Page 161 of Deacon

I scramble up and tiptoe on bare feet to him. He fits the hammer beneath the bottom board and pulls slowly, trying hard not to make a sound. It pulls off, but it feels like it takes an age to come free. I catch it before it hits the ground, and he starts on another.

“We need to pull five boards off for us to fit through,” I whisper.

He glances up. “I’m not going.”

I shake my head. “No, you’re going. I can’t go without you.”

He eases the second board off and hands it to me. “No, you’re small and quick. I’m slow.”

“I won’t go,” I whisper.

He glances at me briefly. “Yeah, you will. Got a baby, that comes first.”

He’s right. I blink, a hot tear etching down my cheek. Bittern eases the third board off, and I stack it with the others. The fourth board is giving him trouble, the nail running through a knot. It won’t pull free the way the others did.

His hands shake. He wipes his eyes.

“Can I tell you something, Frey?” he says, voice hoarse. “Something I just told Deacon.”

I sink to a crouch. “What?”

He’s in profile, a bead of sweat hanging off his nose.

“I’m not Aiden’s boy,” he says.

My heart hurts so badly, I don’t know how to absorb another hit out of nowhere. Bittern sets the hammer down for a second and takes a deep breath. I scramble up and get the half-empty bottle of water sitting on the floor by the bed. He takes it and has some before he shakes and spills it down his shirt.

“How do you know that?” I whisper.

He glances at me. “Lady came from a real rough place. Her family moved down from up north when her mother married a man who worked in the mountains. Aiden got Lady pregnant with Wayland and Ryland when they were teenagers, and he took her to live with him. But she went back to her family real quick, begging for refuge, and her stepdad… He got her knocked up.”

Sickness rises in my throat.

“Oh my God,” I whisper. “Did he go to jail?”

“Lady was just eighteen when she ran home. She got groomed is my understanding.” Bittern sets the bottle aside and takes up the hammer again. “Aiden was humiliated. Never wanted anybody to know, so he made Lady go back with him and raised me.”

It makes sense now why Aiden never liked Bittern the way he liked Wayland and Ryland. I’m speechless. Bittern spits on the ground, struggling to get the tines of the hammer under the last board.

“Nobody in this goddamn family stood a chance,” he says under his breath.

I’m silent, remembering the disgust on Aiden’s face when I begged him not to touch me. This is why he never acted on his feelings. He’s a broken man, haunted by ghosts.

“Did you ever meet your father?” I whisper.

Bittern shakes his head. “Aiden went to his house with a shotgun and told him if he ever came near his family, he’d blow his head open. Might be one of the few good things Aiden ever did.”

The board starts easing off. Bittern gets excited, his eyes flashing, and the board lets out a squeak.

“Slow,” I say.

He nods and takes a breath.

“Bittern, can I ask you something?”

He nods again. I realize now where I got into the habit of doing that. It’s because Bittern never asks or tells without checking with a person first. I think I just picked it up from him without knowing.

“Aiden hates me because of my mother. But that’s not the whole story, is it?”

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