Daredevils Read Online Free PDF

charade in which Dean and Ruth stand on one side of a curtain held aloft by Loretta’s parents, and Dean reaches through the veil for Loretta and pulls her through, pulls her to them, because this is how she will go to heaven, drawn there by Dean and Ruth.
    Â â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢Â 
    Later, Dean comes to Loretta’s room, the anonymous room that never quite warms up against the desert cold. He shuts the door, sits beside her on the bed, holds his knees in his hands. It comes offof him in waves, how badly he wants to move toward her. Thick veins crawl along the backs of his hands, and he squeezes his knees.
    â€œI have promised your father, little sister,” he says, in a quiet voice. “But oh, you are a sore temptation.”
    Her breathing stops. A gust fills her lungs. Loretta feels overtaken, though there is nothing surprising here. This has been plummeting toward her, an enormous meteor pulsing down from heaven, a giant, inevitable stone, and she has averted her eyes and pretended it was not there. This must be how life works, she thinks—the lull of boredom and reverence dulling your mind for catastrophe.
    Somewhere in the night, two dogs burst into vicious barking and fall quiet.
    â€œI do believe it would be best for us to wait,” Dean says.
    He speaks so carefully. As though he were trying to talk her out of something. She takes him in from the corner of her eye: black wool suit, faded along the cuffs and knees, and polished black brogues. A not-unpleasant odor of flesh and cloth. His beard, the combed stubble of brown and red and white, and the tiny chapped areas on his bony cheeks, like dots of rouge on a doll.
    She reminds herself: It is not lawful. It counts only if you believe it, and she will not believe it.
    â€œDo you not agree?” he asks.
    He places his hand on hers, his nails split and cloudy. Squeezes gently. He is younger than her father, but more worn. Taller. Leaner. Stronger. She wonders where Ruth is now, and what Ruth is thinking. Whether Ruth believes he will honor his promise.
    â€œWe are called to raise a righteous seed unto the Lord,” he says. “It is the most sacred principle.”
    She wishes she could laugh, because there is something insane in this language, but she might never laugh again. He leans and whispers damply in her ear, a single brittle hair in his mustache tickling her: “You are trembling, little sister.”
    He grasps her thigh above the knee and squeezes. His hand is massive. A line of sweat trickles from under Loretta’s hair, streaks down her back.
    â€œI am as well,” he whispers.
    His hand gains one inch on her thigh and squeezes again, and she knows now that ignoring the meteor has not made it go away, and that it is worse than she feared, this fate, this stone, because she feels a tingle—a small, repulsive flutter—between her legs. His hand nearly encloses her thigh, and he holds firmly, and though she finds him ugly and repellent, an oaf, she wants to squirm against that tingle, to press against it.
    Dean exhales like a stamping horse and removes his hand.
    â€œThis is hard, little sister, so very hard,” he says. “But we will wait.”
    He speaks as though he were denying her. As though he, through his righteousness and self-control, were saving them from her.
    â€œYou will see that it is better this way.”
    He stands, and does not bother to hide the sideways prong under his black wool pants. Her eyes sting, and weakness floods her, runs into her veins and bones and pores and hair.
    â€œWelcome to our family, Loretta,” he says. “We are walking in the Lord’s true light.”
    He places his hand on her head, and stands there. Showing it. She blinks madly.
    Dean takes her by the chin and says, “Your father has told me about your nighttime excursions.”
    He must feel her chin shuddering.
    â€œThose will end now, of course.”
    She nods.
    â€œI