He didn’t respond. He didn’t know what to say. To anyone. And neither did he know what to do—for anyone.
“You’re bleeding again.” Debbie hurried forward and he let her take his hand. Fresh blood welled at his knuckles and dripped onto the bathroom floor. Onto her hands. Onto her bare feet. Blood—there was fucking blood everywhere.
“Some of these are really deep. You need to wrap them.”
Preacher only stared back at Debbie, wondering what the hell she was still doing here with him and this god-awful mess, and yet thankful that she was. He couldn’t bear to be around the others, couldn’t face another second of witnessing the devastation in their faces… but neither did he want to be alone.
“It’s fine,” he muttered, taking his hand back and turning away. Although his wounds throbbed angrily, the pain was insignificant compared to the storm raining down chaos and destruction inside of him.
Had they died quickly? The thought of his mother suffering was too much for him, and he slapped his forehead against the shower wall. Then again, harder. And again, harder still, wishing that his skull were an eggshell and easy to shatter. Easy to discard.
Preacher stilled when he felt a brush of soft skin against his leg. A hand touched his back, and tentative fingers trailed up his spine.
“Preacher,” Debbie whispered. “Preacher, look at me.”
He couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t even breathe. If he breathed, he was going to lose it.
“I don’t know what to do. But I want to help. Just tell me what to do. Tell me what you need.”
When he didn’t respond, she continued. “I lost my dad when I was little. He was killed in a car accident and I—”
White noise exploded in Preacher’s mind and he turned, grabbed hold of Debbie and pulled her beneath the water. Unable to speak for fear that he’d lose his feeble grasp on control, he only shook his head tightly.
Wide-eyed, she lifted her shaking hands to his face and laid them gently on his cheeks.
“I’m so sorry,” she breathed. “So sorry.”
She stroked his cheeks, his forehead, and tucked his wet hair back behind his ears. Then she rose up on her tiptoes, draped her arms around his neck, and pressed a kiss to his cheek, his jaw, his lips, his nose. Preacher let out a shuddering, ragged breath, and found himself leaning into her.
She was naked, he realized once they were pressed against one another.
Preacher’s hands slid up her back, and she continued to kiss him. Soft, gentle kisses, as if she were afraid he might break.
The next kiss Debbie placed on his lips, Preacher returned. He kissed her painstakingly slow with long, deep, lingering strokes of his tongue. One hand cupping her jaw, the other slid down the side of her body. And as his mental machinations slid swiftly into a different gear, his body hardened.
Pushing Debbie up against the wall, Preacher lifted her leg and wrapped it around his hip. Lifting her, he used his body to hold hers to the wall and positioned himself between her thighs.
Debbie’s eyes found his. Her pupils dilated. Her breaths sped up. Her breasts heaved with the rapid rise and fall of her chest. And Preacher resented her—he envied the single-minded need shining in her eyes.
He wanted that.
He wanted to not think about all that would be coming next.
He wanted to not see the smear of blood on the trailer door.
He wanted not to hear his brother screaming for their mother.
He wanted not to feel the shock, and the fear, and the pain.
Jesus Christ, he wanted just a moment even, just one single fucking moment, to be free of all of it.
Preacher slammed his hips forward and Debbie cried out. He pulled back, the tight, slick feel of her clenching around him tearing a groan from his throat. He thrust again, harder, and Debbie’s answering cry echoed throughout the room.
He thrust again; she cried out again—a harsh, frantic sound, as hungry as the nails scouring his back.
Thrust, cry. Thrust, cry. Thrust, cry.
Hard and fast, Preacher fucked himself into oblivion. Skin-slapping strokes and a primal chorus of guttural groans, desperate cries, and breathless pants were the soundtrack to his manufactured bliss.
His mind was nearly blank, focused only on the body he was pressed against—soft in all the right places, firm in all the right places, and how he felt sheathed inside her—a warm, wet sanctuary where he could hide from everything that was coming.
Because he knew.
He knew what sort of hell lay in wait for him outside of her body. Outside of this room.
The kind that there was no coming back from.
Chapter 25
Present Day
Having grown quiet, Preacher took several shallow breaths and turned away. Leaning back in my chair, I wrapped my arms around myself and just attempted to process everything he’d just confessed.
I could count on two hands the times that my father had been noticeably emotional about anything over the course of my lifetime. Half of those moments had been about me, while the other half had occurred on the rare occasion that my mother was brought up.
I’m not entirely sure why I was so surprised to find out the true extent of his feelings for Debbie. I supposed knowing something as opposed to hearing a firsthand account of that same thing were two very different beasts.
I’d known he’d loved her, of course, even as brief as their relationship had been. He’d loved her enough that her disappearance had crushed him. However, I’d never realized the true depth of his emotions.
Having had Debbie by his side during the tragic loss of his parents, the extent of what he felt for her now made more sense. I knew well enough how tragedy tends to bring about heightened emotions, and usually only one of two possible outcomes: you either grow closer or farther apart. Debbie, it seemed, had quickly become Preacher’s crutch, every bit as much as Preacher had become hers.
I would have thought these revelations might have had a soothing effect on me, but I found myself experiencing the opposite. My irritation was mounting, coupled with the anger of being lied to for so long, and about my own family no less. “Daddy,” I snapped before I could squelch my rising temper. “What happened next?”
Preacher faced me and smiled sadly. “Baby girl, I’d be willin’ to put good money on that being the day we made you.”
“Not that,” I said, making a face. “I meant what happened after that.”
Behind me, Deuce snorted loudly, and I turned to find him smirking. Frowning, I asked, “What’s so funny?”
Deuce shrugged. “That probably happened a few more times.”
With an exasperated sigh, I turned back to my father. “I want to know what happened with the police. Did they have any leads? Was anyone taken into custody?”
I’d only managed to find one article about it online—the Four Points Massacre, it had been called. The article had been sparse on details, and instead fraught with warnings and accusations about the dangers of “motorcycle gangs”.
A faraway look in his eyes, Preacher stared at something over my shoulder. “Wasn’t long after gettin’ back to the city that your mother started gettin’ sick. Couldn’t hold nothin’ down.”
“Daddy, the cops. What did the cops say?”
“It was your Aunt Sylvia who thought she might be pregnant.”
Frustrated, I glanced back at Deuce and rolled my eyes. Now that I knew the truth about my grandparents, it was obvious to me what Preacher was doing. The same thing he’d done my entire life—refuse to discuss his parents. He’d never dealt with losing them, that much was obvious to me now.
“So you brought Debbie home with you?” I asked, resigned to just letting him talk. There would be no forcing Preacher Fox to do anything he didn’t want to do. And I could always ask my uncles for specifics later.
Preacher’s eyes flicked to mine. “Of course I did!” he huffed indignantly. “You think I’d leave her behind?”
“I don’t know what to think!” I shot back. “Everything I thought I knew was wrong! I don’t know what’s true and what’s a lie anymore!”
“There were good reasons I lied to ya, Eva.”
“Like what?” I practically shouted, jumping to my feet. Gripping the bedrail, I glared down at him. So many feelings were coursing through me, too many, and every single one of them was unpleasant.