“Didn’t we?” Hank’s laugh was wild, full of pain and fury and misery. “We didn’t say nothing. We kept it quiet because … because…”
David thought of the one time he’d not been quiet. He’d gone to the cops, thought he could try to tell. And the cop had been one of them. David hadn’t been able to walk for days. The whip had peeled skin from his back. He’d been left pissing blood, tasting blood. Everything had turned to a haze of pain for him.
He hadn’t tried to tell anybody what had been done to him because he’d known the next beating would kill him. Yes, he’d been quiet after that. He’d never seen anybody else, but as he got older, stronger, he’d fought more and more, while the rage inside him grew hotter, brighter.
He’d have to get out or kill himself trying.
And he’d rather get out, because that was the only way to make sure his father paid for what he’d done.
All because of those words, words that haunted David, even now.
You’re old enough now.… Are you my son?
You go in there a boy. You come out a man.…
Be ready to receive the honor we give you. In time, you’ll pass it on to others. Just as we pass it on to you now.
The honor.
They’d expected him to play their evil, awful games.
He would have died first, but he’d rather see them all suffer.
“It stopped,” he said softly, looking out the empty frame where there had once been a window. “For a while, it stopped. They rebuilt it. That’s on them. Not us.”
“Is it easier to sleep at night? Telling yourself that?” Hank shook his head.
“I haven’t sleep well in over twenty-four years.” He’d stopped sleeping well the first time his father had woken him from a dead sleep, promising him that he’d show him the path to manhood.
The path to manhood was via pain, according to Peter Sutter.
David had spent nearly a quarter of a century on that path. It was a one-way road to nowhere.
Hank straightened and looked around, the fury in his eyes clearing, a frown on his face. When he looked at David, it was almost like it was a different man looking at him.
“I’ve been thinking about going to the cops,” Hank said, his voice soft.
David cocked his head. “Have you now?”
“Yes.” Not looking up, Hank just nodded. “It eats at me now. Tears into my brain and I can’t sleep. If … if I do go, I won’t mention you.”
David snorted and turned away. “Plenty of people already know I was dragged into this and those that don’t? Hell, they’ll figure it out soon enough. My father was the head of it.” He shrugged. “Don’t know why you’d try to keep me out of it. I’m about as neck deep in this shithole as you can get.”
“I just didn’t want you…” His words trailed off and he sighed. “I don’t blame you, you know. I tried to kill myself after one of those sessions. Your parents used to pick me up, drop me off. After the last one, I got … well, violent. Told my parents they weren’t listening, they weren’t hearing me. Your dad just kept staring at me, so sad, so serious. And your mom … fuck, she was a cold bitch.”
He shot David a look. David had nothing to add. Cold barely even touched on what Diane had been.
“That night … that night, I snuck into the basement. That’s where Dad kept his guns. Grabbed one. My mom had seen me, though. She came down right when I was putting it in my mouth—she screamed.”
“Shit, Hank.” The word ripped from him as another one of those emotions he’d thought he couldn’t feel cut into him. Shock. And the fury. His father, evil bastard, however he’d left this world, hadn’t suffered enough.
Hank swiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “They panicked. I dropped the gun and Dad came running down, grabbed me. I went crazy. Told them I had to do it, I had to. Told them if they ever made me see Pete again, I’d kill the bastard, I’d kill myself and I’d kill my grandpa, too.”
“Did they…”
Hank shook his head. “No. I think they realized something was wrong. Pete tried to make them give in, but Mom wouldn’t hear of it. Not after that. We stopped going to church where he preached. Stopped being anywhere where we might see him, or even my grandfather.”
“If they believed you, why didn’t they go to the cops?” David asked, his voice tight.
Hank was quiet for a moment and then he shook his head. “They didn’t believe me. They just knew something was wrong. They’d make sure nothing bad happened anymore, and I guess that was better than nothing. But my mother couldn’t believe that her father had done what he’d done.”
He nodded, like he had answered some long-held question, and then some of the lines smoothed away from his face. “I hated them, for a long, long while. Maybe I still should. But I’m tired of letting this control me. I want to go to the cops. I just…”
He looked away, his face slowly turning red, then white.
He didn’t say it, but David knew.
That ugly shame was something few could understand.
“If you need to do it, then do it. That poison may not stop eating at you until you do,” David said. “I won’t say anything to stop you. We all handle this as we need to.”
Hank jerked his head in a slow nod and then turned, walking away in silence.
CHAPTER FIVE
Sybil sat across the table from Drew, holding her cards, studying his solemn face.
He had her face—Layla’s face. And big green eyes. Those big green eyes were probably the only thing his father, whoever the man had been, had passed on to him. Well, that and a face for playing cards.
Sybil tapped a finger against the ones she held and then glanced down, sighed. “Go fish.”
Drew did just that. She couldn’t tell a thing by looking at his face, but ten seconds later he put his cards down, grinning like a loon. “I win again, Aunt Syb.”
“That you do. Card shark.” She went to say something, but the words froze in her mouth, for just a moment. Movement, in the backyard. It was late, too late, really for Drew to be up, but he’d had a rough day. Somebody had told him about Layla and he’d been broody, moody all day.
It looked like Sybil had another broody, moody man flying under her radar now.
David was out there.
“Why don’t you go pick out a movie for us?” she suggested.
Drew’s eyes popped wide. “Really? It’s already ten. You gonna let me stay up that late?”
“Why not? It’s Friday, right? Let’s party.” Never mind her headache or the gritty itch of her eyes. If it kept the boy from thinking about his mom, then he could stay up until two. She doubted he’d make it past midnight, though. “You go on in. I’m going to slip out back for a minute.”
She did just that and found David in his normal spot, leaning against the big oak, lost in the shadows. He didn’t have one of the slim little cigars she’d half grown accustomed to seeing him with and the sight of him in a dark T-shirt, one that clung tight to hard, heavy muscle, made her heart stutter in her chest.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” she said, keeping her voice steady. She curled her hands into fists to keep from reaching for him. “Decide you have time to talk now?”
He didn’t say anything.
She sighed and averted her gaze. “Drew’s had a rough day. He’s inside waiting for me, so if you’re just looking to brood, I’ll leave you to it.”
But as she went to turn away, a hand came out, closed over the back of her neck.
“The way I hear it, you had a rough one, too.”
Her heart jumped up in her throat as he moved, his heat coming up to warm her back as he tucked her up against him. She wanted to just sink right into him, let him take her weight, take her if he wanted. Instead, she just stood there, lifting her hands to cover his. Moonlight filtered down through the trees.
“You know, for a man who doesn’t much show his face in town, you pick up on a lot of gossip.”
He rubbed
his cheek along hers. “I hear what I want to hear.” Silence fell, like a blade.
She pulled away from him and turned to stare at him once she’d put some critical distance between them. She felt each inch, and they all hurt. “And why would something like this matter to you?” she asked, hearing the caustic edge to her tone and hating herself for it. She sounded like a whiny bitch.
David lifted a brow. In the silvery, shadowy light, he looked even more beautiful, more dangerous, than normal. He’d cut his hair. He was no longer even remotely pretending to be one of the Amish—and that was all it had ever been. She’d known it then, but he’d needed the mask, so she’d ignored it.
Even that was gone. His hair, dark and silken, was cut short, almost brutally so, leaving the harsh lines of his face unframed. His gaze locked on hers and she had nowhere to hide from his focus as he said softly, “It matters to me because it affects you. Do you really think she’ll change this time when she never did before?”
It was one of those ugly truths Sybil had been avoiding all day. One she’d face when and if she had to. Shrugging, she looked back at the house. “In the long run, this has more effect on her and Drew than me. I just want to make sure he isn’t hurt from it.”
There was no sound, but she tensed nonetheless and when he reached out, touched her cheek, she flinched. “You are affected. Don’t lie.”
Closing her eyes, she lifted a hand and caught his wrist, nudged it down. “David, why do you care?”
* * *
I don’t.
The words formed on his tongue and he tried to say them. Wanted to say them.
The problem was they wouldn’t be true.
He could give lies, easily. He’d told lie after lie for twenty years. To everybody, to strangers on the street, to people he’d known all of his life, although they hadn’t even realized who he was. He’d even given her lies. Lies as they spoke on the street, as she lay next to him in bed, her body still damp from sweat and him.
Why couldn’t he give her a lie now?
I don’t care. Three little words should be so easy to say and it would help add to the distance he needed to put between them. That distance would make it easier.
But he couldn’t force the words out.
He’d gotten his hair cut earlier, tired of yet another part of the mask he’d worn. Cutting his hair had been like peeling away yet another layer of the deceptively simple disguise he’d worn for so much of his life.
While he was in there, he heard a couple of the guys talking, talking—and mocking. You hear the news? Layla actually thinks she can get clean. I heard she had Noah take her to some residential rehab in Louisville. I saw them getting in a car myself.
Layla can’t get clean. She don’t wanna be clean.
David had no care one way or the other, save for how it affected Sybil and the boy.
And that, he realized, was the problem. He did care, as much as he could. Because he didn’t like to see the bruised, defeated look in Sybil’s eyes and he knew when Layla failed—and she would—this would just put another bruise on Sybil.
Yet none of that had anything to do with why he was here, why he’d waited in the backyard, watching the house and waiting for the lights to go out.
Nine o’clock had come and gone and the lights still burned bright. He should have left, but he hadn’t.
He hadn’t planned to leave, either.
He was here. He was bruised.
He’d walked out of that house, all but staggered over to Max’s, wandered those empty halls and felt like he was going to come apart.
Come out of his skin.
Minutes ticked away into hours and then he found himself striding down the sidewalk. His feet had led him to town, wandering around, and it was no surprise that he’d found himself here. All roads led him here. Sooner or later.
Which was why he was having so much trouble cutting this piece of himself out. Here, with Sybil, was the only place he’d ever found real peace. Not a temporary respite from the noise inside him, some solace from the demons that chased him.
When he was here, with her, it was like he was just … himself.
Slowly, he reached up, pushed a hand into the soft, tumbled curls that fell past Sybil’s shoulders.
But when he tried to tug her closer, she averted her head. “Drew is still awake. We can’t do this right now.”
It was enough to make him go still. Aching, he dropped his head onto her shoulder, half-expecting her to push him away. He’d ignored her or pushed her away for the past week. Now it was her turn.
Instead, she slid a hand up his back, curved it over his neck. “Come inside, David. Watch a movie with us.”
The feel of her lips moving against his skin was a distracting torture and he had to think those words through twice before they made sense. “I can’t do that, Sybil.”
“Why not?”
Why not …
It sounded so easy. Go inside, watch a movie. He tried to remember the last time he’d seen a movie. It didn’t count, really, the brainless shows that had come on while he sat in the hospital waiting for news about Max. It had been twenty years, he thought. Back when he’d still been that other David. Weaker, scared, broken.
He was still broken. No longer weak. Not scared anymore, either. You had to care to really be scared and David didn’t give a shit if he lived or died.
Broken, though …
Yes, he was broken.
Fisting a hand in the material of Sybil’s shirt, he lifted his head, looked down at her face in the pale moonlight.
She waited for him to answer. “Why can’t you come inside and just watch a movie? Is there something stopping you?”
You, he wanted to say.
He needed to stop this. Needed to push her away.
He’d come out here thinking about losing himself inside her, one more time. It was always one more time, but the kid wasn’t asleep. If he couldn’t have that one last time now …
“A movie,” he murmured.
* * *
Dawn rolled around.
David lay in the guest bedroom of Max’s house, a small room tucked under the stairs, and he listened to the quiet. Always the quiet, so he could hear those footsteps that would never come.
He’d watched a movie.
Sybil had fallen asleep on his chest and Drew had fallen asleep on her leg.
In the end, he’d left them both there and tucked a blanket around each of them before he left.
He’d gone there hoping to bury himself in Sybil’s body. Sex was never a peaceful thing for him, but he didn’t need it to be peaceful; he just needed it—with her. He’d find peace anyway, just by being with her. The hot bliss of driving his dick inside her, feeling her nails dig into him, the bite of her teeth, all of that was just a drug, something he needed from her—craved.
Last night, though, he’d discovered a different sort of bliss and he wanted to damn himself for it.
He didn’t even know what movie they’d watched. A boy named Harry, some sort of stone, a school. It had managed to catch his attention a few times and Drew had loved it, but the magic of the night had been just … the night.
He’d sat in a house, with a woman curled up next to him and a boy sprawled on the floor in front of them for half the movie. Sybil and Drew had laughed, teased each other while they quoted bits and pieces of the movie, and to David it had felt like he was caught in some bizarre spell.
Was that what normal was? Sitting down and just existing like that? Laughing and teasing and eating popcorn with too much salt and butter and just … being?
Sybil’s hand on his thigh, her head on his shoulder, a soft, gentle tease that should have called up that monstrous lust inside of him. Then Drew had curled up on the couch and both of them had fallen asleep.
How could they do that? Didn’t they know what he was? What had been done to him and what he had done?
It was like they trusted him, and the very idea had left him shaken.
Not that it was much of an issue. Back on the farm, nobody but Abraham or Sarah had bothered trying to get too close. There had been casual friendships, established later, with men like Thomas who’d realized that there would always be a wall between David and everybody else.
They’d seen that wall and kept a safe distance. He’d let Abraham in. Sarah had tried, pushed for more, tried to pull David into that safer, peaceful world, and each time he pulled further and further away.
Sarah had tried and suffered for it. She’d thought she could pull him into their world, and each time she’d done so she’d gotten a harsh reminder that he—whether he went by “Caine” or “David”—didn’t belong in that peaceful, gentle place.
Even when he’d moved in the town, under that disguise, people had kept their distance. Noah, one of the few who’d actually managed to establish even the most circumstantial relationship, had known enough to keep his distance.
Sybil was the only one who’d never bothered.
She’d seen the edges—he knew that—but she’d ignored them. She felt the scrapes, but she never let it show.
That trust that he never wanted was there, regardless.
And the boy seemed to share it.
Now, because of that fragile, undeserved trust, he had the memory of something he’d carry always. Just a simple night, in front of the TV, watching a movie about a boy named Harry, while they all ate popcorn. Sybil and Drew had watched the movie and David had watched them. If he was honest, he might even admit, he’d wished he could really have that. Have nights like that.
But they weren’t for him.
Now, in the still, quiet morning, he let himself acknowledge that maybe that night should be it. He should let go. If they ever started to look at Sybil as they looked at him, the fractured hold he had on control would break.
If they looked at the boy, then at him, and wondered—
One big hand curled into a fist and he had to breathe through his teeth just to calm the red crawl of rage.
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