The Outskirts

  Watching her flit from shelf to shelf was almost as amazing as watching her come undone underneath me.

  Almost.

  “Not really, I already owned it. I just figured since I wasn’t doing anything with it that you might want it. You can run it. Do whatever you want with it. The city has a library budget this year. You can open it and make it the best library Outskirts has ever seen or you can keep it closed and use it as your very own reading den,” I said, laughing nervously.

  I watched Sawyer innocently fawning all over the books, running her hands along the spines. The first book she plucked from the shelf was a book of fairytales. She skipped over to the couch in the middle of the room and plopped down, propping her legs up on the arm.

  I lifted her feet and sat down, setting her legs across mine. “Fairytales huh? You know those aren’t real,” I teased.

  “Trust me, I know life isn’t a fairytale,” she said, turning the book around to a picture of a library with a princess and a beast standing in the middle. “Yet here I am, in my own library…with my very own beast.”

  Sawyer

  Finn smiled. “Well, beast makes more sense than prince.”

  “Or swamp ape,” I added.

  After we caught our breathes Finn had gently cleaned me up and we’d gotten partially dressed so that I could inspect the books in my very own library.

  “No, that probably makes the most sense,” he said, leaning over to scan the book of fairytales in my lap. “Have you actually read any fairytales? Some of them are great. But a lot of them are weird. Stories about witches luring children into her home and eating them, wicked queens wanting to kill an innocent princess just because she’s pretty. It’s some pretty twisted shit.” Finn shrugged. “I could come up with something better than that.”

  “Oh yeah?” I asked, curious as to where he was going with this. “Like what?”

  Finn slid my legs off of his and reached over, grabbing me by the waist and lifting me so I was sitting across his lap. “Once upon a time there was a man,” he started, “a recluse so caught up in his own pain he couldn’t stand to face the world. Then, the strongest and bravest girl he’d ever met came along with her sassy mouth,” he kissed the corner of my lips, “and innocent pliable flesh,” he squeezed my hip, “and made the man want things he hadn’t wanted in a very, very long time.”

  “Is that all?” I asked, my voice a whisper. My thighs tightened around him on instinct and his eyes darkened.

  Finn shook his head and gently pushed me off his lap onto the couch. “The man told himself he was better off without her,” Finn continued, sliding off the couch until he was kneeling in front of me. He toyed with the waistband of my shorts and pulled them and my panties down off my legs, spreading my knees. He licked his lips at the sight of my embarrassingly swollen clit. “He told himself it would be best if he went far, far away,” he said, his voice deep and rough, his eyes dark and hooded. “For a short time, he even believed it was true,” he said, bending down and whispering the words across the sensitive flesh of my inner thighs. My core clenched in anticipation.

  “Until one day, he couldn’t fight against the need to claim her and make her his.” He looked me in the eye as he swept his flattened tongue over my clit. I bucked off the couch and my book fell off the arm rest to to the carpet.

  Finn chuckled against my outer lips. “You see, the man didn’t just want her incredible body.” Lick. “He wanted her mind.” Impossibly slow lick. “Her spirit. Every part of her she was willing to give.” He glanced up at me. “And more.”

  “What did he do?” I asked, fighting the urge to crush my thighs against his head. He pushed his hands on my knees and spread me wide open.

  Finn’s eyes were downright wicked when he looked down between my legs. He smirked. “He took it.”

  And then he did.

  Finn opened his mouth wide and sucked my clit and my swollen outer lips into his mouth, rolling his tongue over and over again until everything around me blurred and I saw stars in the middle of a bright sunny day. He darted his tongue inside my hole and using a wave like motion he massaged my inner walls.

  Finn wasn’t just tasting me. He was devouring me. This wasn’t a simple act, this was an oral claiming.

  A claiming I wasn’t going to deny because my core squeezed around his tongue and a pressure so great built inside me that when he reached up under my shirt and pinched my nipple at the same time he lightly grazed my clit with his teeth I couldn’t hold on any longer. I ran toward the edge with no parachute and without hesitation, I jumped straight into an eruption of pleasure that exploded from within me and didn’t give way until it had wrung every last bit of bliss from my body.

  “The end?” I huffed when I could finally see again. Finn licked his lips, tasting my glistening wetness around them and slid me off the couch to the floor.

  He chuckled. “No, baby,” he pushed down his jeans and stroked his long thickness with his hand. Slowly, up and down. “This is just the beginning.”

  Finn was right after all. Anything could be a fairytale. And as he took my body again I knew there was no reason for me to ever want a prince.

  I already had my very own beast.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Finn

  In an attempt to help Sawyer figure out her past, mainly her mother’s connection to Outskirts, I found myself alone, scouring the back room of the library to look for any evidence that Caroline Dixon or Caroline Ellen had existed on paper in this town. I’d gone through a couple of hundred dusty files from boxes that fell apart the second I removed the lid when I finally came across a document with Caroline Dixon’s name on it.

  And then I got angry.

  “Why have you been lying to Sawyer? About knowing her mother?” I seethed, bursting through the back door of Critter’s. He was in the back alley smoking a cigar.

  “Why hello to you too, Finn. Nice seeing ya,” he said in that low baritone of his. “I’m fine. Business is great. Thanks for asking.”

  “We can do all that later. First, I need to know why you’ve been lying to Sawyer.”

  Critter leaned back against the wall and took a drag of his cigar, blowing out the smoke in rings into the sky. “It’s a long story. Longer than you are old.”

  “I need to know it.”

  “And why is that?” Critter asked.

  I gave Critter a knowing look.

  “I swear to God boy, if you fuck that girl over imma give you a beatin’ the likes of which this town has never seen. Is that understood?” Critter asked.

  Critter’s threats used to piss me off but this one didn’t. I liked that Sawyer had another protector in Critter. He’d been like the angry uncle I’d never wanted my entire life.

  “Good. I’d expect you to.”

  Critter nodded and held out his hand. Instead of shaking it I placed the document in it. “Now tell me why you’ve been lying to my girl.”

  “Follow me,” Critter grumbled. I followed him into the kitchen where he poured us both a shot of whiskey into red Solo cups. “Cheers,” he said, we clanked our cups together and took our shots.

  He walked over to his desk, just a rectangular piece of wood in the corner with mountains of papers and receipts scattered over the top. He opened a drawer, pulled out a yellow piece of paper and handed it to me.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “This is everything. The reason why I’ve been lying to Sawyer. The reason why she doesn’t know half of what’s been going on since she’s gotten here.”

  I read the flyer several times to make sure what I was reading was right.

  CHURCH OF GOD’S LIGHT

  TENT SERVICE

  Brillhart County Fairgrounds

  Dates to be announced

  I remember Sawyer mentioning the name. “It’s the church she grew up in, right?” I asked, glancing up at Critter who downed another shot and walked into the bar area. I followed and slapped the flyer down on the bar.


  “What does all this mean?” I asked, growing frustrated.

  “It means that I need to tell you a story about a man by the name of Richard Dixon. The lowest cocksucker that ever crawled across this dirt ball we call earth. That rat bastard is one of the heads of that church.”

  “But it’s just a coincidence, right? Sawyer told me that her dad doesn’t know where she is and that he can’t find her because he never knew about the land,” I said, knowing right as the words left my mouth that I was wrong.

  Critter raised his bushy brows at me.

  “That’s not true though, is it?”

  Critter shook his head. “Sawyer thinks it is. And for right now it’s better that way. That girl has already been through too much. She don’t need to worry…unless the time comes when she needs to worry.”

  I started to panic. Sawyer was with Josh at her place but I needed to know what we were up against. “Critter, you have to give me something here,” I was practically begging. “I have to protect her. Tell me what you know. I can’t fight for her if I don’t know who or what I’m fighting.”

  Critter sighed. “I got that today. I was coming to talk to you tonight,” he said, and by Critter’s standards, it was about as close to an apology as anyone ever got.

  “Richard Dixon knows exactly where Sawyer is. He’s probably known where she was before she even got here,” Critter explained.

  “How?” I asked, still not a hundred percent understanding.

  “Because it’s the only way he’s like me. Knows the comings and goings of everyone around him.” Critter looked around like he was searching for something. “Just know, that for right now, I’ve got eyes on that bastard, and when he comes,” Critter reached under the counter and produced his shotgun. He pumped it and the click echoed throughout the empty bar. “We’ll be ready for him.” He leaned forward on the bar. “Are you in or you out?”

  “I’m in,” I said, without hesitation. “Of course, I’m in.”

  Critter clapped me on the back. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say. Then it’s about time I tell you a little story about a man named Richard Dixon. The motherfucker who calls himself Sawyer’s father.”

  “Why do you keep calling him Richard Dixon?” I asked, realizing that Critter kept going out of his way to say his name instead of calling him Sawyer’s dad.

  Critter set the gun down on the counter. “Because, he’s not Sawyer’s dad,” he grated.

  He opened his wallet and handed me a picture of a woman who looked just like Sawyer except with blonde hair. She was smiling at the camera and had her arms around her good-sized baby bump. He then slapped down the document I’d given him. The marriage license listing Caroline Dixon as the bride and Critter Templeton as the groom.

  He looked me in the eye. “Because I am.”

  Chapter Forty

  Finn

  “This will be the last time I come here,” I said. For the first time, I was on top of the slide without a bottle or joint. Just me, a cigarette, and the feeling of peace.

  “I wanted to tell you how sorry I am. For blaming you, for not moving forward with my life when I realize now that I was the only one in my own way.” I took a deep breath, breathing in the smell of the salty swamp. “I know that now. I know a lot of things now. I did love you. Not in the way you deserved to be loved, but I did love you. I always will. I hope you’re at peace now because I think…I think I’m finally getting there.”

  I bent down to the cardboard box and pulled out the wind chimes Jackie had made for me. I tied them to the top of the slide where they immediately began to clink together wildly in the breeze, singing their delicate song without a beat.

  Exactly how I loved Jackie. Wildly. Beyond reason.

  “Goodbye, Jackie,” I whispered, tossing my cigarette into the pool below.

  I stood, feeling the weight of the past two years rise off of me. I felt lighter knowing I was going back to a life I loved again.

  A life with Sawyer.

  And it was because of Sawyer I knew now that it was okay to remember Jackie. Okay to think of her. Okay to even still love her.

  More importantly, it was okay to be completely in love with Sawyer.

  Because I was.

  I was about to head down the steps when I spotted a line of bright yellow trucks and cars driving down the highway. That wasn’t what grabbed my attention though. That wasn’t what had me flying down the steps in a rush to get to Sawyer.

  It was the blue logo each of the vehicles had painted on the doors.

  A sun rising over mountains.

  He’s here.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Sawyer

  I was on edge.

  Something was off. And it wasn’t just that I wasn’t feeling great. I’d been feeling dizzy on and off all day, but it wasn’t that. It was Finn. He’d been acting different lately and when I asked him about it he told me not to read too much into his broodiness. He’d laughed, but it hadn’t reached his eyes.

  I knew he was hiding something.

  That and he went to run an errand early this morning and I hadn’t heard from him yet and it was approaching midnight.

  My mood must have been written all over my face because as I was sweeping up, Critter reached under the bar and pulled out a shotgun. He cocked it and the sound echoed off the walls of the bar. “Where is that son of a bitch?” he asked, heading to the door. “I warned him…”

  “Critter!” I called out. “Stop. Wait!”

  “Did he hurt you?” Critter asked, turning back around and looking me up and down with murder in his dark eyes. “I warned that son of a bitch.”

  “Not in the kind of way that needs resolving with a shotgun,” I explained, pushing the barrel of his gun down.

  He raised a bushy brow. “Is there a kind of way that don’t?”

  “Yeah, and I think this is one of them.” I crossed the room and continued sweeping while Critter walked back behind the bar.

  The shotgun stayed on the counter.

  “You ain’t gonna cry are you?” Critter asked, watching me from the bar.

  “I don’t cry,” I replied, straightening my shoulders. “Not for a long time, anyway.”