Page 3 of Small Town Beast 2: Saverin's Duet

“Don’t start on that, Lorrie.” Absalom rubbed his jaw. He could imagine the talk that was running downstairs in the taproom; he should have sent Lorrie back down the mountain as soon as she turned up here looking for trouble.

Hating to be ignored, Lorrie scooted out of the cot, then strolled the long way around the table. Downstairs the carousing of fifty men mingled with the dulcet tones of Dolly Parton. Lorrie took his arm.

“You sure we can’t go down just for a minute?” she asked softly, her eyes shining with a silent plea.

Don’t look in her eyes, you know where that road leads.“I don’t want the headache,” he said harshly.

She pulled away. “Fine.”

“It’s just a bad time.”

“We could go somewhere else,” Lorrie suggested, forgiving his utterly lame excuse. Like she had done so many times. She always forgave him. She was too good for him and he knew it down to his bones. “Let’s just get out of here and go somewhere private. Like the lake. I miss that place,” she begged. “You know we need to talk, Absalom. I’d prefer not to do it in here.”

“Not tonight, Lorrie. I mean it, it’s the wrong fucking time.”

She turned away from him, making a study of the paper-laden table. He watched her. He liked to watch Lorrie. She was rare as emeralds. Pretty Lorrie, with her skin the exact color of the apple hooch he’d been drinking, and her midnight curls, the longest stretching past her slim waist to a thick country-girl ass.

Her daddy had been Black, her mama one of those Melungeons, the strange olive-skinned folk who kept themselves scarce from all society, preferring to stick to their distant hills. Lorrie had yellow eyes and a flat nose, with bow-like lips that he often, to his fury, caught other men staring at. Her beautywas easy to see, but her heart was pure as pearls, something so fucking rare and true it had a heartless sonofabitch like Absalom Green Tree head over his heels.

And still, he’d fucked her over.

Broken her heart.

Lorrie, whom he loved beyond all sense and reason, had been sacrificed for his ambition.

“I had a bad dream last night,” she said, trailing her fingers on the table. “You were falling down a dark hole. It was so cold. I tried to throw you a rope but it slipped from your hands.”

The hair on his neck prickled. “Dreams don’t signify,” he said.

“I know. What are all these papers for? Why do you actually have a desk in here?”

“Just doing some research.”

“For your Masters Degree?” she teased.

A laugh exploded out of him and she chuckled. He’d missed her so fucking much.

“Come here,” he said.

“One sec.” Lorrie scanned an eye over the papers. There was a file cabinet’s worth scattered on the table. Some were finely-drawn maps, some were lists of names, places, or coordinates. Together they all made a complete survey of the town, Absalom’s home and hopefully soon, his kingdom. Florin County sprawled across four hundred square miles of mountain range: a trove of farmland, old-growth pine, deep rivers and fertile watersheds. In this slice of Virginia, sixteen thousand people dwelled in uneasy harmony.

Of those thousands, Absalom’s cousins numbered in the hundreds. McCalls, Baileys, Greentrees and Snatch Hills (orSnatchells, depending on the hill) made the four greatest clans. But McCalls had always ruled them all, across all living memory.

Tomorrow would make history for Absalom and the mountain.

My mountain.

Lorrie plucked up a paper from the desk. “What’s this?”

“Leave that,” he said sharply.

With a shrug Lorrie put down the list of dead men and walked over to him. She draped her soft curvy body in his lap, snuggling close.

There was a chill coming up the mountain that night, as if winter had broken through a crack somewhere in the banquet hall of summer. Absalom didn’t feel the cold much but Lorrie always did. He rubbed the goosebumps from her arms as she wrapped them around his neck. Her presence was a comfort; he nosed her neck for that sweet wild-honey smell she kept trapped in her waist-long hair. He was happy to have her here, yes. But damn it, she should have stayed down the mountain. Why did she never listen to a word he said? Lorrie was too free sometimes. One day she might get hurt, traipsing all around the damn place like she used to do when they were younger and she sold that caramel candy. When he used to get her up under Mrs. Filfeather’s willow tree and kiss her slow and deep like they had all the time on earth... So many things he missed about having Lorrie in Florin.

Put it from your mind, said the voice of cold reason that had never steered Absalom wrong.She doesn’t belong up here and you know it.

But damned if wrong didn’t feel so right sometimes.

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