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For seven years she cheated on me.
Seven fucking years.
The sharp crack of my father’s voice in the back of my mind boomed like the thunder in the sky. Your bible thumper wife can’t love you. You’re a Reed; corruption is in your blood.
It had been years since I’d seen his face, let alone heard his voice, but the memory of him still haunted me no matter the time or distance between us. His words were that of the devil. One dressed in expensive suits and surrounded by aristocracy. Corruption was an understatement when it came to Lyle Reed and I was his protégé.
Was.
Am.
Lines that were once so clear now seemed blurry.
I left that life for her. She helped me crawl my way out of the sinner’s den I called home. She showed me there was hope for a trespasser like me through faith in a God that forgave. I told her I did it for myself. That my faith was founded in my own desire to know my God, but the truth was it was never about me. It was about her. It was always about her. Something I’d questioned more and more over the last year. But I always came back to Maggie. She was my light in the darkness.
God please show me what comes next. I can’t live with this heartache.
The thunder echoed my cries, but the crashing sounds didn’t hold the answers I sought from a God, who for the first time in almost twenty years had forsaken me.
I slumped forward, drained and defeated. The rain continued to beat down without a care for my pain or rage.
“I don’t know how to live with this,” I whispered, turning my head up again toward the tumultuous sky. “I loved her. She brought me to you. Was that a lie too?”
The blasphemous words fell from my tongue like the drops from above. I put on a brave face, but yet again I was a sinner questioning my faith. In my hour of darkness I was a lost sheep hellbent on placing the blame anywhere but my own shoulders.
It hadn’t always been that way. Before God was my rock, and Maggie was the earth that kept it steady.
She controlled you like all those women before. She was no better than the ones who demanded you fuck them senseless and left you lying in your own cum. She used you to make herself feel better about who she was supposed to be.
The intrusive thoughts I believed I’d done away with years ago crept through the cracks of my broken heart.
No. Maggie would never.
But she did.
I closed my eyes and begged for guidance, but yet again there was no answer from the God who claimed to love me. No break in the rain. No ray of sunshine.
After waiting for far too long for answers that weren’t coming, I gave up. Patience might have been a virtue, but I had none.
Pulling myself from the ground, I hardened what was left of the useless organ beating in my chest. My gaze drifted to my truck, but I had nowhere left to go. Nowhere that wasn’t tainted with her and what she did.
Like a beacon in the dark of night, the neon lights of the Leaky Tap caught my attention.
I was like a moth to flame.
I couldn’t go home.
But with a little help from Jack, I could forget.
CHAPTER ONE
EDEN
Adam, no Michael—shit it might have been Joseph. It was a biblical name, I remembered that much.
Whatever his name, launched the cue toward the solid ball at the end of the pool table, and sure enough, it missed its target by a cunt hair. Even if he cleaned up the rest of his shots, there was no chance he could catch up.
As it was, I could have won four shots ago, but a hustler never played all her cards at once. There were still three more guys at the pub who’d walked in from the adjoining hotel, and I was desperate for cash until I could line up something more permanent. University books didn’t pay for themselves. Not to mention, my music scholarship didn’t include a meal plan, so if I wanted to eat, I needed to make sure each of those men believed they either stood a chance with me—or could win against me.
