Page 95 of Beat of Love
He turned to face his father. “It’s true I rode out to the compound.” His mother’s gasp from behind tore him to shreds. “But I didn’t go in.” He whipped to face her. “Iaman addict, Mom. And Iwantedto go in. Desperately. But I didn’t.”
He held out his arm to his brother, moving his fingers in a gimme sign. Aidan dropped the jar in his open palm. Rafferty was surprised to see the flash of regret before his brother’s expression hardened again.
“It’s not necessary,” their mother wailed. “You heard Rafferty, he didn’t go in.”
“Mom, let him do what makes him sleep better at night.” He shifted his gaze back to his brother, stepping aside. “Wanna come watch me take a piss? In case I’d set aside a sample for you last night before I went out?”
“Son.” The weariness in his father’s tone was almost as disturbing as his mother’s gasp from earlier.
But Aidan followed him.
And Rafferty made sure to fill the jar to the brim, even taking delight in the drops he spilled on the side. “Shut the door on your way out,” he yelled after Aidan.
The slam of wood against wood resounded through his bedroom.
Bracing his arms on the vanity, Rafferty stared at his image in the mirror.
What’s it like to fuck a woman pining for your look-a-like?
Fuck, fuck.Fuck!
Did Brandy-Lyn see Sullivan when she looked at him? There were surprisingly no scars on his face. No marks distinguishing him from his twin.
Except for the stain offilthy prison inkcovering his skin.
It had cemented his cover in prison.
Made him one ofthem.
The scum.
Humans preying on other humans.
But his hair had grown, concealing his dirty stain, allowing him to forget.
No more.
He crouched and opened the vanity door and hauled out his shaving kit.
A painstaking twenty minutes later, he viewed the bloodred rose nestling within the scorpion’s sting covering his scalp. Itwas an indelible reminder that his choices destroyed lives. This way he would not forget.
With a vile curse, he stepped under the hot spray, scrubbing away the clinging remnants of shorn hair from his skin.
Pity the stain of his choices couldn’t be washed off as easily.
27
Scorpion’s sting
Hovering low in the southeastern sky, the sun cast a silvery sheen across the dew-laden grass, and Rafferty filled his lungs with the crisp morning air as he drove the UTV along the rough path. The mesquites, desperately holding onto a few leaves, painted lacy shadows on the ground. There was a stillness in the air, a serenity that dueled with the accusing voices rattling in his head.
There were no second chances for him.
No absolvent of the crimes he had committed.
He would carry the darkness with him till the day he took his dying breath.
But fuck, he knew that day wouldn’t be soon, because he had a lot of penance to do. For a brief, glorious moment in the jungle he’d thought the time to meet his Maker had come. But then Esther happened along, yanking him back from certain death.
