Yes, sometimes Reese still acted like her mother instead of her sister and, yes, it could get extremely annoying, even smothering at times, but Reilly knew she only did it because she loved her, and it was all Reese had done since she was only eleven years old.
Reese became Reilly’s “mother” at eleven.
She wondered how often Rev had to step in to help his baby sister. He didn’t even hesitate to bring Saylor onto the farm and into the club once she was released from juvie. While she was eighteen—and, legally, an adult—he could have easily told her that she was on her own and not taken that burden on himself.
But he did. He made sure his sister was set with a roof over her head and a job. He also ensured she was welcomed into a better family than the two people who were supposed to be their parents.
She smothered a yawn, quickly losing the fight to keep her peepers open.
If he didn’t want to head out and get some fresh air, then maybe she should go walk laps around the motel.
Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.
But she needed to do something to stay awake and if he wasn’t willing to get naked… yet… then they needed something to occupy their time until she could convince him to risk doing some horizontal dancing with her.
She had no idea if he’d answer any of the many questions floating around in her head, but it couldn’t hurt to try. She only hoped he didn’t clam up and shut her out completely. Her plan was to start out by lobbing softball questions and slowly work her way into the more complex ones.
“How old were you when you left?”
“Sixteen.”
Shit. She didn’t realize he’d been that young. He must have run away since she doubted he went through any kind of legal emancipation process. “That made Saylor how old?”
“‘Bout seven.”
“I mean, I won’t lie and say your parents seem like lovely people because clearly they’re complete whack jobs, but why? Why did you leave when you were so young? Besides the fact they act like they’ve stepped out of a M. Night Shyamalan series about religious freaks.”
Well, that went from zero to sixty in two-point-five seconds. Good job, Reilly.
“They were strict.”
“I’m finding that hard to believe,” Reilly teased, her effort unfortunately falling flat. “But most kids think their parents are too strict.”
“Yeah, but most parents don’t make a kid cut their own switch, string them up practically naked in their backyard and whip them ’til they bleed.”
“What?” she whispered, unable to close her mouth or even breathe. This whole conversation just went from sixty to one-hundred-and-sixty in half a second. “They did what?”
She thought parents using switches on their children was a thing of the past. Nobody did that nowadays, did they? They’d most likely be arrested for abuse.
Rev surged from the bed. He went directly for the whiskey, unscrewed the top, tipped up the bottle, dropped his head back and guzzled a good amount.
“Uh… Rev.”
Maybe they shouldn’t talk about this. She did not want a repeat of last night where they both overdid it and suffered the next morning because of it. Plus, she wouldn’t doubt some brain cells were killed last night by drowning.
She hadn’t drunk that much since college and she was surprised she didn’t end up hugging the toilet and retching her guts out.
He slammed the bottle down on the table and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Without even a slight pause, he reached over his shoulder, grabbed a fistful of cotton mid-back and ripped his tee over his head. Totally exposing that mouth-watering, well-defined terrain.
Was he doing it to distract her from asking questions? If so, that was an effective way to go about it.
“Didn’t notice this last night, did you?”
Honestly, last night she’d been kind of distracted by his chest and nipple piercings and the room had only been lit by the television. So no, she hadn’t noticed whatever he was indicating.
Good God, he actually had dimples above his ass. She thought those were a myth. How had she missed those all the times she saw his jeans halfway down his thighs? Maybe because she was always focused on the flex of his naked ass instead…
But those sexy-as-fuck dimples couldn’t be what he was pointing out. What the hell was he pointing out?
Besides those muscles—honed from whatever routine he did in the club’s tiny gym on the farm to counteract all the garbage he ate and booze he drank—she only saw the club colors inked on his skin, mostly in black and gray except for the red blood that dripped from the skull’s eyes and mouth.
“C’mere.”
He didn’t have to tell her twice. She scurried off her bed and got nice and close.
“See it?”
See it? She wanted to touch it. All of it. Every inch, trace every valley. But she still had no idea what he was—
“Ooooooh shit,” Reilly breathed.
The Fury rockers and large center insignia covered most of them, but in the negative space, where the skin wasn’t touched by ink, she could see them. Faded fine lines, barely visible, crisscrossed his back.
If he hadn’t pointed them out, she might not have noticed. Maybe even thought they were a trick of the light.
“Those were done by a switch?” She’d never seen a switch in real life but she had an idea of what one looked like.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“You mean what did I do to deserve them?”
“No. Nobody deserves that. Okay, maybe pedophiles and rapists… And some select others. But what child deserves that? Who would do such a thing?” She sighed. “That was a dumb question. Your parents did—”
“Father.”
She tilted her head to the right. “Your father did that. What reason could he come up with that warranted that type of punishment?
“Plenty.”
“Name one,” she insisted, reaching out and lightly tracing her fingertip over the thin, barely visible lines.
His skin quivered under her touch. “Touchin’ my sister.”
Reilly froze and her chest tightened. “You touched your sister.”
“Hugged her.”
There had to be a lot more to that story than those two words. Her mouth opened and it took a few seconds for her to repeat flatly, “You hugged her.” Her brow furrowed. “You weren’t allowed to show your sister any affection?”
“No.”
“No one could?”
“Not in the way normal families did.”
Normal families. Yes, the description of normal didn’t seem to apply in Rev’s family’s case. “I’m confused.”
He spun around and her eyes dropped immediately to those damn shiny barbells. She curled her fingers into her palms so she wouldn’t reach out and touch them. The time had to be right and now was not it.
She needed answers first.
“We were always in training.”
“For what? Sports?” Every answer he gave made her want to ask so many more questions. This conversation was like opening Pandora’s Box.
“To be Godly, most of all. Also, to be obedient. For both of us to become good members of our congregation. For me to become a worthy husband. For Sarah to become a worthy, submissive wife.”