Rev stopped just inside the doorway, Reilly’s fingers slipping from his.
The light in the sitting room was dim, the curtains drawn. Only one small lamp in the corner lit.
Rev sucked air that held the heavy scent of impending death into his flared nostrils as he took in the hospital bed set up against the far wall. All of the simple furniture he remembered that used to be in this room was gone. The room now only consisted of a small side table and a few wooden chairs set up in a semi-circle around the bed.
He’d recognized those chairs. The ones used for visitors.
Or prayer circles.
It was hard to see the man of his childhood nightmares under the pile of white blankets. The big chested man with broad shoulders and powerful arms seemed to have disappeared. What looked like a skeleton took his place. Blankets and bones were all Rev could see.
The room smelled like sickness. Puke, shit and piss.
John Schmidt’s power was gone. Stripped from him by an evil the man couldn’t beat into submission.
Rev dug deep to see if he felt empathy or even sympathy. Nothing. He couldn’t drum up anything for his sire except loathing.
A slender woman sat by his father’s bed, her head tipped down as she read from a well-worn bible, her mouth moving but no words escaping. Her dark hair was pulled back into a tight bun like his mother’s, but she looked a lot younger than Rachel Schmidt.
Maybe even younger than Reilly.
“Patrice,” Matthew called from behind Rev, making him take an involuntary step deeper into the room.
The woman’s head lifted. Her gaze sliced over Rev, then Reilly, and finally landed on Matthew, who still stood behind them.
“Come, give my nephew some time with his father.” A hand clamped on Rev’s shoulder. “I’ll introduce you to my wife another time.”
With an obedient nod, the woman rose and Rev saw her dress fell all the way to her ankles. Not an Amish-type dress, but one similar to his mother’s, a style the women from their order wore for modesty. No cleavage or skin showing below the high neckline. The dresses always reminded him of something between what the Amish and Mennonite women wore. However, unlike the Amish and Mennonites, the women of his parents’ church did not wear any kind of head coverings—what Rev called sin sifters—except in church on Sundays.
Rev guessed that their religious order broke off from either the Amish or Mennonites a very long time ago, though he never cared enough to ask. The groups were all similar in some aspects but not exactly the same.
Even so, all of them had problems with abuse. Either with domestic violence, sexual assault, even incest. But rarely were those secrets shared outside of their community. Rarely did the pigs get involved. Those closed communities tended to handle their own problems.
Or simply sweep them under the rug.
Or accept it as God’s will.
“Hello,” Patrice said softly to each of them with a slight nod as she passed.
“Hello,” Reilly returned the greeting, glancing over her shoulder to watch them walk back down the hallway toward the kitchen. She then lifted her face to his and bugged out her green eyes.
He didn’t give a shit about Matthew or his wife. He was here for one person and one person only.
He walked through the room, turning on more lamps so his father could see him clearly. So his father would know who was here to visit him. So his father would have no doubt who it was that stood over him in his weakened state.
When Rev was done lighting the room, he moved closer to the hospital bed and glanced down at the man with the pale, paper-thin skin. His eye sockets were shadowed in dark purple, his cheeks hollowed, blue veins visible just below the skin like rivers on a map. Only a few dark strands of his formerly thick hair remained.
This was not the man Rev remembered. His father was now the shell of the man who had ruled his family and this very household. It used to be that Rev was the weak one, unable to overpower his father. How things had changed.
Reilly stepped up behind him, not quite touching him, but close enough he could feel her body heat mix with his. Making her presence and support known without words.
Since stepping into this house, she hadn’t said much. Definitely not normal for her, but then maybe she couldn’t find anything to say. She couldn’t understand the undertones of the house, of the past, of the people who had lived under this roof. Of the people who still lived under it now.
But he was sure she would ask too many fucking questions later.
That was her nature. To be curious, to constantly be chattering, to be involved in whatever was happening around her, whether it was welcomed or not.
It was both cute and fucking annoying. Normally, more of the second than the first.
He hadn’t wanted her to come along, but at this very second, as he stared down at the man who used to be his father, he sure was fucking glad she had elbowed her way along on this trip. Her presence helped keep him from doing what he suddenly wanted to do.
Rev’s fingers twitched with the urge to wrap them around the man’s thin, fragile-looking neck and squeeze until the rattling breath that filled the room went silent.
He wondered how much time his old man had left and whether it would be worth shortening that time or not.
No. Not with Reilly here. Or Matthew and his young wife. Even his mother.
They would be witnesses and strangling always left bruises behind.
Even though his father had cancer rotting away at his insides, to Rev, the man could never suffer enough. Taking his life would only shorten that suffering.
And that wasn’t why he was here.
He was here to witness karma to the very end.
More importantly, while the good pastor didn’t want to hear deathbed confessions, Rev did. Rev wanted to know why the man had violated his sister’s trust. Violated his sister, period.
While he hated every punishment his father doled out to him, he hated every time he heard his sister’s door close and lock even more.
The man’s breath caught and Rev moved even closer, until his body was pressed against the metal side rails, until he was staring straight down into his father’s face.
“Wake up, old man,” Rev ordered. “Wake up and face me.”
His father’s thin, pale lips parted and a weak hiss escaped. His eyelids fluttered a few times before they opened.
Father and son were nothing alike. Rev was blond with blue eyes. John Schmidt’s hair, when he had it, had been a very dark brown that matched eyes neither Saylor or Rev inherited.
His sister also had their mother’s blue eyes, even though Saylor was born with brown hair. Not as dark as their father’s, but certainly not dark blonde like their mother’s or Rev’s.
Their eyes tied mother, son and daughter together. While neither looked like their father. Thank fuck. Because if he had to look in the mirror every day and see his father looking back at him, he wouldn’t have made it to his twenty-eighth year.
“Who are you?” The man’s voice was weak and not as booming or intimidating as Rev remembered.
“Don’t know your own son?”
A flicker of recognition filled his bloodshot and watery brown eyes. “I don’t have a son.” The man tried to pull himself up to his elbows but failed and his head flopped back onto the pillow. He managed to turn his head enough to narrow his eyes on Rev. “Get out of my house, Michael.” His effort to sound commanding, even menacing, failed.
How the mighty have fallen.
“Make me,” Rev said. “And the name’s Rev, not Michael. Michael is dead and so is Sarah Schmidt.” He leaned over and put his ear to his old man’s ear. “Soon you will be, too. Ain’t leavin’ ’til that happens.”
“Why would you… come back here… somewhere you’re not… welcome?” When he started hacking uncontrollably, Reilly grabbed the cup of water with a straw on the nearby table and offered it to him.
His father weakly slapped her hand away. “Sarah?”
Reilly was blonde with green eyes and looked nothing like Saylor.
“Just like you don’t have a son, you don’t have a daughter, either. You lost her a long time ago.”
“Your loss… was not a hardship,” he croaked, “but Sarah… belonged to me.” It sounded like it hurt his throat to talk.
“A young girl can’t belong to a man. A daughter can’t be owned by her father.”
John Schmidt forced out a weak huff. “You have always… been argumentative, child. Always. No matter how many times… I tried to teach you,” he took a rattled breath, “you refused to learn the ways… You know a man’s daughter belongs to him… until the moment he gives her… to her husband.” He wheezed as he struggled to take his next breath. “A worthy man… of the father’s choosing. Just like your mother belonged to your grandfather… until she was given to me.” His skeletal hand, transparent skin over bones, flopped onto his chest. “A daughter faithfully serves her father… until the moment she exchanges hands… from father to husband.”
That was what their church taught. But there was either an unspoken meaning behind that lesson or his father had heard what he wanted to hear and interpreted it to fit his own personal agenda.
“What does your precious bible say about a father lyin’ with his own daughter? What does your preacher say?”
“He tells us… to teach our daughters well. I cannot find a good husband… for my daughter if she isn’t worthy.” He struggled to take another noisy breath. “Sarah was a wayward child… Like you… She needed to learn how to serve… her future husband well. Otherwise, if she failed to do so… she would be an embarrassment to me… to your mother… She would be proof… of our inability to raise our children according to our beliefs… If we failed her… we would fail God.”
Bullshit. Utter fucking bullshit. Rev’s teeth were clenched so tightly he thought they might shatter.
But his sire wasn’t done spewing that verbal diarrhea. “You were a bad influence on her… Encouraging her to act out… to be an ill-behaved child. It was your fault she needed… to be punished so much.”
The pressure in his chest swelled to the point he thought his skin would split open. “Oh no, old man, don’t you fuckin’ dare blame me for your sickness. For what you did. Don’t even fuckin’ go there.” He needed to get the fuck out of there before he up and killed the man anyway. Because he was seconds away from doing just that. From stopping the bullshit and lies. “Are you gonna die today?”
“You would like that… wouldn’t you?”
“It can’t come soon enough.”
“Agreed. It’ll be glorious… to feel the arms of God surrounding me… as He welcomes me into His Kingdom… You will never feel that.”
Rev leaned over the bed and growled, “Neither will you.”
He stepped back, bumping into Reilly. He grabbed her arm to keep from knocking her over and tugged her behind him as he took long strides from the room.
He didn’t go to the kitchen to say goodbye, instead he went directly to the front door, slamming it behind them. He didn’t stop until they reached his Bronco. He went around to the passenger side, yanked open the door and helped Reilly into the seat before slamming that door shut, too.
As he was rounding the front of his Ford, he heard, “Michael!” shouted from the house.
He paused with one hand on the driver’s door handle and glanced back over his shoulder.
Matthew stood on the porch.
Rev couldn’t take much more today. He was already teetering on the edge of a cliff. It wouldn’t take but a small breeze to knock him over.
And if he began to fall, he was taking everyone inside that house with him.
“We’ll be in the area. You got my number now. Text me if you think he’s about to take his last fuckin’ breath. Wanna witness it.”
“But—”
“Make sure to text me, Matthew!” he shouted. “You don’t, you’ll regret it.”
He flung his door open, got in and slammed it shut. He couldn’t get the fuck off that property fast enough.
Stones shot from the tires as Rev gunned the Ford in reverse and backed onto the road.
“Rev—”
“No.” He shoved the shifter into first gear, the tires chirping as the Bronco surged forward.
“Rev,” she tried again.
“Ain’t talkin’ about it right now.”
Her chest had been tight the whole time she listened to the exchange, not only with his mother but his father, as well.
She’d been right. Stepping into that house was like stepping into a whole other world or dimension. Or something.
It was freakishly weird. And nothing what she’d expected.
Rev clearly did not fit in that household. Neither did Saylor. That family was just as messed up as the Shirleys were. And she didn’t think that was possible. She had been wrong.
But, holy hell, how was Rev not fucked up? How did he not turn out to be some sort of serial killer? She didn’t even know most of what he and his sister dealt with but the little she heard so far…
No wonder Saylor acted out and ended up in a juvenile detention center for all of her teen years.
To escape that house. To escape that life.
To escape whatever her father did to her, most of which Reilly could only assume without knowing all the details.
Truthfully, she didn’t want to know the details. She could only imagine what they were and that was bad enough.
Reilly glanced around as he sped down the curvy country road and into town. She had to hang onto the dash and the door to keep from being tossed around, even though she wore her seatbelt. When they approached a strip mall, the knobby four-by-four tires squealed like a poked pig as he turned sharply into the parking lot.
After pulling the Bronco into an empty spot in front of Fine Wine & Good Spirits, he threw the shifter into neutral, jammed on the parking brake, left the engine running, climbed out of the truck and growled, “Stay here,” before slamming the door shut.
Well, then.
Without his cut, he looked like every other Joe Citizen entering the state-run liquor store. Every other citizen who was pierced and tatted up, at least.
Maybe he was a bit hotter than most of the men walking through the parking lot.
All right, a lot hotter. Actually blistering.
Holy shit, his ass in Levi’s was just…
Wrong time, Reilly. The man is in the middle of a crisis and ogling his ass is not appropriate right now. Nor is drooling.
She swiped a hand over her mouth and sighed.
Not even five minutes later, his long legs were eating up the pavement between him and his truck. He jerked the driver’s door open and shoved the bag at her as he climbed in.
She glanced inside it and saw three bottles of Jack Daniels.
Three bottles of Jack.
“Um…Three?”
“They were on sale.”
She pulled the receipt from the bag. No, they weren’t. She glanced over at him with a raised eyebrow. “If you’re going to drink this much booze, food would be a really good idea, too. Don’t you think?”
The problem was, he wasn’t thinking. Right now he wanted to drown out his anger and memories and whatever else he was dealing with.
Three bottles of whiskey would certainly do that. Three bottles might also put him into a damn coma.
“Food, Rev. And I’m hungry, anyway,” she lied. She still was kind of sick to her stomach after dealing with the Stephen King house and family.
He scanned the strip mall, then once again growled, “Stay here.” He repeated the whole mouth-watering performance over again, but instead of going in the liquor store, he disappeared into a pizza shop two doors down.
Of course, Reilly had a hard time not watching his ass the whole time. Because not watching just wasn’t humanly possible.
She sighed at her weakness and noticed she hadn’t been the only one staring at it. The woman standing by her car three spots closer to the strip of stores had also been appreciating everything that was Rev.
The stunning eyes, the short spiky hair, the neatly trimmed beard, the badass tattoos and piercings, the denim-clad perfect ass and those damn, powerful thighs that Reilly had seen at work every time he pumped into a sweet butt on the farm out in front of anybody and everybody.
The man had no shame, but then none of them did. That was just the way the guys were. They liked sex and didn’t care who watched them have it.
Sometimes they didn’t care who they had it with, either.
Sometimes they didn’t care that they were also getting sloppy seconds.
Or thirds.
Yuck.
If she was smart, she’d find a nice guy to be—what the guys called— her regular, who didn’t wear a cut and the act of fucking him wouldn’t cause an issue with her sister or anyone else. Also, a guy she hadn’t watched have sex with a bunch of other women. Not just fucking, but getting head and giving it, too. The “giving it” part being cunnilingus and not sucking another man’s cock.
Though, that might be kind of hot…
No. She didn’t think any of the Fury members were into that and if they were, they certainly weren’t open about it.
The guys didn’t mind having sex together as long as they had a female as a buffer between them. No sword play allowed.
She might have to use two of the guys “accidentally” discovering each other as one of her future fantasies while using her Rabbit.
Yes, she would.
She eyed the woman still standing at the rear of her minivan, loading her groceries into the back with a slowness that reminded Reilly of a vibrator with dying batteries. As in, the woman was too busy keeping her eyes on the door to the pizza shop than worrying about her Rocky Road melting in the warm mid-day, mid-April temperatures.
But then, Rev was much tastier than Rocky Road. And eating a healthy helping of Rev wouldn’t cause a woman to put on a few extra pounds like ice cream might.
Sorry, lady, if anyone is jumping his damn bones tonight, it isn’t going to be you. You better save your ice cream before it turns to soup because that’s the only snack you’re eating tonight.
The woman’s spine suddenly snapped straight, her breasts pushed out and manicured fingernails fluffed her hair around her shoulders.
Reilly pursed her lips and debated whether to watch Rev coming back to the Bronco or the woman.
The woman. Who just happened to drop an item, then do some exaggerated movements, including bending over and wiggling her track pants-covered ass, to catch Rev’s attention.
Rev was too busy beelining back to the Bronco to even notice. His hands were full with a six-pack of Coke in plastic bottles, a large bag of chips and what might be two large submarine sandwiches.
Yep, the woman could have been naked and slapping her own ass and he wouldn’t have noticed. He had too much other shit clogging up his brain matter right now.
Like murdering his father. Maybe even his mother, too.
What a damn mess.
He opened the driver’s door and the smell of the freshly baked hoagie rolls filling the interior made her mouth water. Not as much as Rev’s ass, but damn close.
She pouted when she saw the chips were BBQ flavored instead of sour cream and onion, but she didn’t dare complain. Not in the mood he was in. She’d like to keep her head attached to her neck.
However, six sixteen-ounce bottles of Coke were not enough to mix with three 750 ml bottles of whiskey, that was for damn sure.
“Are you sure that’s enough soda?”
He squinted at her. “That shit’s for you, not me.” He threw the stuff behind the driver’s seat and finished climbing inside. “Anythin’ else, princess?”
Princess?
He thought she was acting like a princess because she suggested food to add to his liquid dinner?
“You know—”
Her mouth hung open when he cut her off with a sharp, “No,” like she was Cujo and Rook was scolding his four-legged terror for taking a shit on the shop floor.
She snapped her mouth shut and stared at him with pursed lips, debating whether it was worth wasting good whiskey by cracking one of the bottles over his head.
Her conclusion was that it wasn’t.
“Fine,” she huffed.
He gave her a sharp look and a cocked eyebrow before releasing the parking brake and shifting the Bronco into Reverse.
They drove in complete silence—no radio, no talking, nothing—until he located a motel at the other end of town that advertised vacancies in red flashing neon.
She anticipated his growled, “Stay here”—since that seemed to be today’s theme—and he didn’t disappoint her. He left her in the Bronco to go into the motel’s office alone.
The place reminded her a lot of The Grove Inn, an older, but well-kept, motel. The differences were the office was on one end instead of the middle, and there seemed to be rooms in the front and the rear of the one-story building.
And she was pretty sure there wasn’t a smoking hot biker like Ozzy behind the front desk.
She wondered if Rev was getting one room or two but that was answered when he got back into the truck with three key cards in his hand.
Three.
That was an odd number for two rooms. He tossed one plastic card into her lap and slipped the other two into his back pocket. As her brain processed that, he pulled the Ford around to the back of the motel where the rest of the parking spots were empty.
“Hold up, you have the key to my room, but I don’t have the key to yours?”
She received silence as an answer. Unacceptable.
“Rev…”
He pulled in front of the room at the end farthest from the office. After shutting down the Ford, he turned to her. “Yep.”
“Why?”
“‘Cause you’re property of the club and since you’re with me, it’s my job to protect you.”
Oh.
But wait. “That still doesn’t explain why I don’t have a key to your room.”
“‘Cause you don’t need one.”
“But I want one.”
“Don’t always get what you want, Reilly. Though, I know you think you should. My trip. My rules. You didn’t have to come along.”
“After what I saw today, I’m glad you didn’t come by yourself,” she muttered.
That made his mouth get even tighter than it had been since the moment they pulled into his parents’ driveway. “Coulda done it without you.”
She wasn’t so sure of that.
“Get whatever you need outta the truck before I lock it up.”
“If you’re going to get smashed on whiskey, how are you going to protect me?” She had air-quoted the word “protect.”
“Once you’re in your room, you ain’t leavin’ it.”
“But—”
“My trip. My rules,” he repeated. “You could be back in the Grove doin’ your own thing. So, buckle up, buttercup. You insisted on comin’ along.”
Buttercup? She wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than princess. “You keep reminding me of that.”
“‘Cause you keep forgettin’. You think I wanted you to see that shit you saw? Think I wanted for you to hear that shit you heard?”
No, probably not.
“Don’t want anyone to know that shit. That’s my shit and no one else’s goddamn business.”
“Saylor.”
“Leave her out of it.” His tone cut her like sharp glass.
It was hard to leave his sister out of the equation since they had the same parents and she dealt with the same things as he did. Maybe even worse.
“She’s my friend, Rev. She’s like my sister, too. Do you think I don’t care what happened to her?”
He stared at her for a couple of breaths. “She talk to you about that shit?”
“No.”
“Then it ain’t your business. Know you struggle with this, buttercup, but everything ain’t your business.”
She wasn’t liking this whole “buttercup” thing. He’d never called her that before and he wasn’t doing it to be cute, he was doing it because anger was seething just under his surface.
Right now, he was annoyed at the world. He needed to decompress.
He thought whiskey was going to help him do that. Reilly doubted it would. However, she was pretty damn sure he wasn’t only going to be hitting the bottle tonight. He’d also be hitting a joint or smoking a bowl.
Hopefully he wouldn’t go on the prowl to hit up a woman like the one doing her mating dance in the parking lot of the strip mall.
With one look, one crook of his finger, he could probably get most women to drop at his feet. Maybe they wouldn’t want anything more than one night with the biker bad boy, but they’d at least want a little forbidden taste of him.
Maybe he’d be a checkmark on their bucket list.
She’d seen nasty cat fights between female hang-arounds over getting one of the guys to themselves. Usually, whoever it was solved it by disappearing with them both after the nails were retracted and the blood stopped flying.
Someone needed to club her over the head if she ever got to the point that she thought any man was worth fighting over.
When it came to the Fury sisterhood, if any of their ol’ men stepped out of line with another woman, they already made it clear to them, they’d simply walk away. They weren’t putting up with that shit and they also weren’t going to fight another woman over him.
And what did that do?
It kept those men on a short leash without them even being aware of it.
You stray, you pay was the silent code the women followed. And it was damn effective.
No nagging, no arguments and no having to keep tabs on their men. It was an easy and tidy way to keep their relationships loyal and solid. It simply worked.
“Grab your shit,” he grumbled, getting out of the truck and going to the back hatch. When she got out and joined him, he handed her her backpack, the soda and one of the subs.
He grabbed the rest of the stuff, locked up his vehicle and headed to the room on the end.
“Which one is mine?” she asked with her arms full.
He jerked his chin toward the room next door and disappeared inside.
His door slamming shut jerked her into motion and she went to her door, managed to open it without dropping anything and went inside the dark room.
She couldn’t see shit but at least it smelled clean.
She made her way to the bed, dumped everything on it, then went back to close the door, lock it and turn on the lights. Once she did, she turned and noticed something.
Another door on the right.
He’d gotten them adjoining rooms.
She immediately went over and unlocked her side and was faced with a closed door on his. She tried the knob but it was locked. She sighed, closed hers but didn’t bother to lock it since he had a damn key, anyway.
Truthfully, she had no reason to keep him out. If he wanted to come visit her during the night and ravish her, she certainly wasn’t going to push him back out the door.
A whole bunch of hot, sweaty sex and exchange of fluids—besides whiskey—might help release some of the irritability he was struggling with.
They were in Coatesville, PA. Far, far, far from Manning Grove.
No one had to know.
Hell, no one even knew she and Rev were together. In the same town, in the same motel. The two of them knocking boots would just be one more secret in a club full of them.
All they had to do afterward was pretend it never happened.
That could work.
It could.
Couldn’t it?
She stared at the door that connected the two rooms and chewed on her thumbnail.
No. He wanted to be alone. To wallow in his misery. She needed to respect that. He was always telling her she was sticking her nose where it didn’t belong. And if she pushed her way into his room, she would be proving him right.
“Damn it,” she whispered.
She’d leave the interior door unlocked and she’d let him make the first move, if that was what he wanted.
She glanced at her phone and saw it was only a little after five and way too early to call it a night. She removed her boots, jeans, bra and top and pulled on the comfy silky shorts and camisole set she slept in. Once settled on the bed with pillows propped behind her, she grabbed the remote, found a decent movie, sucked down the bottle of warm generic water that came with the room, and ended up scarfing down the whole ham, cheddar and bacon sub by herself.
After getting up before the crack of dawn and now with a full belly of carbs and processed meats, the movie became a distant memory as sleep pulled at her, dragging her under until it spit her back up hours later.
The drone of the TV filled her ears before she blinked open her eyes, taking a few seconds to remember where she was and why. She wiped the saliva away from the corner of her mouth, brushed breadcrumbs off her chest and sheets, then glanced at the time on her cell phone again since it had to be the middle of the night.
She groaned. It was only nine. She’d slept away the last three hours.
If she tried to go back to sleep now, she’d never sleep through the rest of the night.
What was the solution? Whiskey. Maybe a few hits of pot.
But did she have any? Hell no.
Did she know who had some? Hell yes.
Now, was he willing to share?
She didn’t know, but it couldn’t hurt to ask, now could it?
