The Anti-Hero (The Goode Brothers, #1)(50)

He looks like the kind of man supermodels fight over and

absolutely nothing like the guys I date. He doesn’t even have a single tattoo on his body.

For no reason at all, I screenshot that photo and keep it in my camera roll. Then I scroll a little further and come across a video on his feed. Immediately, I press play.

It’s Adam in a deep-blue button-down shirt and dark-brown slacks. He’s standing at the front of the church, holding a microphone in his hand. As he walks, he preaches, and while I’m not focusing so much on his words, I can’t take my eyes off the way he looks in that role. He’s so natural, pacing around the stage, inflecting on all the right words, keeping the attention of his audience. He’s clearly gifted in public speaking. Hell, even I want to believe in God after listening to this.

“What are you listening to?” he asks as he climbs back in the window, setting Roscoe down on the floor.

I hold up my phone to show him. “I didn’t know you were a preacher too.”

His face tightens in a grimace. “I’m not.”

“This looks like preaching to me.”

Without letting the expression relax, he walks over to me and takes my phone. Staring down at his own video, he scrutinizes it for a moment. “I’ve only done it a few times.”

“Did you like it?” I ask.

A beat of silence goes by before he nods. “Yeah, I did.”

Then he lifts his head and looks at me as if he’s been struck by an idea.

“You know…I was thinking,” Adam says. “We should film somewhere different.”

I slip my phone into my back pocket. “What’s wrong with my apartment?”

“Your apartment is fine, but I just figure we need to mix it up. Really give them something to talk about.”

I pour coffee into each cup on the counter, then a little cream in each, handing Adam’s to him. “You sound like you have something in mind,” I say with a playful smirk.

“I do.”

“And?”

I take my coffee to the linoleum table, where he’s already sitting.

“It’s a surprise,” he mumbles, blowing on his coffee.

“I love surprises,” I reply with a smile.

“It’s not enough to be fake dating and making sex tapes. I want to really hit him where it hurts. Spit in the face of everything he loves.”

His voice is dark and serious as he talks, and it pulls on my heart to see him struggling so much. Adam is going through something major. The nice guy who bought me breakfast last month would have never said anything so menacing. Reaching across the table, I place my hand on his.

“What happened yesterday?” I ask, remembering the way he called me in a panic, clearly upset by something.

“He came over.”

“And?” I gently pry.

His expression darkens as he stares downward at the coffee. “I wanted to knock him out. He tried to threaten me, control me, intimidate me.”

“Did you?”

He looks up at me, and there’s something burning in his expression, his gaze holding mine for a moment before he shakes his head and stands up. “No. I didn’t. But it’s clear he knows how to push my buttons, so I want to push his.”

My heart breaks for him again.

He takes a sip of his coffee, places the cup on the counter, and nods toward my bedroom. “Get cleaned up and let’s go.”

“So bossy,” I reply, taking another drink.

Within minutes, I’m dressed, and we’re both heading out the door.





Twenty-Two

Sage

“Y ou must be joking.”

As Adam turns down the access road, avoiding the long line of traffic ahead, I realize he is, in fact, taking me to his father’s church.

On a Sunday morning.

“I am not,” he replies.

He reaches into his visor and pulls out a laminated card, rolling down his window as we pull up to a security station blocking the entrance to the back of the church.

“Morning,” he greets the guard waiting there.

“Morning, Mr. Goode,” the man replies. Adam waves his card at him while I try to duck down in my seat. As I sneak a peek through the window at the guard, he gives me a terse, furrowed glare.

“Morning, miss,” he says politely.

“Morning,” I chirp in response, trying to feign confidence, like I’m supposed to be here—which I’m not.

After a moment of clear hesitation, the man finally waves us through as the bar rises. Adam pulls into the massive parking lot behind the church.

“How on earth are we going to get through here unnoticed on a Sunday?” I ask.

Just as he pulls into the spot labeled A. Goode, he turns to me and gives me a devilish grin. “Who says I don’t want to be noticed? What’s he going to do? Beat me up in front of the congregation?”

My stomach turns as I imagine walking into that building.

I haven’t been inside a church since I was thirteen and my aunt dragged me to Sunday school after I got in trouble at school for kissing a boy in the bathroom during PE.

She thought I needed Jesus. Like he could somehow make me not love making out so much.

It didn’t work. I ended up getting to second base with a boy in Sunday school instead.