Sinner(85)

My heart drops out of my chest.

“What?”

“You’ve left me no other option,” he snarls, shaking his head.

“Dad! You can’t just-”

“Point my wayward daughter back into the direction of God’s holy love and light?!” he roars. “You are GODDAMN RIGHT I can!”

I gasp at the fierceness in his words, and my eyes dart over his shoulder to my mother, but she only shakes her head and looks at the floor. “Listen to your father, Eva.”

The room goes cold.

Numbness.

The heart’s refusal to accept what the mind is hearing.

My father’s face softens slightly as he presses the Bible into my hands.

“I will pray for you, Evangeline,” he says quietly. “But test me not. God help me, in three days time, you will be marrying Milton, and we’ll forget this whole visit to this obscene, wicked little town ever happened.”





Chapter Forty-Two





Rowan




“Attention, attention!”

My mother beams across the function space in the basement of Dad's church, clinking her wine glass with a spoon.

“Quiet, if you could, everyone!” She grins and looks at clusters of round tables around the room before she lands on the one Ivy and Silas, Kyle and Vivian, Sierra, my other sister Stella and my nephew Carter, and myself are sitting around.

“Hammonds, I’m looking at you.”

The crowd laughs as a chuckle erupts from our table of siblings and significant others.

My mom turns back to the rest of the room. “My husband and I just want to thank you all for being here. For dedicating your time, your efforts, your hearts, and in some cases your baked goods,” she winks at Mrs. Wilshire as another laugh ripples through the room.

“But honestly, we couldn’t have even begun this project without all of your help, and for that, we sincerely thank you from the bottom of our hearts.”

That's why we’re all here, at this dinner here at the church — a sort of congratulations now that final permits have been signed and final fundraising for the remainder of the construction has been secured.

Mom turns to the other table towards the front of the room. “And to Pastor Ellis and his family, we want to thank you so much for coming up here and lending your support. Thank you, Leonard.”

I glance over at Eva’s table, trying to stop myself from grinning the second I see her.

The room applauds their table as her father nods quietly. She quickly — just for a second — turns my way, her eyes lancing into mine.

And it just slays me. The tight lid I’ve been trying to keep on my own face breaks, and the smile spreads across it.

Damn, do I feel good. I'm feeling…different, almost. And it's all ‘cause of her.

Of course it's her.

I can’t put a label on it, and I can’t put my finger on what it is about the whole thing that’s getting to me like this, but there’s no way I can pretend it's not there anymore.

At first, it was the filthiness of it. At first it was the hot and wickedly dirty thought of laying my hands on her, and showing her all this for the first time. It was a macho sort of “claim” thing — making her mine.

But now?

Now I’m past that. Now I’ve grown up, or something I guess.

Now it’s the simple fact that I can’t stop thinking of her, or of her smile, or of the way she plays with her hands when she’s nervous.

Of the way she looks at me.

Of how damn smart she is, and how good she is.

She’s too good, for a guy like me. And yet somehow, I’ve got her. For now, I guess.

She glances at me again, and I grin at her, but her face is white as she quickly turns away. I frown, but I chalk it up to the circumstances. After all, we’re not alone in my apartment this time. Or on the beach, or the confessional booth.

I grin at that last one.

I get that her father wouldn’t and doesn't approve of me in any conceivable way, least of all in the way I'd like him to. And I don’t know what that even means for us, or what that means for the expiration date this thing has, but…

I shake my head and chase the thought away with a sip of my beer.

I'm not dwelling on that right now. I'm feeling too damn good to go there, and if there's one thing life has taught me it’s this: hang the fuck on to the good parts, for as long as they last.

The assembled families and volunteers are standing and cheering — applauding the end of my mom’s speech that I’ve missed while staring at Eva. But I stand along with them anyways, raising a toast to my mom and then to my siblings.

“Irene, if I may?”

Leonard stands, smiling thinly at the crowd as he takes my mom’s place at the front of the assembled tables. His eyes move over the room, dancing from one face to the other — making the connection — as I know my dad does in his own sermons.