The Preacher's Son #2: Unleashed Read Online Free PDF Page A

frighteningly like a relationship.
    "No," came the answer, whispered into my hair. "I made the choice. I came here, knowing, at least in some way, what you wanted, and I wanted it too. When I stepped into this house, I knew I was crossing some kind of line that I wouldn't be able to uncross. I did it anyway, and that was my choice, Shea. You didn't take my innocence; I gave it to you. I don't regret it. 
    "I just don't know where we go from here." This last part was whispered more to himself than to me, and I didn't respond. 
    I didn't know either. 

3
    My Audi's engine hummed, purring smoothly as Tre guided my car around the gentle curve of the highway. The top was down, wind whipping our hair, the sun warming us as we cruised south on US-49 towards Jackson. 
    Tre had decided upon waking the next morning to make a clean break.
    "I want to leave," he had said at breakfast.
    "Leave? Okay. Where do you want to go, and for how long?"
    He met my eyes, and his were intense, determined. "I mean, leave Jackson. Move away, permanently."
    I was shocked. "Okay...um...okay. Are you sure?"
    He nodded. "I'm not just assuming we'll stay together, if you're not ready for that. I don't want to assume that this is...something it may not be, for you."
    I took a moment, thinking. I looked around me, out the sliding glass door to the yard I'd never been in. I realized there was nothing here for me. If Tre left, I'd leave.
    "Alright," I said. "Let's go then. Let's go now. I'll pack a bag and we can go." 
     He drove to his parents' house in his old F-150, his duffel in the trunk of my car. This time I went in with him, dressed somewhat conservatively in a pair of jeans and a not-too-revealing T-shirt. I held Tre's hand as we stood in the foyer of his parent's house, matching stares with his father. His mother sat in a La-Z-boy, cross-stitching a simple pattern into a cloth stretched across a round hoop. She didn't look up when Tre entered, didn't give him a greeting, or even acknowledge his presence. 
    "What do you want?" Tre's father said. "And why have you brought this prostitute into my house?"
    Tre's eyes narrowed, his jaw clenched, and his fingers curled into a fist. Before I could stop him, Tre had let go of my hand, took three long steps, and floored his father with a thunderous right hook. Pastor McNabb tumbled backward, fell to his backside, his nose gushing blood, broken.
    "She's not a prostitute, Dad," Tre said past clenched teeth. "And we came to say goodbye. I'm leaving. Permanently. I know better than to think you'd ever change your mind about me, or Shea."
    Tre's mother had glanced up now, weak brown eyes wide, hands stilled on her cross-stitching hoop, needle pinched between trembling fingers. His father remained on the floor, letting his nose bleed onto his white button-down.
    Tre waited, but neither of his parents said anything. "Fine, don't say nothin'. You're my parents, and I love you. At least, I want to. But if you're so closed-minded as to disown me over this, without talking to me about it, or knowing a damn thing about Shea...then I guess it's just as well. You'd have never accepted me anyway, not if I didn't live my life your way." Tre turned and stalked to the door, face expressionless and hard, and took my hand; he spoke without turning around. "So, goodbye. I hope this is worth it to you, 'cause you ain't never gonna see me again."
    Tre's mother took a deep breath, mouth trembling, cross-stitching wavering in her hand. She stood up, reached for Tre with a thin-fingered, gnarl-knuckled hand, as if to stop him. Then, with a single glance at her cowering, bleeding husband, she lowered her head and sat back down. I watched in a kind of apathetic horror as she took the needle in now-calm fingers and plunged it into the white fabric and threaded it back through. She didn't look up again, didn't move to help her bleeding husband. She never spoke a word.
    Tre's father, Pastor Brian McNabb, stood as Tre walked out, me