Chapter 1
Ruth
The thing about being good is that nobody ever asks if you're tired of it.
I've taught Sunday school since I was seventeen. I've led the choir since I was twenty-one. I organize the spring charity drive every single year, and every single year my father stands at the pulpit afterward and says, "I don't know what this church would do without my Ruthie."
Every single year I smile like that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me.
Most years, it is.
"You're quiet this morning," my father says, buttering his toast like it's a surgical procedure.
"I'm always quiet in the morning."
"You're quiet in a specific way this morning."
I love my father. I want to say that clearly, because everything I'm about to think is unkind, and none of it changes the fact that Reverend Thomas Calloway raised me alone after my mother died, gave up things I'll never fully know about, and loves me with a ferocity that has never once wavered in twenty-five years.
It's also, some days, the exact same ferocity a man might use to keep something from getting loose.
"I was up late," I say. Which is true. I was up until nearly two, painting a mountain I've never seen, in a country I've never visited, from a photograph I found in a library book about the Alps. I do this more nights than I'd ever admit out loud, and definitely more nights than I'd admit to him.
"Sermon prep?" he asks, hopeful.
"Something like that."
He nods, satisfied, and I let him be satisfied, because correcting him would mean explaining the easel in my closet, and the easel in my closet is the one thing in this entire house that's mine and only mine.
Twenty-five years old. Never left the state.
Never dated a man my father didn't personally interview like a job candidate — there'd been exactly two attempts, both mercifully brief, both ending the moment my father asked the young man in question what his five-year plan was, in the tone of a man reviewing a mortgage application.
I know every hymn in the book. I've never once been properly kissed.
Some nights that second fact bothers me more than it probably should for a preacher's daughter.
"The Petersons need help organizing the shelter roof repair," my father says, changing the subject to safer ground. "Roof's been leaking since March. I told them we'd have volunteers by Thursday."
"I'll call around."
"Good girl."
He says it the way he's said it my whole life — warm, automatic, meant as praise.
It used to feel like a gold star. Lately it feels more like a leash with a bow tied on it, and I hate that I've started noticing the difference, because noticing the difference means I can't go back to not noticing it.
"I heard the Hendersons might help too," I say, mostly to fill the silence. "Mrs. Henderson mentioned it at the last committee meeting."
"Good. The more hands the better." My father folds his newspaper with the same precision he folds everything — corners squared, crease exact. "Though I'd rather you not spend too much time out there yourself, Ruthie. Roof work isn't really suited to you."
"I'm coordinating, not climbing a ladder."
"Still. I'd feel better if you kept your visits brief."
"Of course," I say, and pour myself more coffee, and do not mention that I have absolutely no intention of keeping anything brief, though I don't yet know that for certain myself. Not this early in the morning. Not before I've even met the man who's about to make brief impossible.
I am twenty-five years old, and my father just called me a good girl, and I said thank you, and I mean it, and I hate a little that I mean it.
Thursday comes and the volunteer list is exactly as short as I feared. Half the congregation is over seventy. The other half has a bad back, a bad knee, or a genuinely, understandably bad attitude about climbing a ladder in April with a bad back and a bad knee.
"There's one more option," says Mrs. Petraki from the shelter board, not quite meeting my eyes. "The motorcycle club. The Iron Thorn. They've done roof work before — helped rebuild the Hendersons' porch after the storm two years back. Free of charge, and quick about it too."
"The motorcycle club," I repeat.
"They're good with their hands," she says, then seems to hear herself and adds, quickly, "With tools. Good with tools, I mean."
I know the Iron Thorn the way everyone in Clover Ridge knows the Iron Thorn — by reputation, by the low rumble of engines passing the church on Sunday mornings, by my father's particular tone of careful, diplomatic wariness whenever their clubhouse comes up at town council.
He's shaken hands with their president at ribbon cuttings.
He's never once invited any of them to supper.
"I'll go ask," I say, and something in my chest does an unfamiliar, unauthorized little flip.
"You want me to send someone with you?" Mrs. Petraki asks.
"I think I can manage a conversation, Mrs. Petraki."
"Of course, dear. Of course you can."
She doesn't sound entirely convinced. Neither, if I'm honest, do I.
The clubhouse sits at the edge of town behind a long gravel drive, past a rusted sign that says NO TRESPASSING in letters faded almost to invisibility, and I walk that drive in my good sandals with my clipboard held against my chest like a shield, rehearsing my opening line the way I'd rehearse a Sunday announcement.
Professional. Brief. In and out.
I do not expect to round the corner of the main building and find a shirtless man hanging upside down from a pull-up bar, doing sit-ups in reverse like gravity is a suggestion he's personally decided not to take.
He sees me before I can retreat. Grins, upside down, which should not be as unfairly charming as it is.
"Well," he says, dropping down in one smooth motion and landing on his feet like it costs him nothing at all, "you must be the preacher's daughter."
"How did you—"
"Sandals," he says, nodding at my feet. "And you're holding that clipboard like it's a Bible."
I look down. He's not wrong, which is somehow worse than if he'd been wrong.
He's tall, black hair pushed back like he ran a hand through it once and gave up on the rest, and there's a tattoo across his chest and shoulders I can only see the edges of — wings, I think, though I try very hard not to stare at a shirtless stranger like a woman who's never seen one before, which, to be entirely accurate, I very nearly haven't.
He's got the kind of crooked smile that looks like it's been getting him out of trouble since he was in diapers, and probably has.
"Ruth Calloway," I say, and stick out my hand like this is a business meeting, because if I don't anchor this conversation to something normal I'm going to lose my nerve entirely and turn straight around.
He looks at my hand like it's the funniest thing he's seen all week, and shakes it anyway. His hand is warm, and rough, and about twice the size of mine.
"Gabriel Mercer," he says. "Though I hear you might know me better as Saint."
"I've heard the name."
"And?"
"And I'm not sure it fits."
Something flickers across his face — quick, gone before I can name it — and then the grin comes back, wider than before.
"You come to save my soul, preacher's daughter?"
I don't know where it comes from. Some buried, unauthorized part of me that's suddenly, inexplicably tired of being careful.
"I don't think there's enough time before lunch," I say.
He laughs. It's not the polite, performed laugh I get from most of the congregation when I'm being appropriately charming at a bake sale. It's real — head back, surprised out of him, like I've done something genuinely, delightfully unexpected.
"Okay," he says, wiping his eyes, still grinning. "Okay. What do you need, Ruth Calloway?"
"The shelter roof. It's leaking badly, apparently since March. We were told your club might be willing to help."
"We might," he says, crossing his arms, considering me the way a man considers a puzzle he's decided to enjoy. "What's it paying?"
"Nothing. It's charity."
"My favorite rate." He whistles, short and sharp, over his shoulder toward the open clubhouse door. "Diesel! Get out here, we got a job."
A massive, bearded man appears in the doorway, coffee mug the size of a small bucket in one hand, takes one look at me, and says, "Reverend's kid?"
"Reverend's kid," Gabriel confirms.
"Knox is gonna have a stroke."
"Relax. We're fixing a roof, not eloping."
I feel my face go warm at the word, which is absurd, because nobody said anything about — it's a roof.
It's shingles and nails and a leak over the shelter's east wing.
I clear my throat and hold up the clipboard like it might restore some order to a conversation that has gotten away from me entirely in under two minutes.
"If you could have a crew there Saturday morning—"
"We'll be there," Gabriel says. Then, quieter, just to me, in a voice that isn't performing for Diesel or anyone else: "You want to walk the site with me first? See what we're actually working with, so I know what materials to bring?"
I should say no. I should hand him the address and the material list and go home and forget the particular way his hand felt shaking mine, warm and rough and entirely too pleasant.
"All right," I say instead. "It's this way."
We walk together down the gravel drive, and he asks me questions the whole way — real ones, not the polite conversational filler I'm used to at church functions.
What's the shelter for. How long has the roof been bad.
Do I like doing this kind of work, the organizing, the clipboards, the calling around to volunteers who mostly don't answer.
"I don't mind it," I say.
"That's not the same as liking it."
"No," I admit, surprised at myself again. "I suppose it isn't."
"Then why do you do it?"
"Somebody has to."
"That's not an answer either. That's a deflection with better posture."
I laugh before I mean to. He looks pleased with himself in a way that should probably irritate me more than it does.