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That’s not what I would get, though. I’d never been the girl a man sought out to keep for the happy times, but I was the perfect one for a man at the bottom of the barrel. I was how they healed. I was how they moved on.
I gathered the beers by the bottlenecks in one hand and Hank’s martini in the other, and turned on my heel to head back to the table, a plan formulating in my mind. I knew the moment he opened his mouth and his drawl washed over me that I was going to know his name by the end of the night, and he would know mine. Hell, if I had it my way, he’d probably be screaming it.
This was my toxic trait—my morbid fascination with broken humans. Add in a gorgeous body and desperation rolling off him in waves, and I couldn’t walk away. I’d seen many men just like him drowning their sorrows. They were always the best lovers, for a night at least, and they all wanted the same thing: someone to talk to after they fucked away their pain. Someone to see them when the lust faded and all that was left was the vulnerable sliver of the soul they tried to keep hidden.
I was that person, and I added their stories to my little black book of inspiration.
Even as an eight year old before I grew into my body and learned to wield it, men told me their stories and I listened. At first it was innocent, but then I craved their narratives. They helped me escape my own lackluster life and fueled my art. They were my muses, and I was their redemption.
I could already taste the melodies I would make about this man. He had no idea he was caught in my web and would become the subject of my music for years to come. My muse had taken hold, and when that bitch got involved, all bets were off.
CHAPTER TWO
NATE
Our love was a lie.
I slammed back two more shots and chased it with the piss-water the pub called beer. This wasn’t my usual scene, but it was exactly what I needed. Out of the way from both my parish and my job, it was somewhere no one would know me as the promising theology professor or the deacon who’d lost his wife. It’s like the Leaky Tap was delivered to me by divine intervention.
Or deliberate debauchery on behalf of the devil himself.
The jury was still out on who was battling for my life after my out of body meltdown on the side of the road.
I just wanted to forget long enough that it didn’t feel like a knife was being twisted in my chest. To get just drunk enough that I could pass out, but not so drunk that my demons grew confident enough to creep forward.
Because they were there, skirting the edges of my mind and taking advantage of my rage. They taunted me while I pleaded with my God for some sort of reprieve. The impure thoughts of all the things I shouldn’t want as a man of God. Since Maggie dragged me to New York they’d never been quite strong enough to seduce me, but that night, I was on the edge.
I wanted control.
No, I needed it.
I looked down at the offensive words I’d written on the small square napkin. They were the words of a sinner and comprised of all the fucked up things I would do to Maggie—to any of the women who once frequented my body for their pleasure.
Flush against the ground, in ropes that dig.
Binding your sins. Tied for my pleasure.
Mine alone.
My captive to command, to leave my mark.
Beg me for forgiveness. You’ll find none here.
I’m famished from your neglect, my heart bled dry for you.
It’s your blood I crave now. Your cunt I’ll own.
Until I’m satisfied, you’ll only know the depths of my pain.
It’s yours now.
I don’t know when I became so damn poetic. No, that’s a lie. I knew when. I chose not to remember it, along with everything else that happened at the Eastover Country Club. Writing was how I coped before Maggie and all her kind words and godly ideals. I’d fallen far if I was resorting to the musings of my pain.
I shouldn’t’ve been surprised. I just wanted to be free of my mind for one fucking night; my mind—and the little red headed firefly that my gaze kept wandering back to.
She was a distraction I didn’t need with her daisy dukes and low cut top that showcased the fringes of her lacy black bra.
I tried to ignore her when she strode up to the bar, hell-bent on swindling yet another one of these want-to-be-couture businessmen. I knew the type.
