Fourteen years ago, on the banks of Craving’s Creek, Ryde swore to his best friend Alistair he’d never be alone in the world. Though Alistair was destined for the priesthood, there was something beyond holy about the first kiss they shared. But a fun camping trip went horribly wrong when Alistair was involved in a horrific incident. Now, at age thirty-one, Ryde’s life is a mess of alcohol and the painful imprint of his last look into Alistair’s desperate eyes. Since the evil they encountered on that shore, his first love has been lost to him ... until he learns a friend’s wedding is to be officiated by a priest named Father Alistair Genet. Amid the rush of emotions, one thought crystallizes: Ryde’s love for Alistair has never died. It’s stronger than ever. But can it win over the repressed memories slowly tearing Alistair’s mind apart?

Craving's Creek

Winter has yet to really look at me. Last night, at dinner, she wouldn’t even say a word to me. Have I lost my baby sister? I don’t know these two young women. I’ve been so immersed in my own pain in the last decade that I’ve missed them growing up. How many parties did I ruin? How many Christmases? I’d show up drunk with whomever I was living with at the time, and by the time dinner was over, I would be thrashed out of my mind, incoherent and arrogant, centered around my own core, a satellite orbiting around its own private planet of pity.


At first the girls, when they were young enough to be pacified and manipulated, would be interested in their new brother-in-law, Danny or Thomas, and would laugh at their big brother’s antics, but as time went by, their little hearts began to lock me out, and now I don’t know if I have the right to ask for my key back.


Chapter 43