Page 113 of Deacon

He’ll go with the boys from the factory and kick somebody to shit for it either way. It’s just the way of things.

Aiden puts the cigarette back to his lips. He blows smoke out.

Nobody says a word.

The next morning is Saturday. I hear boots on the floorboards. The doors smash, the truck fires up. I curl on my side in Wayland’s old room. Aiden took my things off the couch and threw them on his empty bed yesterday.

“Might as well sleep here,” he said. “Get you off the couch.”

The bed smells like beer. I lay there, waiting until the truck engine dies away. Then I get up and strip the sheets and haul it out to the washing machine in the tobacco barn. I have breakfast, and while the sheets and quilt dry, I sweep the floor and scrub down every surface with bleach.

Wayland wasn’t kind. He put his knuckles through the drywall the way Aiden does, tripped me with his big boots, and called me a whore. But I never wanted him to die, crushed beneath a ton of stone. At least, I hope it was quick.

Bittern comes out to where I’m sitting on the porch. He’s in just his sweats. His ribs strain through his pale skin. He spent too long down there with nothing to eat and no sunshine. He looks like a cave cricket now, and I hate it.

“Let me make you breakfast,” I say.

He nods and follows me into the kitchen. I make up leftover bacon, dip stale bread into eggs and fry it sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. Then, I put it on the nice plate, the blue willow one, and set it in front of Bittern. He offers me the first smile I’ve seen from him in days.

“Thanks, Frey,” he says.

We eat in the living room. After a while, Bittern gets up and turns on the TV. I sit with him and watch reruns and listen for the trucks in the driveway. It comes, around three in the afternoon, afterBittern falls asleep from his medication. I give it to him with a glass of water and a cup of applesauce so it won’t hurt his stomach.

The trucks come to a halt. Aiden and Ryland’s voices boom out, deep and loud, frightening because they’re not sad right now. They sound like they got what they came for.

The back door kicks open. Aiden strides down the hall, knuckles bloody. Ryland comes in behind him with a shiner and a rip in his t-shirt. They go right for the liquor cabinet, probably in need of something to dull the pain from their bruises.

I stand in the doorway, pressed up against the wall. Aiden takes off his shirt and uses it to wipe his face and hands before shoving it in his back pocket and reaching for the moonshine. He’s talking about something, but I can’t hear through the roaring in my ears. Then, like he can sense my presence, he pauses and looks right at me.

“What do you want, girl?” he snaps.

I swallow hard. “Did you kill them?” I whisper.

He uses his teeth to take the cork out of the bottle and spits it into the sink. “Yeah,” he says.

NOW

“I—I can’t,” I gasp.

Deacon’s eyes glint, soft black like the sky. “Revenge isn’t wrong,” he says. “It’s just the balance of the world.”

The pastor in my church back home taught us that an eye for an eye makes the world blind. Apparently, Deacon thinks differently. He stabs out the cigarette against the empty package. His hands come around my waist, almost touching over my spine.

Holding me tight.

I squirm, but I can’t get free. His cock hardens, filling me once more. He’s an animal. A gentle, brutal beast, and I’m afraid I’ll fall for him.

“If you hit back hard enough, no one ever hits you again,” he says. “And if you can’t, find someone who can.”

I go still. There’s no point in fighting. His brow is creased, dark eyes fixed to mine. His cock twitches inside my pussy.

“Take it out,” I whisper.

“No,” he says.

I gasp. He spits into his hand and pushes it between us, finding my clit. Electricity hums between us. I could shake my head like he told me, but I don’t. Maybe he’ll listen if I do, maybe he won’t.

But it’s a comfort I have in the back of my mind, like a weak collar around a dog’s neck. So long as the dog wants to be restrained, it’s obedient.

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