Chapter 6
Sutton’s been out for over six hours since we got back to my place.
Zane saw her this morning when we came in and wanted to show her around.
He was so excited to have his teacher in his home.
She was drained but never denied his requests.
Martha made breakfast, and after we all sat down and ate, she took him to school, much to his resistance.
He wanted to stay and have naptime with Sutton too.
Last night was wild. The moment I saw Sutton’s name come across my phone and heard her panicked voice that they’d gone over the bridge, my heart stopped.
I’ve never known terror like those few short moments when my body hit the cold water and I swam to her floating body by the shoreline.
The ambulance ride felt like it took forever.
This thing with Sutton came at a time I wasn’t expecting.
Raegan had just come back, and I thought those feelings from when we were teenagers were going to resurface, and we would pick up where we left off, but they didn’t.
If I’m being honest with myself I think both Raegan and I forced our relationship as teenagers.
We were going through some hard times, and as we bonded over that, we probably mistook those feelings as more than friends.
Riot had tried to say something at the time, but I didn’t listen.
Sutton shifts and her eyes flutter open. She looks around the room, getting her bearings. Once she locks in on me, a slight smile kicks up at the corner of her perfect mouth. I tighten my hold on her, I feel her take a deep breath.
“Hey,” she says, rubbing her eyes and yawning.
“You feel okay?” I trace my finger lightly across her exposed skin peeking out from her bunched up shirt.
She starts nodding, “Yeah. I can’t believe how much I’m sleeping.”
“Your body’s been put through a lot in the last twenty-four hours. It needs rest to recover.”
“I guess,” she mumbles, shifting to her back from laying across my chest. She stretches her arms above her head and groans.
“Sore?”
“Just a little.” Her head turns towards the window, and she sits up quickly. “What time is it?” she asks in a panic.
“Relax, Angel, the sun’s still out.” Her shoulders come down a touch. “You hungry? Martha made some pasta casserole that Zane loves.”
Her stomach growls in that moment, and a soft blush paints her cheeks.
“Stay here,” I instruct.
Swinging my legs over the side, I pull on a pair of athletic shorts that are at the end of the bed.
“You’re naked,” she states almost accusingly.
“It’s how I sleep,” I confess. What I want to reveal is that I was tempted to peel off her panties and top to feel every inch of her body against mine and have nothing separate us, but I don’t.
I leave the bedroom and trek down the hall towards the kitchen. The smell of Martha’s cooking fills the air of the house. After plating some food for both of us, I return to Sutton and see she’s got her back against the headboard of the bed, staring at the wall across the room.
“Here you go,” I say, handing her the plate.
“Thank you.”
We eat for a few minutes in silence. The only sound is our forks clanking when we dig into the pasta. After half her plate is eaten, she sets it down on the nightstand.
“My family isn’t what the public thinks it is,” she confesses as she picks at the skin around her fingernails.
“Your dad’s the pastor of the church, right?”
She snorts through her nose then looks up at me.
“When I was growing up he was, but it’s not what people think,” she says.
“What is it then?”
“The Fellowship is…” She pauses as her eyes look around like she’s trying to think of what to say. “Hell.”
Hell?
“What do you mean?” I ask, feeling my back stiffen. “You’re going to have to elaborate.”
“Papa changed. Something happened years ago, and he’s not who everyone thinks he is. I realize now why my mom tried to get me away. We almost made it, but he and some of the men got to us before we could make it into the police station.”
She stares off like she’s remembering the event. I reach over and grab her hand.
“Start from the beginning.”
She takes a deep breath, like she’s grounding herself.
“Papa came from a strict religious family from what I remember Mama telling me. When they got married and moved here, the local pastor was retiring so Papa took over the job at the church. Over the years things started to change. Mama thought Papa was being too strict on the congregation towards some of the teachings, but he didn’t relent.
Papa went away to a conference one summer and came back changing the church.
He told the people that God had showed him that he was to be followed in every way.
That his word came directly from the Lord.
” She shakes her head. “I see now that he was changing things so slowly that the people didn’t realize that he was moving them away from what they believed in to what Papa wanted.
He had the people start dressing a certain way and calling him Shepherd Walter. ”
“And no one saw this and objected?” I ask.
“Those who went against Papa and his new leaders were sent away on mission trips.”
“Mission Trips? Where?”
“I didn’t know and no one spoke about it.
When the people came back, they never said where they went or what they did, but they fell in line with Papa and the other leaders.
” She starts to twist her fingers together in a nervous manner.
“When I graduated high school, I was shipped off a few days later on a mission trip. I didn’t even know about it until the morning of. ”
“Where did you go?” I remember the file that Hawk got me said something about South America, but didn’t pay too much attention to the country.
“Colombia.” She shivers when she says it, and it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention.
“What kind of mission work did you do there?”
She snorts and a haunted look flashes across her face.
“I dug,” she spits out. Her voice filled with hate.
“Dug what exactly?”
I always thought mission trips meant spreading the word of God to the local villages or building homes.
“Holes. They had us digging large holes in the fields so that they could build buildings underground to store stuff in.”
“What were they storing, Sutton?” I ask carefully.
The only thing I know that comes from Colombia is coffee beans and drugs.
She shrugs her shoulders, “I don’t know. Once we finished one hole, they moved us to the next one located somewhere else.”
“How long were you in South America?”
“Four years,” she says, and my heart drops into my stomach. “It was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced in my life.”
“Four fucking years? Why didn’t you leave? Why’d you stay so long?”
“Because they took my phone and passport when I arrived. I didn’t have any money or any way of getting home once they took me to a remote village,” she defends then crosses her arms over her chest. Her face is hard, and her eyes are narrowed towards me.
Placing my hands up in surrender, I change my face and body language to make sure she knows I’m not the enemy.
“It wasn’t an accusation, I’m sorry. Just shocked me.”
She rubs her face. “I know, sorry.” She finally looks back over at me. “I hate talking about it. Just want to forget it ever happened and what they did.”
My muscles lock into place when she says those last words.
“What did they do to you, Sutton?”
She starts to shake her head, “It doesn’t matter now.”
“Yes. It. Does,” I grit, grinding my back molars. “Anything that involves you matters to me.”
“But why? Why does it matter to you, when we haven’t even known each other that long?”
“Because when you walked into Frankie’s bar that night, something shifted in me.
It was like a sign or a vision smacking me in the face.
My head was jumbled from fighting with Stone earlier that day, but when I looked at you, it was like I was seeing things so clear for the first time,” I reveal to her.
“And what did you see?”
“My future.”
Her eyes widen, and she starts to shake her head.
“No. That can’t happen, you won’t want me—”
“Why not?” I snarl back at her.
She’s still shaking her head back and forth. Reaching over, I place both hands on her cheeks stopping her movement. Her eyes meet mine and tears spill out.
“Why not, Angel?”
She sucks in a breath, and I feel her jaw quivering. “Because I’m dirty.” A pain-filled sob leaves her throat, and my chest tightens.
What does dirty mean?
“Angel, you’ve got to tell me more and explain your words.
I need you to spell this out for me.” My head is starting to swim with what I think she might be talking about.
I try to school my face and calm my body to get her to finish talking.
The urge to spring up from the bed and pace the room is strong, but I stay rooted in place.
I brush her tears with my calloused thumbs as they stream out of her jade-colored eyes.
“They moved us around after we’d finish digging the deep holes.
I think it was so that we couldn’t remember where the underground buildings were located.
We’d only been at this new location for a day or two when we were sent to our huts to sleep.
A big commotion broke out at the main camp.
We’d heard gunfire and screaming. There were about ten of us in our hut, six girls and four guys.
We were told to never come out at night or we’d be shot and left for the animals to feed on our bodies.
” I stiffen, bracing for her next words.