by Cat Miller
Luc rode for what felt like hours into the desert with no real destination in mind. It was just Luc, his bike, and the Nevada sunshine on his face. The road flew by under his wheels. The steady rumble of his bike through his body was a familiar old friend.
Luc found himself in North Vegas, his old neighborhood, which wasn’t far from the bright lights and action of the strip. He pulled into the parking lot of a brick building that was as familiar to him as his own home had been. It was the church his grandma had been such an active member of throughout her life. She’d raised Luc in the church from the day she’d been awarded custody when he was only a couple months old.
Luc looked up at the cross perched on the steeple and felt a smile touch his lips. He knew every crack on the pavement, every swirl in the wood of the pew in front, the one his Gran always occupied during services. He knew every hymn in the book and could quote more of the Bible than he wanted to admit.
Much of his young life had been spent inside those four walls, from Sunday school to after school care while his Gran worked, to service three times a week until he went off to college. All of that time, he, Rourke, and Dolce had been inseparable.
Just standing there made him feel closer to his beloved Gran. Maybe that was why his bike had taken him home. Luc needed to feel his Gran’s grounding influence to sort out all of the confusion in his head.
A familiar ache set up in his chest at the thought of his Gran, and Luc rubbed at the spot. He had a new pain to add to the old one now. Everly had wound her way into that space that had become so hollow since the death of his grandmother. They lived there together now. Both the memory of the woman who raised him with so much love and thoughts of the woman who’d stolen his heart along with every bit of his common sense.
He unsnapped his helmet and climbed off of the bike. It was the middle of the day, a Tuesday. Luc wasn’t sure who the new preacher was since Pastor Davis retired. There weren’t any services going on, but if the new preacher was anything like Davis, the doors would be open for anyone who wanted to come inside for a little peace.
He looked down at his faded riding jeans with rips in a few places, his sleeveless muscle shirt, and black riding boots. Not exactly appropriate church attire, but it was unlikely he’d see anyone inside at this time of day unless he went looking for them.
Luc climbed the steps to the tall, white double doors. In his head, he repeated a childhood rhyme that went with hand motions.
“Here is the church. Here is the steeple. Open the door. Here are all the people.”
He paused there on the top step and looked up at that cross high above his head and rubbed the back of his neck.
Fuck. He didn’t belong there anymore. Too much time had passed. He’d seen too much, done too many unscrupulous things to ever be forgiven. His Gran would be ashamed of the man she’d raised.
He hesitated there, wavering between hopping back on his bike and getting his ass back to his end of town, and going inside to face his demons.
He snorted to himself. There were no demons inside. Not in the church. No, those were inside of Luc himself. They were already with him outside on the steps. They were always there and he was damn sick of the company.
Luc grasped the familiar brass door handle and pulled. It opened easily, and he breathed a sigh of relief. What the hell did he think would happen? Lightening would strike? Or maybe his evil ass would be barred from this sacred place? He scoffed at himself. When had he become so fucking fanciful? This was just a building like any other, no matter how large it loomed in his memory.
When Luc crossed the threshold, a sense of peace fell over him. It really was like going home. Inside the sanctuary all was quiet. The lights were dimmed, and no one was in sight. He made his way to the pew he and Gran had always occupied.
Luc was careful to lift his riding boots as he walked. In his youth, the habit of shuffling along as he crossed the carpet had earned him many a static electric shock.
He settled himself into his old seat and looked up at the ornate cross that adorned the altar. Without his permission, Luc’s hand slid to the empty space on the pew next to him. His Gran wasn’t there, but in that sacred place, he felt as if he might just be closer to her than he’d been since the day he held her hand and let the tears flow as she passed away in the hospital.
He missed her so much. He didn’t think he’d ever stop missing her and he didn’t want to. She was goodness and light. She was his mom, whether she gave birth to him or not. She was the only thing that had kept him on the straight and narrow. As soon as she was gone, his true nature had risen to the forefront.
A noise to his left drew Luc’s attention. He smiled and began to stand when he saw Pastor Davis entering the sanctuary from the church office.
“Stay seated, Luc,” Pastor said with a bright smile on his tan face and raised bushy grey eyebrows that expressed his surprise at finding Luc there at the church. “It’s good to see you, son.”
The pastor slid into the pew next to Luc and gave him a hearty pat on the back.
“I just saw you on Sunday at service in the chapel. You miss me already?”
“I do actually. There was a time that I saw you several times a week. You and your Gran are deeply missed around here.” Pastor Davis looked around the holy space and sighed. “Yes, I miss you both very much.”
The pastor and his wife had hosted Luc and Gran many times for Sunday dinner and even on weeknights. At the time, it was just a part of life for Luc. Looking back, he now understood that the Davis’ were lending support to a woman struggling to raise her grandchild alone. She wasn’t a young woman. She worked, and she was tired. Having a meal she didn’t have to prepare was a welcome treat and much needed break for his Gran.
“I’m a little surprised to see you here, Pastor Davis.”
“I was about to say the very same thing to you.” He chuckled. “I just can’t stay away. I do the bookkeeping and hang around to keep the doors open when the new pastor is busy.” He shrugged. “Since Lucy passed, I get tired of rattling around the house alone. Retirement was fun when I was spending it with my Lucy. Now . . .” He shrugged again, looking a little lost.
Mrs. Davis had died unexpectedly from pneumonia five years ago. Luc tried to change the subject. The pastor was clearly still struggling with the loss of his wife.
“I’ve been thinking of asking you for help with an idea I’m brewing.”
“Really? What’s on your mind?” He had the pastor’s attention.
“There’s an empty store front not far from the casino. I’m thinking of renting it out. I have quite a few employees who struggle with reliable childcare. I don’t know a thing about kids. It’s not something I’d want to oversee myself, but if I had a trusted friend to check in regularly and assure everything was run smoothly and quality of care was above standard, I might go ahead with the plan. I need someone who knows what to look for from applicants for daycare providers, too.”
It was something Luc had been thinking about for a while. He’d had awesome after school and daycare at the church when he was a kid, but the church was too far away from The Inferno, and they only catered to church parishioners. It was a small program. That was why it was so great. Lots of personal attention.
Luc looked at Pastor Davis to see how he was taking the suggestion. The man was grinning from ear to ear and shaking his head.
“What?” Luc asked.
He didn’t think it was funny. It was a good idea. If employees who needed it were offered affordable, safe childcare they’d be happy. They’d work harder. That was all. It was a good idea. He didn’t find it funny at all.
“Are you going to take care of me now, as well, Luc?” the pastor asked.
“You as well? What does that mean?”
“You’re just like your grandmother with that big heart of yours.” The pastor patted Luc on the back.
What? Big heart? Him? He didn’t have a big heart. He was a bastard. He was ruthless. He didn’t h
ave a big fucking heart. His heart was what had changed his life and made him a miserable fuck. He didn’t want a heart at all.
“Don’t look so confused, boy.” Luc received another hearty pat on the shoulder. “You see a person in need, and you try to fix it. Your employees are the happiest people in the business. People clamor for jobs with your company. You provide a free clinic and insurance. You have a dorm for displaced employees and a chapel for anyone who wants to attend services. You hire prostitutes and give them safe jobs. You hire as many veterans as you can to fill your security staff. Now you want to open a daycare to give me something to do?”
No. No. Pastor Davis had it all wrong. The way he described it made Luc sound like a fucking saint or something. He wasn’t. It was just good business. Happy employees worked better. Service men came already trained for security jobs. They knew how to fight and how to handle a firearm safely. They could subdue a person without a fight or a firearm in most cases.
Yes, he had a doctor and nursing staff, but that cut down on time off requests and sick time. That’s all. It wasn’t a big deal. Again, it was just good business.
“I don’t want to hear your excuses about good business decisions. We’re going to differ in opinion on that topic. Why don’t you tell me why you’re really here today, Luc? Something has you out of sorts. Let’s talk about that.” Pastor Davis sobered and leaned back into the pew. He was giving Luc that ‘stop bullshitting me, boy’ look.
Luc blinked. He didn’t know how to take that. “I didn’t know you would be here.”
“No, you didn’t, but I am and it’s clear to me that you have a burden you need to release. Talk to me, son. Is it about Everly?” he asked with sympathetic eyes.
Just the sound of her name spoken aloud made his heart stall in his chest. He’d fucked up so bad with Everly. He knew when she left after he got her back from Charlie that he’d made a mistake. He just couldn’t let go of his mistrust.
It was really no surprise that she’d walked away without a fight. He hadn’t deserved her. She was far too good for a ruthless bastard like him. She was better off at home with her family.
She would have received the divorce papers by now. It would all be over. She would go on with her life without him. And didn’t that fucking sting? He rubbed at the center of his chest. The idea of Everly moving on with another man made him feel murderous, but she deserved a good man. A man who knew how to love. A man who didn’t accuse her of being a conniving, manipulative bitch who’d seduced him into marriage for his wealth.
What he still couldn’t understand was why she’d done it all. Why had she let him use her that way? Why had she sacrificed herself for her brother? Why? He wished he could understand.
“Fine. You want to know what’s eating me, I’ll tell you. Yes, it’s Everly. She’s gone, and that’s a good thing. She was a distraction. She interfered with my work, my staff, and my general mental well-being.”
“She drove you crazy because you love her, Luc. That’s the effect women have on us poor men. I imagine you made her a little nuts as well.” The pastor spoke from the experience of a man who’d loved a woman for many years.
“Was it love? I don’t know if I’m capable of real love in the long-term. Maybe it wasn’t really love for Everly either.” This would all be easier if Luc didn’t really love Everly. He wished he could wake up one day and just not want her anymore.
He wasn’t sure that Everly had loved him. He couldn’t be sure until he understood her motives. That would never happen now. He’d never see her again. Their marriage would be dissolved very soon. He just had to wait for her to sign and return the papers. There was no reason to ask her about her motives now. He should’ve done that before he sent her packing.
“No? Hmmmm…” The pastor made a drawn out contemplative sound.
“Okay. Let’s try something. I want you to tell me about your grandmother.”
Luc was confused. Pastor Davis knew his Gran very well.
“Humor an old man, would you? Pretend I’d never met your grandmother. Tell me who she was to you.” He nodded in encouragement when Luc hesitated.
He felt stupid, but he had too much respect for the pastor to ignore his request. Luc closed his eyes and thought about his Gran.
“She was beautiful. My Gran had long blond hair, but I was the only one who ever really got to see it. She kept it in a tidy braid that she twisted into a bun. Only when she came home at night did she unwind all of that hair. I remember watching the grey spread through her hair over the years. She said she wouldn’t dye it because she’d earned every grey hair on her head, and she wasn’t ashamed of her age.”
Luc smiled at that memory. He’d asked her once when he was about ten why she didn’t dye her hair like the other moms. He often forgot that she was his grandmother and therefore much older than his friend’s mothers.
“Gran was a secretary. She worked long hours, and I suspect she didn’t make nearly what she was worth. She didn’t like to talk to me about money. I don’t think she wanted me to worry about things like that. She worked for a law firm in town for twenty-five years before she got sick and was forced to retire.
“Even breast cancer couldn’t keep her down, though. She still went to church three times a week when she wasn’t having chemo or radiation treatments. She tried not to let me see how sick she really was, but I knew. I knew.
“She believed in God. She believed in her church. And she believed in me.” Luc’s throat closed on that last statement.
His Gran had been such a wonderful mother to him. She knew he was angry about the death of his mother. Especially for her sake. She knew he felt responsible for the loss of her daughter. It was him, him and his bastard father who had killed Madeline.
She worried he would hunt down Charlie Christianson and end up in jail or dead. She had good reason to be worried.
“Alright. It sounds like you had a lot of respect for your grandmother. Did you love her?”
Luc glared at the pastor. He held up his hands defensively but not in fear. He knew Luc would never hurt him. “Just humor me.”
“Yes, of course, I loved her,” he snapped. “She was the only person I’ve ever loved. The only person I said I love you to . . . except for . . .” He didn’t want to say her name. It was hard enough just thinking about Everly.
“Except for Everly? Tell me about Everly. Don’t tell me what happened between the two of you, but about her as a person,” he instructed.
Luc cleared his throat. It was tight again.
“She’s something more than beautiful. More than just lovely. She radiates this energy that pulls you and makes you wonder where all of that spark comes from. She has such a positive outlook on the world. I never got that about her. She’d lost her mom to a drunk driver. She had to give up her education to go home and raise her sister. Her father became a drunk with a gambling addiction.”
Luc fisted his hands at his sides.
“Men like Dean Parker and my father need to be shot for the hell they put their families through. He was out squandering the family fortune, gambling with their very livelihood while she and her brother struggled to keep things afloat. How do you survive all that and still stay positive?”
“She sounds like quite a young lady. The self-sacrificing kind of woman you want by your side when things get rough. I see a lot of similarities between Everly and your grandmother.”
“You do?” Luc had to think about that for a minute. He supposed they did have some similar traits.
“I do. They both loved you very much,” said the pastor.
Luc’s head whipped around. “I’m not so sure.”
“Let me tell what I know about love, son. Love is just a word. It means nothing until someone comes along and gives it meaning. For your grandmother, it was you and Madeline that gave meaning to the word.
She tried to love her husband, but he wouldn’t let her love him. He refused to love her back. He loved his addiction. They fell apart i
n spite of her best efforts, because he wasn’t willing to put forth any effort at all. She sacrificed so much of herself for her child, and then her grandchild.” The pastor nodded thoughtfully.
“The meaning of love for Everly, much like your grandmother, is her family. They are what she was willing to sacrifice for, even to the point of giving up her own self-respect.”
Luc felt heat rise up his face. He didn’t like the idea of people knowing his private business. Especially this particular bit of business.
“Oh, yes, I know all about your arrangement with Everly Parker. Dolce put it around that you were dating when rumors started to fly, but it was too late. Too many people already knew of her father and his issues. They also knew he owed a huge debt to you. You might want to tighten up security in your contracts department. Someone there verified her status as your in-house prostitute.”
“She was not a prostitute! It wasn’t like that between us!”
Luc didn’t mean to snarl at the pastor, but damn it, that was Everly he was talking about. And why wasn’t he so fucking offended when he’d called her a lying gold digger to her face?
As soon as he got back to the casino, he was going to have a long talk with Dolce. She should have informed him of an information breach. He might not have gone over the edge and ran off to California after learning the staff thought he and Everly were in love if he’d known Dolce had started a rumor to defuse more vicious gossip.
They wouldn’t have been at Harlot that night Archie started trouble if he’d known. He also would have known they had a leak in legal sooner.
“I don’t pretend to know what was between you and Everly. What I do know is that you were a different man when you were with her. You married her, for the love God! You committed yourself to her for life. There had to be something more than simple lust behind that action.”
“It was a mistake,” Luc grumbled. They were getting a divorce. He would never admit to second thoughts. Everly hadn’t reached out to him. She must think it was mistake after the way he treated her on their damn wedding day of all days.