Chapter 2: Bless This Forbidden Feast
The porch swing creaked a lazy, rhythmic protest under Aunt Millie’s weight. She fanned herself with a church bulletin, the paper snapping in the humid evening air. “And then Bev Henderson had the gall to suggest my potato salad was ‘too forward with the paprika.’ Can you imagine? Too forward!”
Craig grunted, a non-committal sound he hoped passed for engagement. His fingers were tight around a bottle of beer, the glass slick with condensation. The lantern on the wobbly table painted their faces in swinging, golden light, but the shadows beneath the table were deep and pooling.
Celeste sat across from him, a vision of innocent repose. She was curled in the old Adirondack chair, bare feet tucked under her, a glass of lemonade in her hand. She’d been nodding along to Millie’s story, making all the right sympathetic noises. But her gaze, when it flicked to Craig, was anything but sympathetic. It was a live wire.
“It’s just jealousy, Aunt Millie,” Celeste said, her voice sweet as the tea. “Your potato salad is legendary.” As she spoke, she stretched her legs out slowly, her toes brushing the rough wood of the porch floor. Then, with a serpentine grace, her bare foot slid forward, across the space between them, and came to rest, warm and deliberate, against Craig’s calf.
He went absolutely still.
“Well, I don’t like to gossip,” Millie continued, leaning forward conspiratorially, which made the swing groan again. “But legend has it she uses frozen potatoes. Frozen!”
The touch under the table was a brand. Celeste’s foot slid higher, her toes tracing the tense muscle of his leg. A slow, claiming caress hidden in the dark. He could see the faint, knowing smirk playing at the corner of her mouth as she took a demure sip of lemonade. The necklace was there, he knew. Beneath her simple sundress, the zebrawood pendant rested against her skin, a secret she was daring him to acknowledge.
His knuckles were white on the bottle.
Millie’s chatter faded into a buzzing drone. All he could feel was the heat of Celeste’s skin through his jeans, the brazen ownership of that touch. It was a power play. A test. She was seeing how far she could push him here, in the safe, sanitized glow of his mother’s porch, with the fireflies blinking their harmless code in the hydrangeas.
Her foot crept higher, nudging at his knee.
A red wall of pure, primal possession slammed down behind his eyes. In one fluid motion, he set his beer down with a sharp clack. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, as if suddenly engrossed in Millie’s story. His right hand dropped below the tablecloth.
His fingers found Celeste’s thigh, not with a caress, but with a hard, unyielding clamp. He dug his thumb into the soft flesh just above her knee, a silent, punishing stop.
She jumped, a tiny, almost imperceptible spasm. Her lemonade sloshed. Her eyes flew to his, wide and startled.
He didn’t look away. Holding her gaze captive, he leaned in further, his voice a low, dark rasp meant only for her. It was barely louder than the rustle of the oak leaves. “You keep teasing, little girl, and Daddy’s gonna bend you over that porch swing where everyone can see what’s mine.”
The words hung in the space between them, vulgar and electric. Celeste’s breath hitched. The playful smirk vanished, replaced by a flush that spread from her cheeks down her throat. He saw it, even in the lantern light.Not fear. Arousal, sharp and immediate.
“Craig, honey, are you listening?” Millie’s voice pierced the bubble.
He released Celeste’s thigh slowly, letting his fingers drag for a fraction of an inch, a final promise. He leaned back, his face smoothing into a neutral mask. “Frozen potatoes. A crime against humanity.”
Millie laughed, a full-bodied sound. “See, Celeste? He understands the important things.” She stood, the swing lurching. “I’m going to fetch the pie. Don’t let the mosquitoes carry you off.”
The screen door wheezed open and slapped shut behind her. The silence she left was colossal, charged like the air before a lightning strike.
Celeste didn’t move. She stared at him, her chest rising and falling quickly. The vulnerable shock from the shower was gone. This was something hotter, more defiant. She carefully set her glass down.
“You wouldn’t,” she whispered, but it wasn’t a challenge. It was a question laced with want.
“Try me.” His voice was gravel.
She stood up, the movement fluid. She walked to the porch railing, her back to him, looking out at the darkening lawn. The thin fabric of her dress did nothing to hide the line of her body. She knew he was watching. “She’ll be back in two minutes.”
“Then you have one minute to sit down and behave.”
She turned, leaning back against the rail. The lantern light caught the side of her face, the stubborn set of her jaw. “What if I don’t want to behave?”
He rose from his chair. He was across the porch in three strides. He didn’t touch her. He just loomed, the space between them crackling. He could smell her shampoo, the lemonade on her breath. “This isn’t a game, Celeste.”
“It feels like one.” Her eyes dropped to his mouth. “My favorite game.”
The screen door’s creak was their warning. Craig took a half-step back just as Millie emerged, balancing a cherry pie and a stack of plates.
“Help me with this, would you, Craig?”
He took the pie, his movements mechanical. Celeste floated back to her chair, a ghost of a smile on her lips. The rest of the evening passed in a torturous pantomime.Pie was eaten. Stories were told. Millie yawned, announcing she was turning in. “You two clean up. Don’t stay out too late with the bugs.”
Finally, blessedly, the farmhouse went dark except for the single lamp in the upstairs window.
They cleaned up in silence, carrying plates and glasses into the quiet, dark kitchen. The tension was a physical entity, a third person in the room with them. He scraped a plate into the trash. She was at the sink, her back to him, rinsing glasses.
He moved behind her, not touching her, just crowding her space. He could see the fine hairs on the nape of her neck, the place where he’d fastened the chain.
“You think this is funny?” he murmured, his voice low in the quiet kitchen.
“I think you liked it.” She didn’t turn around. “You liked telling me what to do right under her nose.”
His hands came down on the edge of the sink, caging her. “You have no idea what you’re playing with.”
“Then show me.” She finally turned, trapped between him and the counter. Her eyes were huge, reflecting the dim light from the porch. “You keep making promises, Craig. So far, you’ve only kept one.”
He knew what she meant. The pendant. The word Daddy hanging between them.
A desperate, wild anger surged in him—anger at her, at himself, at the impossible trap of it. He grabbed her hand, his grip firm, and pulled her away from the sink, out of the kitchen, through the back door.
“Craig—”
“Quiet.”
He didn’t lead her to the porch. He led her off the side, into the deeper darkness where his old truck was parked beside the dilapidated garden shed. The smell of tomatoes and damp earth filled the air. Fireflies blinked around them like scattered embers.
He backed her against the rough, sun-warmed wood of the shed. The night was loud with crickets.
“You want proof?” His voice was harsh. “You want to see what this is?”
She just looked up at him, her lips parted.
He kissed her, but it was nothing like before. This was all teeth and possession, a punishment for her daring, for her smile, for the way she’d made him feel more alive and more damned in one week than he had in a decade. She kissed him back just as fiercely, her hands fisting in his shirt.
He broke the kiss, breathing hard. “This is wrong, Celeste.”
“I don’t care.”
“You will. Everyone will.”
“Let them.” Her fingers found the pendant under her dress, clutching it. “This is mine. You gave it to me. That makes you mine, too.”
The raw ownership in her voice undid him. He’d created this. He’d forged the key and handed it to her. There was no going back.
He spun her around, facing her towards the shed. “Put your hands on the wall.”
She did, without hesitation, pressing her palms flat against the splintery wood. He lifted the hem of her sundress, the sound of the fabric rustling unbearably loud in the quiet night. He fumbled with his belt, his jeans. There was no finesse, only a frantic, aching need.
He entered her from behind, a single, deep stroke that made her cry out into the darkness. He clamped a hand over her mouth, muffling the sound. The other hand splayed across her lower stomach, holding her in place against him.
“This is what you wanted,” he growled into her ear, his body moving against hers in a rhythm that was pure claiming. “This is what happens when you tease Daddy. You get taken.In the dark. Like this.”
She nodded against his hand, a frantic, eager motion. Her sounds, even muted, were not of pain, but of a fierce, triumphant surrender. She pushed back against him, meeting each thrust, the shed wall rattling softly with their momentum.
It was fast, brutal, and over in minutes. A frantic, angry coupling that left them both breathless, clinging to the wall and each other in the aftermath.
He slumped against her, his forehead pressed to her shoulder, the guilt already a cold tide washing over the heat. He slowly removed his hand from her mouth.
She was silent for a long moment. Then, her voice small and cracked, she spoke to the darkness. “Don’t you dare feel bad about it.”
He straightened up, fixing his clothes, a sick feeling in his gut. She turned, her dress falling back into place. She reached for him, but he took a step back.
“Craig—”
“We can’t.” The words sounded hollow, pathetic.
“We just did.”
“It stops. Tonight.” He meant it. He had to mean it.
Celeste looked at him for a long time.She didn’t cry. She didn’t plead. She just nodded slowly, as if accepting a terms of surrender. She reached behind her neck, her fingers finding the clasp of the necklace.
His heart stopped. “Don’t.”
She paused, her hands still at her nape. A faint, sad smile touched her lips. “You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore. Remember?” Her fingers worked the clasp. The chain came loose. She held it out, the pendant swinging gently between them, a dark little pendulum in the night.
He couldn’t take it. He stood frozen.
She didn’t drop it. She stepped forward, took his limp hand, and pressed the warm metal and wood into his palm. She closed his fingers around it. Her hand was shockingly cold.
“When you want it back on me,” she said, her voice clear and terribly adult, “you know where to find me.”
She turned and walked back toward the farmhouse, a slender silhouette swallowed by the deeper shadows of the porch. She didn’t look back.
Craig stood alone in the dark by the shed, the necklace burning a hole in his clenched fist. From the house, he heard the soft, mournful notes of her harmonica float through the upstairs window—a lonely, wandering tune that spoke of distance and loss.
Upstairs, Aunt Millie stood in the dark of her bedroom, having watched two shadows merge and separate by the garden shed. She hadn’t seen details, only shapes and motion. But it was enough. Her hand went to her chest, a silent prayer forming on her lips that was equal parts denial and dread.
She let the curtain fall back into place, the familiar fear settling deep in her bones. Some family secrets, she thought, weren’t meant to stay buried. Some ghosts didn’t just haunt you; they walked right out into your backyard and tore everything apart.
She turned from the window, the harmonica’s lament the only sound in the heavy night.
She turned from the window, the harmonica’s lament the only sound in the heavy night.
The screen door whined softly under his hand. The kitchen was dark, save for the pale blue light of the moon through the window over the sink. The harmonica’s notes drifted down the hallway from the small back bedroom, each one a flat, lonely ache. He stood there in the dark, the necklace chain biting into his clenched fist.
He walked down the hall. Her door was slightly ajar. He pushed it open.
She sat on the edge of the narrow bed, backlit by the moonlight, the harmonica glinting in her hands. She didn’t stop playing when he entered. The tune was familiar, an old folk song their grandfather used to hum, but it was twisted now, minor and sorrowful. She played it like a dirge.
“Celeste.”
The music stopped abruptly. She lowered the harmonica but didn’t look at him. “You’re supposed to be gone.”
“I am gone.” The words felt true. He felt hollowed out, a shell moving through someone else’s life.
“Then leave.” Her voice was quiet, devoid of its usual musical lilt. It was the voice of the girl who’d walked away from him by the shed, not the one who’d dared him under the table.
He stepped into the room. The floorboard creaked under his weight. He opened his hand, the necklace pooled in his palm like a sleeping snake. “Take it back.”
“No.”
“Celeste, for god’s sake—”
“You said it stops. You made your choice.” She finally looked at him. Her eyes were dry and fierce in the moonlight. “So stop.”
The resignation in her voice was worse than her anger. It was a door closing. He couldn’t bear it. The hollowed-out feeling erupted into something hot and panicked. He dropped the necklace on her nightstand with a sharp clatter.
“It’s not a choice!” The words burst from him, too loud for the quiet house. “Don’t you get that? There is no choice here. It’s just… wrong.”
“Then why does it feel like the only thing that’s ever been right?” She stood up, facing him. The few feet between them felt like a canyon. “You gave me that. You called me that. You don’t get to take the words back because you got scared.”
“I’m not scared.” It was a lie so transparent the air around it seemed to thin.
“You’re terrified.” She took a step closer. “You’re terrified of me.Of this. Of wanting something so much it scares the hell out of you. Welcome to the club, Craig.”
He shook his head, a frantic, denial motion. He was backpedaling, but the room was small. His legs hit the edge of the bed. “You’re nineteen. You don’t know what you’re throwing away.”
“I know exactly what I’m throwing away!” Her whisper was sharp as a blade. “A life of pretending. Of being everyone’s sweet, musical little cousin. Of smiling and singing and never, ever getting to have what I really want.” Her breath hitched. “You were the one person who never asked me to pretend.”
Her words gutted him. They stripped away the last of his excuses, leaving only the raw, ugly truth of their mutual craving. It wasn’t just him corrupting her. It was her choosing her own corruption. The symmetry of it was devastating.
He saw her lower lip tremble, just for a second, before she bit it hard. That tiny crack in her defiance undid him completely. The panic and the guilt and the wild, screaming need coalesced into a single, irreversible impulse.
I grab Celeste and pin her to the ground.
It wasn’t a graceful motion. It was a lunge. His hands closed around her upper arms and he drove her backward. She gasped, the sound cut short as they landed on the braided rug beside the bed. The air rushed out of her in a soft oof.
He was on top of her, his weight pressing her into the scratchy wool, his knees on either side of her hips. He pinned her wrists above her head with one large hand. The moonlight caught the shock in her wide eyes, the frantic pulse in her throat.
For a moment, they were both perfectly still, frozen in the aftermath of the fall. He could feel her heart hammering against his chest, or maybe it was his own. The harmonica had skittered away under the bed.
“This,” he breathed, his face inches from hers. “This is what you get.Not promises. Not necklaces.This. Me, losing my goddamn mind on your grandmother’s rug.”
She didn’t struggle. She stared up at him, her chest rising and falling rapidly. The shock in her eyes melted, transforming into something else, something dark and accepting. “Okay.”
“Okay?” He snarled the word. “That’s all you have to say?”
“What do you want me to say?” Her voice was a whisper, stripped bare. “You’re here. You’re not walking away. That’s all I wanted.”
He dropped his forehead to hers, a groan of utter defeat rattling in his throat. The fight drained out of him, leaving only a weary, bottomless want. He released her wrists. His hand came up, trembling, to cup her cheek. His thumb brushed the line of her jaw where a tear had escaped.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. It was inadequate.It was everything.
“Don’t be.” She turned her face, pressing her lips to the palm of his hand. The kiss was soft, a brand of forgiveness. “Just don’t leave again.”
He kissed her then, but it was nothing like the shed or the shower. It was slow, deep, and steeped in a sorrow that tasted like salt and surrender. It was a kiss that acknowledged the ruin and chose it anyway. Her arms came up around his neck, pulling him down into her, into the scratchy embrace of the rug and the moonlight.
Down the hall, a floorboard creaked.
They froze, lips a breath apart. A shadow passed through the sliver of light under the door—a slow, quiet movement. Then, the soft click of the bathroom door closing, and the sound of the lock engaging with a firm, final sound.
Aunt Millie had heard everything.
The lock’s click was a gunshot in the silent house.
Craig went rigid above her, every muscle taut. Celeste’s eyes, wide and dark, mirrored his own dawning horror. The harmonica’s memory hung in the air, a ghost now crowded out by the thick, suffocating truth. Millie knew. She’d heard the thump of their bodies hitting the floor, the whisper-argue, the surrender.
“Get off,” Celeste breathed, her voice thin.
He rolled away, landing on his back on the rug, staring at the water-stained ceiling. The shame was a physical weight, cold and leaden in his gut. From the bathroom, the old pipes groaned as the faucet turned on. A deliberate, normal sound. It was worse than shouting.
“She knows,” he said to the ceiling.
“Yeah.” Celeste sat up, drawing her knees to her chest. She rubbed her wrists where he’d held her. “So what?”
He turned his head to look at her. The moonlight cut across her face, half in shadow, half in pale light. There was no trace of tears now, just a stubborn set to her jaw.“So what? Celeste, your aunt—my mother—just heard me… heard us…”
“Living,” she finished for him, her voice hard. “She heard us living. For five minutes in this dead place.” She stood up, her silhouette slight against the window. “I’m not sorry.”
He pushed himself up to sit, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. The phantom scent of her, of their sweat and the old wool rug, was on his skin. “This isn’t living. This is a disaster. A slow-motion train wreck.”
“Then get off the tracks.” She walked to the nightstand, picked up the necklace. The chain slithered through her fingers. “But I’m not getting off with you.”
The bathroom door unlocked. Footsteps, carefully measured, moved down the hall. They paused outside Celeste’s door. Craig held his breath. Celeste stood still as a statue, the necklace dangling from her fist like a challenge.
The footsteps continued, retreating to Millie’s bedroom at the end of the hall. Her door closed. Not a slam. A soft, definitive click.
The silence that followed was absolute.
“See?” Celeste whispered. “She’s going to pretend she didn’t. She’ll make us breakfast tomorrow and ask about the weather.” She sounded strangely disappointed. “Everyone just pretends.”
“I can’t,” Craig said, standing. The room felt too small, the walls pressing in. “I can’t do this in her house.” He moved toward the door, a flight response screaming in his veins.
“Where are you going?”
“Home. To the cabin.” He needed the lake, the silence, the space to unravel.
She was in front of him before he reached the door, a small, determined barrier. “So you’re running. Again.” She held up the necklace. “You want me to pretend, too? To forget you gave me this? To forget what you call me when no one’s listening?”
He looked at the pendant swinging between them. Daddy’s Good Girl. A title, a claim, a confinement. A truth he’d carved and now couldn’t bear. “Yes,” he lied, the word ash in his mouth. “Forget it.”
Her laugh was short and bitter. She dropped the necklace on the floor between them. It landed with a soft, metallic sigh.“There. You can step on it on your way out.”
He left it there, a dark coil on the braided rug. He sidestepped her, pulled the door open, and fled down the dark hallway. His truck keys were a cold shock in his hand. The engine roared to life, a vulgar noise in the sleeping farmyard. He didn’t look back at the dark window of her room.
The dirt road to the lake was a tunnel of night. The headlights cut through the black, catching the startled eyes of a raccoon before it scurried away. His mind was a broken reel: the feel of her under him on the rug, the click of the lock, the pendant on the floor. His hands shook on the wheel.
His cabin was a welcome, familiar shadow. He stumbled inside, not bothering with lights. He went straight to the sink and splashed icy lake water from the tap onto his face.It didn’t help. He could still smell her in his clothes, on his skin.
He tore his shirt off, throwing it into a corner. The quiet of the place, usually his balm, felt accusatory. The half-finished furniture stood like silent witnesses. He poured two fingers of whiskey, drank it neat, felt the burn all the way down. It didn’t touch the cold knot inside him.
A soft scratching sound came from the front door.
He froze, the glass halfway to his lips. It wasn’t an animal. It was too hesitant, too human. His heart hammered against his ribs.
The scratching came again, followed by a faint, muffled voice. “Craig. Open the door.”
Celeste.
He didn’t move. He willed her to be a ghost, a hallucination born of guilt and whiskey.
“I know you’re in there. Your truck’s here.” A pause. “I’m barefoot. There are rocks.”
A curse escaped him. He set the glass down too hard, the sound cracking through the room. He yanked the door open.
She stood on his doorstep, shivering in the thin sundress. Her feet were indeed bare, dusty from the gravel road. Her hair was a wild halo in the moonlight. In her hand, she clutched the necklace.
“You walked?” His voice was rough. “It’s three miles.”
“You drove.” She hugged herself. “Can I come in? Or do I have to be more pathetic?”
He stepped aside. She walked past him, her shoulder brushing his chest. She went to the stone fireplace, knelt, and placed the necklace carefully on the hearth. A peace offering, or a declaration of war.
“She didn’t say a word,” Celeste said to the cold ashes. “Just went to her room. I waited ten minutes. Then I left.” She looked over her shoulder at him. “I’m not letting you quit.”
“It’s not quitting. It’s surviving.” He remained by the door, the threshold between them feeling like the only sane border left.
“This is surviving.” She stood, facing him. The defiance was back, but it was brittle now, edged with a desperate fatigue. “Everything before this was just… waiting to die. You in your cabin. Me in my stupid songs. Don’t you feel it? Being near me?”
He felt it. A magnetic pull, a gravity that warped everything else into irrelevance. It was the most alive and the most damned he’d ever felt.He said nothing.
She took his silence as an invitation. She crossed the room slowly, stopping just out of arm’s reach. “You told me to forget. I can’t.” Her eyes searched his. “Make me forget, then. Make it so all I can remember is you.”
It was a dare. A surrender.A plea.
The last thread of his resistance snapped.
He closed the distance, his hands coming up to frame her face. His kiss was a answer, hard and consuming. It was gasoline on the smoldering wreckage of his good intentions. She kissed him back with a fury that matched his own, her fingers digging into his bare shoulders.
He walked her backward, not to the bedroom, but to the large, solid worktable in the middle of the main room. Tools and wood shavings scattered to the floor. He lifted her, her weight nothing, and set her down on the cool, scarred surface.
The moonlight through the window bathed her in silver. He pushed the sundress up her thighs, his hands rough. There were no gentle words, no tender pauses. There was only this hunger, this angry, shared need to obliterate everything else—the fear, the guilt, Millie’s knowing silence.
He undid his jeans. Her eyes were on him, wide and dark, reflecting the reckless void he was stepping into.
He grabbed her hips and pulled her to the edge of the table.
He didn't ask. He didn't coax.
I FUCK CELESTE HARD LIKE SHE'S A CHEAP FUCK TOY.
It was a frantic, piston-driven rhythm, each thrust a punctuation mark against the silence of the cabin. The table rocked, a leg scraping loudly against the floorboards. He held nothing back, no art, no pretense of making love. This was raw usage, a claiming born of equal parts desperation and possession. Her sharp cry wasn't of pain, but of release, a mirror of the wild, broken thing roaring to life inside him. She clawed at his back, her heels digging into his thighs, meeting him thrust for thrust, her breath sobbing in his ear. It was over quickly, a violent summit reached and shattered. He collapsed against her, his face buried in the sweat-damp fire of her hair, his whole body trembling. The only sound was their ragged, shattered breathing and the slow, final creak of the table settling.