Page 5 of Please Open Me
But I wasn’t their prophet. Not really. Just the placeholder Dale chose six months ago when he decided Cameron’s chapter had closed and mine had begun. No warning. No ceremony. All it took was a moment of desperation and prayer that led to an agreement I barely understood.
The vulpine girl and I held gazes for a moment. When I gave her a silent nod, she looked back at her hands and resumed praying.
Religion was a sham–one crafted by the small minded and weak. By those who either needed a fictional compass to steady their morals, or a divine being to blame when life became incomprehensible.
I knew this for a fact, because in my own weakest moment, when I feared Mason Albright would die, I became religious. That moment of temporary insanity only lasted until the coincidences added up, and the threat of her loss subsided.
When logic returned to me, it became abundantly clear that the doctors had been wrong. Mason’s coma wasn’t a result of stress, or pregnancy, or high blood pressure. Dale and the Sons of Christ had done something to her, but I had absolutely no way to prove it.
Every part of me screamed to run for the hills, pull my family out of Hartwood, and start over in the house I owned in Portland. But, I was ensnared in this life like an asylum patient in a straight jacket. I had no way of escaping, even if I didn’t deserve this life. Dale had made it abundantly clear that if I eventriedto leave, he’d come for Mason, Cameron, and Rosemary.
My first instinct was to kill him. The act itself would be easy, but if I left behind even one shred of evidence, I would risk falling back intoS.H.A.D.E.’sclutches. The cult was the bigger threat, though. Even if I committed the perfect crime, they would assume my guilt, then seek retribution by slaughtering me and everyone I loved.
So, I played along. I did what he asked.
I showed up.
I spoke.
I performed when necessary.
And when I left, Ineverbrought it home. Not because I was ashamed–well, maybe a little. But mostly, I didn’t want to upset Cameron, or risk him going back.
Now that I wasn’t openly trying to kill or arrest Cameron, he’d opened up to me a lot about the church. I knew every nitty-gritty detail about the abuse he’d endured, how he’d felt like he could never escape. He called Rosie, Mason, and me his rainbow, because, after years of storms, he finally had something beautiful... even if it looked a little different from the perfect life he’d pictured.
I couldn’t take that life from him. Nor could I live with myself if I let this cult take everything from him once again.
Besides, this was something I could manage.
I was smarter than Cameron, and thanks to his stories, I had devised a plan to keep myself safe. Plus, I had a pretty outstanding track record of not getting anyone pregnant.
Cameron knocked up his first girl by the time he was eighteen, I was almost twenty-four years free of doing anything like that.
Dale’s drawl hit me before I saw his face, snapping me back to reality.
“Sebastian. I’m so glad you joined us today.” A hand appeared on my shoulder, and I suppressed the urge to tense. “Have you found a suitable vessel for the second coming?”
The way he talked about women—vessels,wombs,bloodlines—made my stomach turn. He could dress it up in scripture and prophecy all he wanted, but it all reeked of ownership. Like he thought their bodies were his to loan out for divine use. Once upon a time, I wouldn’t have batted an eye at his rhetoric. But now that I had a daughter and a shred of mental stability, I could finally recognize just how fucked that mindset was.
I turned just enough to meet his eyes, keeping my expression blank.
“I hate to disappoint, Father Cole,” I said dryly, “but after six months of trying, I’ve yet to produce an heir.”
He smiled like he always did. Yellow teeth, too wide, like he was barely concealing his disappointment.
Of course, he thought I was trying with Mason. That she’d been chosen. That her survival wasproof. The idea made my skin crawl, and I wanted to kneel at her feet and apologize for a thousand things she didn’t even know about.
But I couldn’t pull a new name out of nowhere, not again. Last time I tried that, Dalechecked. He’d gone through social media, tracked the woman’s work schedule, even found a mutual contact to ask subtle questions. He was thorough—more than that, he was paranoid.
So I let him think it was Mason.
Any verifiable source would back it up; she and I couldn’t keep our hands off of each other. She liked to have sex more than most people brushed their teeth; apparently it was a sensory-seeking behavior related to her autism. And I wasn’t about to tell her no. We were rational adults, which meant we could fuck like rabbits and no one could judge us. It wasn’t acrimeto be a little promiscuous.
When I discussed it with Dale, I just casually left out the fact that I was careful.
Always.
She was on birth control. I pulled out. We used condoms as if we’d die without them. And that one time the condom broke, and I got anxious? I drove to the next town over and picked up Plan B.
