“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 appreciatesomeconversation.
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.”
