Page 2 of Demons

I didn’t believe that. Most of the religious folks I’d met in my life were hypocritical bastards. None of them meant well.

“And here I thought, lying was one of those sins y’all steered clear of,” I replied.

Her cheeks flushed, and she scrunched her nose before letting out a nervous laugh. “Yeah, well, I had to save you from her. It was the first thing that came to my mind, so I went with it.”

There was no reason for me to linger. I’d come to see her, and I’d done that. There was work I should be doing.

“You think I needed saving, huh? Might be a first,” I said instead of getting in the truck and leaving.

“What’s a first? Someone saving you?”

I nodded my head, enjoying her facial expressions. She had no fucking idea who I was, but she was curious. It was all there on that perfect face of hers. So was the innocence. I needed to leave.

“Yeah,” I replied. “It’s never me who needs saving,” I replied, then put my cigarette back between my teeth and straightened from my relaxed position against the truck. Time for me to go.

“Oh,” she said in a breathy voice. “I, uh, do I know you?”

That was a loaded question. Not one she would ever get the answer to.

“No, you don’t.”

I opened the truck door and turned to look back at her. Her brows were drawn together in a small frown that was real fucking adorable.

“And you don’t want to,” I added.

“I should get to decide that.”

Those eyes of hers said more than she needed to ever say to someone like me. The hopeful glint in them almost had me closing the door and staying here with her longer. Almost. As much as I liked the way she made me feel—less detached—I knew if she let me get too close, I’d destroy her.

“You’ll thank me,” I told her.

Climbing into the truck, I closed the door before she had time to say another word. The longer I stayed, the more damage would be done. But to which one of us, I wasn’t sure.

She stepped back when the engine roared to life. Wide-eyed, she stood there, watching me as I backed up.

Probably shouldn’t have come here. She’d ask questions about me. Find out who I was. Folks in town would tell her I was dangerous. I’d killed a guy and gotten away with it. Probably whisper about the things they knew about the Family, but weren’t sure how much was true.

All of it.

After that, she’d stay the fuck away. Which was for the best. I didn’t trust my reactions to her—or rather, my reactions to others who treated her poorly. It was unlikely it would happen again. She wasn’t that awkward, shy little girl whose mother dressed her anymore. But I wasn’t about to test that belief either.

I’d never felt the overpowering need to protect someone like I had with her. It was something that still bothered me.

Beauden Redd had been a bully. I went to high school with him, and I never once reacted to the shit he did or said to others. I had not once given a flying fuck. It didn’t concern me. He’d stayed clear of us.

Thinking back on that afternoon—when I’d been walking back to my truck from picking up a box of condoms in the pharmacy and heard a panicked, muffled cry, then followed it to find Beauden holding a girl up against the side of a dumpster—I still didn’t know what the fuck had happened. Everyone always acted as if I had no impulse control or I was unpredictable. I let them think it too. But the truth was, I always knew exactly what the fuck I was doing.

Except that day.

I’d stopped to consider doing something about the situation when big gray eyes looked over at me through ugly-ass, wide-framed glasses. When I stared at her terrified face, a switch flipped. Ice-cold rage exploded in my chest, and any sanity I had was snatched from me.

I then said his name. The threat in my voice made him step back and let her go. She looked at me, and I made the mistake of shifting my attention to her yet again. Her body was visibly shaking, and it only seemed to heighten the fury taking over me.

“Go home,” I’d told her, and she took off running.

Beauden backed away and started going in the opposite direction. I did my best to let him leave. Find some way to calm this thing inside me. But the vision of the girl and those eyes of hers kept taunting me. Fanning the flames of whatever demon inside me she’d unlocked.

When Beauden reached his car, parked behind the pizza place where he worked, he realized I’d been following him. His body tensed, and he turned around to look at me. For a moment, I wondered if he saw the evil clawing just beneath the surface where my soul should have been and realized this was it. His last breath.

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