The Anti-hero (The Goode Brothers)

“We need more plates,” Sage says, rushing around me and heading toward the kitchen.

“They’re stacked up by the fridge,” I reply, glancing back toward the room she disappeared into. If I wasn’t up to my elbows in mashed potatoes, I’d help her.

“Found ’em!” she says, jogging back out to the rec room with a stack of paper plates in her arms.

“Hey, hey, hey,” I shout at her as she brushes past me. Turning with a perplexed look, she stares at me as I smile and lean toward her, waiting for a kiss.

“Can’t you see I’m busy, Church Boy?” she replies, stepping closer to press her lips to mine anyway.

With a lopsided grin, I watch her walk away, delivering the plates to the end of the table, where my mother is greeting our guests.

“You’re so screwed,” my brother Caleb says with a laugh next to me, where he’s serving gravy for the turkey and mashed potatoes.

“Screwed?” I ask.

“I give it three months before you two are married and six months before she’s knocked up,” he replies, shaking his head as if he knows something I don’t.

“And you call that screwed? Don’t let your wife hear that.”

Caleb’s smile falters for a moment.

“Screwed in a good way, of course. Marriage is bliss,” he adds. There’s no hint of a smile on his face this time.

While I focus on scooping mashed potatoes and greeting our guests, I can’t help but wonder if there’s more going on with Caleb than he’s letting on. Dread starts to seep in through the cracks.

He and Briar were once crazy about each other, too. I remember when he brought her home. The way he looked at her like she was the most dazzling diamond this world had ever seen stuck in my memory for a long time. Briar and Caleb were the real thing.

Sage laughs on the other side of the room, and I glance up to watch her standing with Gladys, Mary, and Sylvia. When I catch her eye, she winks at me, a sly, secretive smile stretching across her face.

Being married to her would be bliss. My life is already perfect. We spend our days in our apartment now since I finally put mine up for sale and it was snatched up almost immediately. At night, we work at the club together, and on Sundays, we’re here.

We’re not holding services at the new church. Not yet, and maybe not ever. There’re a lot of legalities and church property laws to get through before it becomes officially mine, but for now, the owners lease it to us for gatherings and events like today—free Thanksgiving dinner for the community.

I have no idea yet what I want to do with this place or with my life. The ministry doesn’t feel like my path anymore, but I can’t seem to let this place go either. I’m still so afraid of turning into my father that the idea of delivering sermons and building a congregation makes me uneasy. For now, this is enough.

Especially while I finish my book—this one exploring the deconstruction and reformation of finding yourself outside of a strict religious upbringing. It doesn’t have a name yet, although Sage still insists that Church Boy has a nice ring to it.

But her name ideas have always been terrible.

This is why the club is not called Sex Church, but a much more appealing and equally apropos—Sinners and Saints. Because everyone who enters is both.

When the line dies down, I take a moment to glance around the room, taking stock of our first big event, and so far, it seems like a success. The rec room is full. Everyone looks happy, sated, and at ease.

In the corner, Briar set up a craft station with Abigail, where the neighborhood kids are making thank-you cards and place mats. On the opposite side, Gladys set up a free book library, a familiar copy of The Rake and His Reluctant Bride sitting untouched on the top.

When I feel a pair of arms wrap around my waist, I smile.

“Watching you serve those mashed potatoes is getting me hot,” she whispers, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Caleb snicker to himself before pulling off his gloves and walking away.

I peel mine off as well, turning to face the pink-haired beauty trying to dirty talk me in a church. Although…I guess we’ve done worse here.

“Oh yeah?” I ask, looking down at her and biting my bottom lip. Reaching behind me for a spoon, I scoop up a dollop of the creamy potatoes. “Open, Peaches.”

With a sultry expression on her face, she parts her lips and tilts her chin up for me.

“Good little slut,” I mouth before sliding the spoon into her mouth. She closes her lips around it, letting out a hum as I pull it out. “Lick it clean,” I whisper, and with a mischievous smile, she does.

“I think we need something out of the storage closet,” she says with a wink.

Laughing, I lean forward and take her mouth in a kiss, trailing my hand over her jaw and holding it delicately around her throat. This girl makes me crazy.

“And what is that?” I hear my mother’s voice from just a foot away, and it’s like ice water over my quickly growing dick.

Clearing my throat, I pull away and glance down at what my mother is staring at in horror.

“Busted…” Sage teases.

That’s when I notice the sleeve of my shirt has rolled up enough to expose the black-and-gray tattoo covering most of my forearm.

My mother approaches, practically ripping the buttons off my sleeve to see the artwork there. As far as I know, I’m the first of her sons to get a tattoo.

“What is it?” she asks, as her fingers run over the ink.

“It’s a snake wrapped around a peach tree,” I reply, glancing up at Sage, who’s biting her bottom lip and smiling back at me.

“Why on earth did you get that?” my mother asks with alarm.

“The snake represents fresh starts and rebirth since it’s always shedding its skin. And the peach tree…is personal.”

At first, my mother’s expression is loaded with emotion, staring up at me as she touches my cheek. Then her gaze tracks over to my girlfriend, looking more and more mischievous by the second. My mother narrows her eyes at her before wrapping an arm over her shoulder.

“You’re a bad influence,” she says with affection as she squeezes Sage to her side.

“Thanks,” Sage replies, taking that as a compliment. “We can get you one next.”

“Nice try,” my mother says with a laugh.

After letting go of Sage, she wraps a hand around my arm and squeezes it. Then we gaze out at the crowd, eating the meals we provided. For a moment, the emotion is thick between the three of us, my mother at one side and the love of my life at the other.

As Sage tucks herself under my arm, nestled in with her arms wrapped around my torso, my mother smiles. Then she looks me in the eyes as she whispers, “I’m so proud of you.”

And those five words alone make everything worth it.