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My only chance was to hide. Hide like a little rabbit, bury myself underneath this little overhang on the riverbank until all the pursuers ran by.

But the whole church didn’t pursue me. Only Saul.

CHAPTER 3

Saul

Nice try, baby girlI thought as I watched Gracie run out the door, and I remembered the first day I had ever seen her.

I didn't particularly want my dad to get married again.

As a teenager, I was very concerned about my rightness with the Eye. It seemed like I was always in the wrong. I was always doingsomethingwrong.

Could I ever act right enough to be reconciled with the Great Eye of Nimhe?

I was tortured by the thought of the great Eye watching me.

I was tortured with the thought of the great Eye seeing the depths of my wickedness, the monster that lurked inside me, but the moment I sawher, my religion all fell away before her like a petal in the motherfucking wind.

My religion all fell away because I knew if loving this girl was wrong, I could never be right.

And my father had said Gracie was off-limits. Not to touch. Not to lust for. That it was a sin to want her.

I gave religion up then and there. I became an unbeliever the very moment I saw her.

She had the longest, silkiest, softest-looking honey brown hair, the exact color of dark tips of wheat.

It reminded me of how my father would make me walk for miles through the fields and mountains, trying to “wear the devil out of me.”

It didn’t work then, and it wouldn’t work now.

She did not wear a speck of makeup, and her eyes fascinated me.

Gracie had the biggest gray-blue eyes I had ever seen, huge and luminous. I felt like I could look at them forever with the way they seemed to change so quickly. And she had a tiny little nose with such a sweet mouth, plush pink lips.

And god, those tits.

Even underneath her good-girl shirt, I could see that they were the best tits I’d ever seen, bouncing with big, mouth-watering depravity.

I knew it was depraved to want her this badly but I couldn’t stop.

I used to jack off to those tits five times before bed and wake up fucking coming all over myself.

And the moment I saw her, I knew she was the only one for me.

She would always be the only one for me, and I wanted to do the dirtiest, filthiest things to her, things I barely even comprehended.

I wanted to see her belly swell up and know it was my baby inside her.

Everything that happened our senior year felt inevitable.

From the moment that I saw her, I knew.

Iknewit would end in violence.

Because I would do anything I could to protect her. Everything to keep her mine.

Now, as I watched Grace disappear out the door, Pastor Mickelson turned to me, his tone completely changed.