Page 112 of Severed Heart

I hand him a bill as I keep my eyes on the kid who’s reaching for me.

“Hole me,” Zach demands.

“Can’t tonight, buddy, but maybe some other time,” I tell him, ruffling his hair.

“He likes you,” the woman says with a laugh, her eyes meeting mine and roaming over me briefly before she freezes. I frown at her rapidly shifting reaction to me as she opens her mouth and closes it just as quickly, her eyes darting from me to the cashier. A second later, she nods toward the aisle she just raced down as Zach continually reaches for me, wiggling in her arms to get to me.

“Hole me!”

“So, I’m just going to take him back now,” she adds as if she owes me more of an excuse. “I’m really sorry about that,” she says with a pleading look in her eyes. Perplexed, I give her a slow nod in reply before she turns and flees toward the open door at the back of the gas station.

The fuck?

Utterly puzzled by her fast retreat, I turn to the cashier as he deposits my change in my open palm. “Is that your wife?”

He nods. “Yeah.”

I glance back in the direction she fled. “She looks familiar.”

“You go to First Baptist? She sings in the choir.”

“No ... huh, must be from here.”

“Yeah, she works here most days.” He looks down at the empty silver rungs just next to the register before shouting, “Grace!”

Every hair on my body stands on end, a clear vision filtering in of a bar on one of the worst nights of my life.

“What?” Grace calls from the back.

The night I lost my hero.

“We’re out of plastic bags up front!” he shouts.

The night I lost all sense of security.

“Tim, I’m a little busy back here!”

“I don’t need a bag,” I hear myself say as my veins start to boil. Swiping my haul from the counter, I barely register Tim’s parting wish for me to have a good night. Just before I clear the door, I glance back across the top of the aisles to meet the terrified eyes of the woman standing in the doorway of the back room. Her own eyes already trained on me as she holds her son. A son with the same color hair and eyes as mine and those of my father. The guilt and fear marring her expression due to her part in helping destroy my family. By having an affair with my father and fucking him in my mother’s bed.

My father’sGrace,but the destruction of my own.

* * *

Minutes later, I pull up curbside at Delphine’s to see an unfamiliar truck in the driveway. Blinking at the sight of it, crimson threatens to steal my vision. Vision I just spent long minutes clearing in an effort to get back from the state I was in—to get back to her. Eyeing the storm door, I feel the jealousy snapping me into motion as my heart stutters with the notion of what it could mean.

She wouldn’t.

No, please, no.

Fuck no.

Heart thundering, I barrel out of my truck and make it up the steps just as a man—who looks to be in his late twenties—steps out of the front door. In an instant, I’m gripping his neck, lifting him to his toes as I size him up. Within a second, I recognize just how easy it would be to snap his neck and dispose of him. Easily assessing within the same length of time just how little I would feel if I committed the act. Loosening my grip slightly as his face starts to redden, he instantly starts stuttering as I scan him from head to foot. “Hey man, I don’t know what—”

Regripping his neck, I plaster him to the side of the house, my hand making it clear I don’t want any excuse from him. Instead, I deliver a threat I have every intention of carrying out if he doesn’t heed the warning.

“Leave without another word, or you’ll cease to fucking exist.” When he opens his mouth, I jerk my chin in final warning, knowing there is murder in my eyes. “Just get in your fucking truck”—I drop my eyes to the name stitched on his shirt—“Eric, and drive away.”

He must see his imminent death in my gaze because he manages to keep from so much as brushing me when I release him before scrambling to his truck. Gripping the storm door handle as adrenaline does its thing, I do my best to counteract it, even as her warning months ago reaches my ears and snakes its way into my psyche.