Free The Preacher's Son #1: Unbound by Jasinda Wilder

1
    He was everything I'd never had before. Not just physically, but who he was, inside and out. He was young, strong, kind...and oh my Lord, so innocent.
    I met him in church. He was sitting near the back, staring out the window and not really paying attention. He was the first person I saw when I walked in those chipped white doors with their faded brass handles. He was coiled into the pew, his knees drawn up, his back hunched, long fingers tapping his broad thighs. His messy black hair swept across his brow, covering one eye before he brushed it away absently with a thumb. I barely managed to avoid stumbling on a rip in the threadbare carpet when my heel caught. I was so busy taking in the absurd beauty of him that I just about fell flat on my face. 
    He saw me, then, too, and I think the awe in his eyes is what did it for me. He looked at me like he'd never seen a woman before, he looked at me like a man in a desert looks at a wellspring. I'd never had anyone look at me like that, with a naked desire, unadorned wonder. 
    The only open seat was at the aisle-end, one row up from him. I took it and sat down just as the white-haired old lady left off her godawful pounding on the poor little tan upright piano. She'd been murdering "Old Rugged Cross" as the congregation took their places, and I was the last one in. Apropos, that was. It was at least ten years since I'd last been in a church—outside of weddings and Christmas—so coming into this little Reformed Baptist chapel was an act of will, a challenge to myself.
    I'd fled back to the South after things with Dan went to hell, just packed a couple bags, withdrew all the money in my hidden account and hopped the first plane away from nasty old Atlantic City. I wanted distance, I wanted space, I wanted away. I got off the plane in Atlanta, rented a car and drove West until I hit Jackson, Mississippi, and I spent the night there in a seedy old motel off the freeway, roach-infested, stinking to high-heaven, and oh my Lord, so quiet. 
    I grew up in the South, a couple of lifetimes ago. Dan had swept me away from Savannah when I was sixteen, lured me north with promises of money and excitement and fun and endless sex, and he'd provided all that for a few years, and then things changed, as things do with men like him. He got bored, I guess. I wasn't exciting anymore, wasn't new and shiny and tempting. All I can do is guess though, 'cause Dan never told me anything. Just flung money at me and left me for his call girls and his whores and his gambling bunnies and who knows what else. I doubt he ever noticed I was gone, probably. He didn't care what I did, and he was so rich from owning the casino that I could siphon off money left and right and he never said a word. I started that about two years in, when I realized he didn't really love me. It took a long time, but eventually I had enough money stashed away that I knew I could make it on my own, and I split. 
    By then, of course, he never bothered with me. Rarely came home, never spoke to me. I was just the trophy wife, beautiful and pointless. I tried to find satisfaction elsewhere, once, with one of the card dealers, but Dan made it violently clear, to me and to the poor dealer, that he wouldn't stand for it. I never tried that again.
    So, I ran off with a couple million dollars and no clue what to do with myself. 
    I buzzed north from Jackson in my little Audi Quattro, top down, feeling finally free. I'd spent a while in Jackson, maybe a year, a year and a half, just taking time to be me. Then, one day, I up and took a little drive, followed US-49 into this  little tiny place in the middle of nowhere, full of nothing. It was slow and sleepy and beautiful in its own way, and I liked it, found an empty house to rent, filled it with new things, moved in, and that was how I ended up in little Yazoo City. 
    The thing to remember about the South is that in little places like Yazoo, you go to church. You just do. You don't have