More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
November 3 - November 6, 2025
Freedom wouldn’t be linear for a nation that built itself on the backs of enslaved people, and a signed paper didn’t change the prejudice snarling at their heels.
Thomas seeded and nurtured his own path with brambles that grew and choked out their love with each dismissed conversation and averted gaze until Decker could no longer recognize him through the thorns.
The preacher still wrote his own death sentence, but Decker couldn’t decide if his confession dripped ink across his pardon or his punishment.
“The holy book has no commands for the feelings I have. No amount of prayer could fix the things I’ve felt. The things I’ve thought.” Laurie spoke like a tortured man, begging for mercy through lips bloodied by his own righteousness.
“Don’t kill me.” Barely a whisper. Laurie’s face was like terror etched in stone. “Laurie.” His name slipped from him like smooth liquor with a note of admonishment. Intoxicating how his pulse jumped under his hand.
Few animals could match the strength and senses of a predator so ancient some cultures considered him a god. A young man from Boston didn’t stand a chance.
Laurie tasted like all he wanted. Decker knew his lips would be the closest to salvation a creature like him could ever deserve.
Lavender in the midst of sagebrush where men were meant to love women and women were meant to love men and neither could be anyone else.
faint smile brushed against Decker’s lips. “Your lust is entirely your own, Laurie.”
If Ender’s Ridge was the Devil’s Town, the Devil had come home.
“Your momma will be expecting you,” he said softly. Cricket’s fingers left permanent creases when they fell away from Decker’s shirt. A scarlet puddle formed under the table and filled the cracks in the floor. Safine’s arms trembled as she held her ripped skirt to his chest, waiting for it to rise again. It never did.
The stained glass depiction of Christ bent under the weight of the cross watched over them. In death, Decker hoped Cricket had finally found his peace.
Decker had held his necklace in his hand until the weight of it was enough to crush him. He scrubbed away the grime until it gleamed and threaded the pendant on a new leather cord. They’d left pieces of themselves in that coffin. A flask of aged whiskey, a rosary, two shotgun shells, strained last rites from a man who never knew intimate death, and a fresh tin of tobacco and a sheaf of rolling papers in his pocket from Safine.
If there is a god, I hope he welcomes you. If he didn’t, Cricket would raise hell until God got sick enough of the fool he’d let him in anyways.
Decker had been running from something his entire life—home, family, war, lovers—until his life slowed to a crawl here, where there was some semblance of safety. And now even safety lay in the grave in the form of Cricket Conklin.
If there was a god, the God, and Laurie was wrong and this was a punishment for their mere existence, how was he meant to fix this? Shout at the stars and demand redemption from a being that hadn’t given half a shit for his whole life? Bargain with the Devil himself since he knew the coldness of God intimately?
“My blood is the only part of myself I can give to you.” Laurie’s words, the whispered pinnacle of faith.
Another soul lost to a dead religion made for them and then rewritten to condemn them. Decker couldn’t lose someone else he was starting to love.
Extravagance like this was never intended to help the needy; it existed only to boast wealth, like a canary in a gilded cage who would never see the mines. Hell would welcome the Father if this church enabled Whitton.
He would tell them how Laurie made him feel like there was a God, for Laurie must be made of the divine.
If we fail, you, Laurie Lane, will never be one of my regrets.
Guttural chanting in a language more ancient than Laurie’s God trickled from Decker’s lips, weaving together the fabric of his only creation in a ritual that was never taught, but engraved on the bones of every creature like them at their turning. This is right. Sunlight streamed through the window, bathing him in red until he was covered in it. Baptized, and born again. Decker gathered Laurie into his arms and stood in the ruins of the chapel at Ender’s Ridge. A foreign god looked down upon him. He didn’t think Laurie’s God accepted bargains, but if he had a soul to bargain with, he would
...more
Decker crouched, hands spread as they circled each other, master and apprentice, god and creation, the voice of reason and the achingly bitter snarl of unwanted destruction.
He would never see his face bathed in sunlight again, but Decker didn’t mind. Laurie was just as beautiful in the moonlight.
Humanity was better left to those who understood their own power, cherishing time in their race against mortality.
“I know you, Laurie Lane,” Decker said. “I am the one who made you.”
Scripture wove into the threads of Decker’s mind, shining with acceptance instead of condemnation, new memories replacing old, adoration mending bitterness. Bone of my bones.
Ender’s Ridge wouldn’t last forever. The people they knew, the people they loved, would pass. One by one, content and old and grey. And they would still be there. Living sanctuaries, beacons of hope. Covenants of acceptance, no matter the cost. Mortality bowed to them. Forever cradled them in her palm, whispering you are home.
