Page 16 of Lonely (Wellard Asylum #4)

“ I absolve you from your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” Father O’Neil said through the mesh.

But his voice shook, and I heard him swallow.

Some truths were better left unspoken.

I’d always hated confessionals. While I felt unseen elsewhere, I didn’t here. God knew everything.

Fingering the ankle bracelet, I hesitated. Did I even want forgiveness anymore? When I’d passed through the common area earlier at work, Carter glared at me again, and my heart flipped.

Sin set my soul aflame.

Prayer suffocated it.

I did the sign of the cross, and Father O’Neil told me to go in peace, but I couldn’t find peace, not like this.

He wanted to keep me from Carter, just like everyone else.

Like Anna and my mother.

Father O’Neil escaped, and I sat in silence for a moment, squeezing the heart pendant while trying to muster up the willpower to face my mother.

She waited for me outside with a tub of homemade bolognese she’d made this morning with the freshly ground minced meat in my fridge, ready to gift to anyone she deemed worthy.

With her chin tipped as always and a lilac feathered hat on her head, she walked past the pews, expecting me to follow.

We entered the cold afternoon and joined the other churchgoers. Fir trees stretched tall. Crows cleaned their wings with their beaks on the aged headstones to our left. I huddled into my scarf, my breaths visible in the chilly air.

While I was freezing my balls off, Mother socialized. She turned to me with a stern look that said, “Don’t fuck this up,” and urged me forward with a wrinkly hand on my back. “Say hi to Esther Jenner. Her family has recently moved back.”

I stiffened. But I wasn’t staring at the barely legal girl. I was staring at the older woman beside her.

Chris O’Connor’s Sarah Jenner? Esther was her daughter?

Sarah, the church leader’s daughter. She had ridden Chris’s cock behind Tessa Miller’s back while I lurked behind my curtain with my binoculars.

Apparently, I wasn’t allowed to stick my dick in wild women like Anna, but Sarah’s daughter was deemed a suitable match.

Dressed in a brown knitted cardigan and a conservative floral skirt that stopped at her ankles, Sarah was nothing like Anna.

I bet she screamed like her though. Or maybe not? Maybe Anna’s screams had been sweeter because of her wild, untamed nature. But despite the conservative clothing, Sarah liked sex, too.

Premarital sex.

I spared her daughter a glance, noting her delicate youth. She’d be easy to manipulate. Too easy. I was already bored.

Sarah’s husband, a tall man our age, reached his hand out. We shook. He had a full head of hair.

I hated him already.

“Esther is eighteen,” Mother told me, and I heard everything she wasn’t saying.

Marry her and fuck her brains out. Teach her to fear God between the sheets. I’m old. I want grandbabies.

Esther smiled, a blush creeping up her graceful neck.

I pictured our future—me taking her ass to avoid remortgaging the house.

If I weren’t careful, a young, ripe woman like her would pop out babies like a tennis ball machine, and my earnings from Wellard would soon stretch thin.

She would turn into my mother . . . bitter and angry, with ten kids and a messy house and Chris O’Connor’s skull beneath our marital bed.

But then I pictured Anna’s red heels on her small feet, and those were dangerous thoughts. I cleared my throat before my cock started to swell.

“Nice to meet you,” I said before walking away.

I didn’t have to turn around to know Mother gawked at my back before handing the Jenners the tub of bolognese.

Rude, petulant boy.

Go fuck yourself, Mother.

I’d barely gotten the key in the ignition when she joined me in the car, pulling the door shut with a huff and smacking me with her handbag. “You’re marrying that sweet girl.”

“I’m old enough to be her dad,” I muttered, reversing out of the parking spot.

“Like that stopped you with the nurse,” Mother spat. “You were more than happy to fornicate with her. Esther is a God-fearing young lady from a respectable family.”

I scoffed, shifting gears as we drove down the country road with barren fields on each side.

“Sarah Jenners was no innocent Mother Mary. She fucked Chris O’Connor next door. That’s why they moved. Did you know that? I saw her through the window, and let me tell you, she liked what Chris did to her.”

Mother seethed and drilled bullets into the side of my face, but my thoughts were already far away.

I pictured Carter in bed, staring vacantly out the window, his hair messy as though he had run his fingers through it. I wondered what he was thinking now that he was lucid enough to string sentences together. Had he lost hope? Was he as washed out as his surroundings yet?

“I’m not marrying Esther,” I told Mother, my words final.

I was filling out paper forms by the nurse’s desk in the common area when I felt him behind me. The hairs at the back of my neck stood on end, and my pen paused on the signature line.

He was close enough for his breath to hit my ear. “Are you avoiding me, asshole?” His voice rolled over me like a warm summer breeze.

“I take it that you feel better.” I signed the dotted line and glanced at the nurse behind the counter. She smiled and lingered with her eyes on me, the way women did when they pictured you naked.

No one had looked at me before Anna.

Hyperaware of the shadow behind me, I ignored her. Carter smelled like broken dreams and danger. I wanted to take him back to my office and do bad things to him.

“It’s been days.” He reached around and snatched the pen from my fingers. He clicked it, inching closer to my back. “Days of you walking through here, watching me watching you.”

A bead of sweat formed at my temple as I shivered.

“You like it, don’t you? My eyes on you.”

I collected the files and turned around, using them as a shield. Carter met my gaze, and those emerald-shadowed eyes made me weak at the knees.

“I want to ram my cock down your throat,” I admitted, aware of the other patients. I kept my voice low. “It’s all I can fucking think about.”

He tsked while waiting for a nurse to walk by. When he checked her out, I ground my teeth. He looked at me again and dipped his amused gaze to my lips. “What do I get in return?”

“What do you want?” I gritted out, falling silent when a nurse handed me another folder. I stacked it with the rest. At this rate, I was ready to give Carter almost anything if I got to feel his mouth on me again.

“I think you know what I want,” he responded, making a show of wetting his lips like a fucking slut who needed a hard slap across the face for teasing me.

I felt my pulse spike and looked around. Carter wanted me to get him out of here. He knew I had the means and power to do it. He wanted his freedom.

“I can’t just let you walk free. You’re a murderer,” I whisper-hissed.

“So are you,” he responded as I stared at his alluring lips.

Fuck . . . Why did he have to be so tempting?

“I get to fuck your mouth first. Let me fuck it again, and I’ll make it happen.”

He chuckled in a voice that was deep and husky from disuse.

“Nah,” he said, darting his tongue out to wet his bottom lip. Then he stepped away, palming his growing bulge. “If you want it, you know what to do.”

As he walked away, I growled.

Who the fuck did he think he was? And why the fuck did I want it so much? I could just take him, but I didn’t . . . I didn’t want to.

His submission was the currency. I needed to pay up, or I would never earn it.

“Damn it,” I muttered, slamming the files on the counter.

Later that afternoon, after my last patient had returned to his room, I placed my glasses on the desk. A headache was the last thing I needed.

I couldn’t see without my glasses, so I put them back on before rising from the chair. After filling a glass with water, I mixed in a crushed sleeping pill.

Exiting the office, I peered down the empty hallway.

Nurse Charlotte exited one of the rooms farther down the hall.

She was a na?ve young lady with jet-black hair who got the job because she was the boss’s niece.

There wasn’t much going on upstairs, but she was useful because she believed the best in people and never asked questions.

“Take this to room five,” I ordered. “The patient is dehydrated and needs to drink water.”

Charlotte smiled and walked away, wearing flats, unlike Anna.

It was quiet without her. A good quiet, but also bad.

Reaching into my pocket, I fingered the ankle bracelet. I would wait until the sun set behind the trees before visiting Carter.

He was right. I’d avoided him because he scared me, but I couldn’t stay away now that he’d dangled the worm on a hook.

He was poison beneath my skin, and I needed to cut him out.

Streaks of silvery pale moonlight flooded through the tall windows. I glanced behind me, but the night nurses were nowhere to be seen, and the doctor on duty had already done his rounds.

The door to Carter’s room creaked in the silence, something I’d never noticed in the daylight, but sounds were heightened now. I quickly stepped inside, shut the door, and wedged the chair beneath the handle.

Carter slept on his front, facing away from me.

His body was too large for the small bed, and one veiny arm hung over the edge, his fingers almost touching the floor. I approached his sleeping form, my heart beating faster, my throat suddenly dry.

I was glad Anna was no longer here to take advantage of him when he was vulnerable.

Had he been lucid enough as he lay there, strapped down and staring out the window, while Anna took her pleasure like a thief in the night before sneaking out with his sticky cum on her thighs?

Had he understood what was happening to him, or was he locked inside his own mind?

Would he have liked it if he’d been clear-headed, like he was now? Would he have stopped her? Or helped her along, guiding her hips with his own hands?