Once, he threatened to knock my teeth out with his hand around my dick.
Shame, hot and dizzying, rolls through me, and I clench my fingers into fists beneath the table as I force myself to smile at Neve, the same way I always smiled at my parents when I walked home to our shithole house. Not in lack of luxury; in an overabundance of dedication to Deliverance.
A framed photo of Father Tim hung above my bed until I left that house.
I threw myself into hockey because it was a sanctioned escape, the one sport the church looked upon with God’s grace.
I knew why.
Professional players with roots in branches of Deliverance sent back huge sums for tithes. They expected the same of me.
Even now, the reason I never signed that contract that could’ve taken me all the way to Minnesota, the one regret Imight have in my life—although Neve sitting across from me is relieving the feeling—was the thought of paying Preacher Tim makes me see my own shade of red.
Was it you?
I hold her gaze. She hasn’t blinked once, and despite the fact I could’ve easily done whatever I wanted to her in that alleyway because she’s so close to fainting as is, she looks strong with her lips pressed together, a furrow between her light brows.
I can make you weak.
I don’t say it, but the thought makes me hard, and I shift slightly in my seat.
“You’ll have to clarify for me.”
She lifts her chin as if in defiance. “Last night. Were you watching us?” Still no blinking, but I thinkshe’s blushing. It’s impossible to tell without asking, but it seems as if the tops of her cheeks have darkened slightly.
“Us?” I pull my head back in a mimicry of surprise. “Who isus?”
She blinks. She can’t tell if I’m lying, or if I genuinely don’t know that she was doing the walk of shame from my captain’s house before the sun fully rose this morning.
Is it shameful? Deliverance would say she’s a harlot, the worst kind of woman. My mother never even spoke to a man—even a cashier at the grocery store—in order to avoid anyone thinking of her that way.
But my father didn’t carry the same shame. I caught him jerking off to bondage porn more times than I can count on one hand, although I never told him. I just watched over his shoulder like a ghost, listened to the sounds he made when the release of breaking free from his reality whispered through the air while Mom was at her lady’s prayer meeting or visiting the elderly or whatever other saintly shit she did.
I always wondered though, what her kink was. What’s her dark secret? Her shame? I knew my father’s, and it was so predictable as to make him boring.
But Mom’s? She truly is an angel, so far as I can tell.
Nothing like the woman sitting across from me, and for that reason, I want to save her. Or corrupt her withmy sins.At leastIcan keep her safe.
She should know that.
Haven’t I proven it?
I might have failed when Mother went to confession and she came home in tears—a woman who is a saint, so far as I can tell, unless Preacher Tim made her a sinner—and I might not have had the guts to murder him to stop her sadness, but for Neve… I’ve done my best, haven’t I?
She ran into Faust’s arms that fateful night, then later, mine.
God, or someone like him, decided I should be her guardian.
She’s redemption. A chance to do over my wrongs where my mother was concerned.
She takes a breath, then pushes the plate away. When it first arrived, she took a tiny bite, no biscuit, but a part of the egg and cheese.
And while I only ordered a plate of bacon—now gone—I’mnot the one lacking in the calorie department. Neve is gorgeous, flawless, but she’s tired and pinched and she needs to fucking eat.
The iced coffee with a drop of milk she devoured doesn’t count.
I open my mouth to tell her I’m not letting her leave here until half that biscuit is gone, but before I can, she’s talking, staring out the tinted window that overlooks the snow-dusted side street edging campus.
