ginny’s demand that he do right by Sylvia, and if Joe felt trapped now, it was his own damn fault and none of Preacher’s concern. What was Preacher’s problem was Ginny forcing him to share a tent with his idiot brother.
Gripping his arm, Joe wrenched Preacher to a stop, forcing him to turn around and face him.
“Mom made me,” he seethed, his eyes wide and glinting with anger. “She said no grandbaby of hers was gonna be a bastard!”
“Mom made me,” Preacher mimicked. He shook his arm free from Joe’s grip and shoved his brother in the chest, sending him stumbling backward. “Man, you know you sound like a little girl, right?”
“You weren’t there!” Joe shouted, a vein in his forehead throbbing angrily.
Preacher knew Joe was seconds away from hauling off and slugging him. A recreational boxer with fists of steel, Joe wasn’t someone you wanted to piss off. But the way Preacher saw it, a concussion and couple of black eyes were preferable to wandering around the park at the ass-crack of dawn bickering like a pair of old women. Balling his hands into fists, Preacher readied to duck and swing.
“Dad told me if I wasn’t gonna do the respectable thing, he wasn’t gonna have a place for me at the table!”
As Preacher’s jaw went slack, so did his fists. “What?”
“Yeah,” Joe hissed. “He was gonna take my patch. And then what?” Joe threw his hands up in the air. “And then I’d have nothin’!”
Preacher raked a hand through his hair. “Man, I didn’t know. If I woulda known—”
“Joey?”
Both men turned and found Sylvia rounding the corner of a nearby trailer. Appearing freshly showered, she was wearing a blindingly bright polyester number that made Preacher wish for temporary blindness. Then he spotted who was turning the corner behind Sylvia and Preacher suddenly couldn’t remember what he was doing out here in the first place.
Debbie’s long dark hair was wet and messy in a way that looked sexy. A pair of aviator sunglasses hid her eyes. She wore denim cutoff shorts and the same yellow T-shirt she’d had on yesterday, only today she’d gathered the hem and knotted it off to one side, exposing several inches of flat, smooth stomach. Barefoot, she held her sneakers in one hand and her backpack in the other.
Debbie paused beside Sylvia and lifted her sunglasses, her gaze on Preacher. He found himself smiling at her and then grinning when she suddenly flushed pink and her bottom lip disappeared behind her teeth.
“Dammit, Sylvie,” Joe growled, shoving past Preacher and holding his hand out to his wife. “You can’t run off like this! Ain’t nobody gettin’ any damn sleep!”
“You think this is what no sleep feels like, do you?” Sylvia’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “What about when the baby comes? Then you’ll see what no sleep feels like!”
Joe’s arm dropped to his side. “Fuck this,” he muttered, turning away.
“What did you say?” Sylvia shouted, hurrying after him. “Joey, did you hear me? I asked you a goddamn question! Don’t you walk away from me! Did you hear me? Joey, you come back here right now!”
“She talks a lot,” Debbie murmured, joining Preacher.
“You have no idea.”
“She’s nice, though. But sad, too.”
Frowning, Preacher glanced over his shoulder at Sylvia’s retreating form. “Sad? Really?”
“Maybe sad wasn’t the right word. Maybe lonely.”
“Lonely? Why do you say that?”
Preacher actually couldn’t care less about the South Jersey chatterbox who’d trapped his brother in a shitty marriage. But because he liked hearing Debbie talk and wanted to keep her talking, he kept the dialogue rolling. Debbie was the polar opposite of Sylvia, and while he didn’t like overly chatty women, he did appreciate some conversation.
Gazing off into the park, Debbie shrugged. “I don’t know. I just got that impression. I think she and your brother are equally unhappy and neither of them knows what to do about it.”
Preacher lit up a cigarette. “You know a lot about unhappy marriages?”
Her eyes found his, flashing fire, fire that was in direct contrast to the vulnerable expression she was suddenly wearing. “A little bit,” she said softly.
Preacher stared at her, wondering what she meant. And as his eyes roamed her face, he found himself noticing things he hadn’t before. The high cut of her cheekbones, the dashes of gold shining in her big brown eyes. And her nose wasn’t just small; it was straight and pretty much perfect. And her lips… shit, he just really fucking liked her lips.
He’d been wrong yesterday when he’d thought her no great beauty. She was beautiful—really beautiful.
And young. Too young for him.
“Preacher?”
“Hmm?”
“Why’d you run away from home?” The vulnerability in her expression had doubled, and Preacher got the impression that his response was important to her.
He took several pulls on his cigarette before answering. “It’s gonna sound stupid,” he said, and shook his head. “But I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.” Dropping his cigarette, he crushed it beneath the toe of his boot. “I felt like the goddamn walls were closin’ in on me.”
Debbie placed her hand on his forearm. “That doesn’t sound stupid,” she said, breathless. “I couldn’t breathe either.”