Page 58 of Seduction Under the Southern Stars

Linc stops eating and points his fork at me. “No, it wasn’t your fault either. It was the fault of the men who assaulted you.”

“Yeah, yeah, blah blah, I know. But Dad feels responsible. I get that, of course. I’ll always be his little girl. But we were a religious family, and an event like that was always going to cause problems.”

“Were? You’re not religious anymore?”

I eat the bacon. “It’s complicated.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

I sigh. “I don’t have the unwavering faith that I had before. I have questions now. Dad tries to answer them, but I don’t like the answers, and that’s caused a bit of a rift between us.”

“Questions like…”

“Why does God let bad things happen to good people? Before, I thought that if I was a good girl and didn’t do anything wrong, nothing bad would happen to me. It sounds ridiculous to my ears now, but I accept that I was a child then, so it was bound to be simplistic. But after the assault, I realized how incredibly naïve I was. Embarrassingly so. Humiliatingly so. And it made me angry that Dad had raised me to believe in this all-powerful, omnipotent being who then chose not to help me in my hour of need. And I’m sorry but saying ‘you experienced that in order to learn a spiritual lesson’ doesn’t work for me.”

“Nor me, but you knew that.”

That makes me smile. Linc came to Dad’s church a few times, more out of curiosity than anything, and on Sundays he was sometimes there in the mornings when we had Bible study. He never spoke up or interrupted, and he never ridiculed me for my beliefs, but I knew him well enough to almost hear his thoughts occasionally, the WTFs that made his brows draw together when he didn’t understand or agree with something.

“It’s Epicurus’ trilemma, isn’t it?” he says. “Is God unable to prevent evil? Then He is not omnipotent. Is He unwilling to prevent evil? Then He is not all-good. And if He is both willing and able to prevent evil, why does evil exist?”

“Exactly.”

“You’ve taken the red pill,” he says, “according to The Matrix. Personally, I think it’s a good thing. But it also makes me sad that you had to wake up. There’s something to be said for the blue pill. It’s a lot less unsettling.”

“It is.” I poke my pasta.

“Come on,” he says softly, “I didn’t come here to make you sad. Let’s finish our dinner, and then we should watch a movie or something.”

“Okay,” I say, cheering up. “What kind of thing do you fancy watching?”

“It’s got to be Raiders of the Lost Ark, hasn’t it?”

That makes me laugh. “I haven’t seen that in years.”

“Perfect. We can say all the lines together.”

So we finish eating, rinse the dishes and stack the dishwasher, then bring the two mini tubs of Ben & Jerry’s that we bought in the supermarket over to the sofa. I find the movie on one of the providers, and we sit next to each other and dip our spoons into the ice cream while we watch Indiana Jones and exchange quotes.

He’s so easy to be with. I don’t get tongue-tied with him like I do with other men. He doesn’t make me nervous, because I don’t have to worry about what he’s thinking or feeling. He’s so open, saying exactly what’s on his mind, and I like that.

I also like the way his dark hair is very short at the back, but longer on the top.

I like his bright-green eyes and the way they seem to sparkle when he’s teasing me.

I like his straight white teeth, and his ready smile, and his husky chuckle that makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

I like his tattoos and his muscular arms, and the way he hugged me tightly, as if he didn’t want to let me go.

I like his pirate cologne, the spicy scent stirring my senses.

I like everything about him, really.

I wish he was here for longer. But if he was, I’d then have to watch him dating other women, and I wouldn’t like that. So at least this way I can have him to myself, and I can pretend he’s mine, just for a little while.

The movie eventually ends, and we get up to take the tubs and spoons into the kitchen.

“I’d better go,” he says. “We’ve got a busy day tomorrow.”

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