“Matthew’s my uncle. My mother’s brother.”
Finally!
Rev locked his damn irresistible eyes with hers. “Haven’t told anyone this. Shouldn’t be tellin’ you, either, but…” Reilly hung on that last word, watching his lickable, kissable lips move as he spoke. “They wanted her to come home.”
Hold on. She blinked, confused. That wasn’t what Rev or Saylor had said. “Oh. But—”
“That was the last fuckin’ place she wanted to go and, even if it wasn’t, there was no fuckin’ way I was lettin’ her go home. Not then, not now. Not fuckin’ ever.”
Unfortunately, the more he talked, the more confused she got. Conversation was supposed to clear up misunderstandings, not make them more convoluted. Someone needed to tell Rev that. Or steer him in the right direction. That somebody was her. “I thought you called her so she could go with you… to wherever home is.” Hint, hint.
“No.” He shook his head. “Shouldn’t have called her.”
Now, instead of wanting to ride his cock, she wanted to strangle him. “But she needed to know her father—your father—is ill, right?”
“Why I called her.”
“But you don’t want her to go with you to… wherever.” Hint… Oh, fuck it. “Where is wherever?”
“Reilly.”
“Rev. Seriously. I was going to go back inside and leave you alone, but you forced me to sit back down. I’m thinking there’s a reason for that. Am I wrong?”
He turned his gaze from her to stare out over the storage yard, which was really more of an organized junkyard, full of old vehicles, stray cats and rats. Mud, too. She couldn’t forget all the damn mud.
Even under his thick, but short, dark blond beard she could see his jaw clenched tight.
“I’m not wrong,” she whispered, turning on the bench until her thigh was pressed against his. She brushed her fingers over the short wiry hairs covering his tight jawline. “I can’t sit out here forever, Rev. Dutch is probably throwing things right now. Especially if the phone is ringing off the hook in the office and I’m not there to answer it.”
“Go inside, then.”
“You didn’t want me to go back inside,” she reminded him softly. “You wanted me to stay. I’m here. I’m listening.”
His eyes squeezed shut. “Can’t fuckin’ think straight.” He opened them and jerked his chin toward the slip of paper. “Don’t ever take a call from that man again.”
“Okay.”
“He calls, you hang up.”
“Okay.”
“No. First tell him to fuck off, then hang up.”
“I’ll do that.” She stared at him a few more moments while he worked through whatever emotion was crossing his face. “What are you going to do?”
He scrubbed both palms down his face to wipe that emotion away and sighed. “Don’t know.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Don’t know.”
Maybe she should ask questions he knew the answers to, to make it easier for him to process whatever he was attempting to process. “Where do they live?”
“Outside of Coatesville.”
Coatesville. Coatesville in Chester County?
Reilly blinked.
Coatesville was not far from where she lived prior, before moving in with Reese all those months ago. Where she lived when her former boyfriend almost killed her.
When her former fucknut of a boyfriend scarred her face.
Before she slammed the button on the furnace with her former abuser inside.
Still alive. Still breathing.
Until he wasn’t.
Her heart kickstarted in her chest and began to thump heavily.
Every time she was reminded of that day—even though she avoided talking about it, even though everyone avoided talking about it—she relived it like it only happened five minutes ago.
Her shoving past Deacon, her eyes focused only on that red button.
The whoosh of the burners lighting. The muffled screams.
Then feeling nothing but relief.
The sense of freedom washing over her. Filling every cell in her body.
The tension gone.
The fear gone.
The abusive asshole… poof… gone.
Unable to make anyone a victim again.
With one simple push of a button a rabid animal had been reduced to a pile of worthless ash.
She jerked back to the present. To Rev. Where were they? Oh yeah. “Are you even considering going?”
“Don’t know.”
He was. For whatever reason.
“If you do, you shouldn’t go alone.”
“Saylor ain’t goin’.”
“Then, don’t go, either. I see you’re torn. That means there’s a reason to be torn. Leave the past in the past. Like Elsa, just let it go.” She stood up. Her work here was done.
He frowned. “Who the fuck’s Elsa?”
She rolled her lips under. Even if she told him, he wouldn’t know. And then she’d have to admit why she watched Frozen a half dozen times with his sister and Cassie’s daughter Daisy.
“Nobody you want to know,” she murmured. She smiled down at him, once again plucking at the spiky dark blond hairs on the top of his head.
He kept his hair short but used a lot of gel to spike it at the top. While she preferred the shorter hair on him, some of the other guys could rock the long-haired look. Like Shade. And Easy.