“Out.” His voice was ice. Daniel bolted without a word. Didn’t look back. I heard the gate shut an hour later as his truck rumbled down the drive and never saw him again.
My father turned to me, jaw rigid. His lips curled like my very existence disgusted him.
“Are you a fucking deviant?” he snapped. “Do you have any idea what people would say if they saw that?”
I tried to speak. To say it wasn’t what he thought.
But it was.
And we both knew it.
“You think the world’s going to bend for you? That your name will save you from the consequences of being... this?” His mouth twisted like he couldn’t even say the word. “Weak.”
My voice cracked when I whispered, “I’m not weak.”
He grabbed my jaw hard enough to bruise. Leaned in close, venom spilling from his breath.
“You are nothing without this family. Without me. You want to throw that away for some... filthy whim?”
He shoved me back so hard I hit the dresser. Felt the edge dig into my ribs. I cried out as pain bloomed under my skin. He didn’t care.
“You will fix yourself,” he spat. “You will bury this, or I will bury you.”
The next day, it hit me that Daniel was gone. The following week, I was sent to Saint Augustine’s for “reputation repair.” By the end of the year, I’d learned how to lie so well even I believed it.
My breaths came in jagged bursts. The sound of Timothy’s voice pulled me from the memory. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, like I could scrub the memory out with pressure alone.
But the words stuck.
Bury this.
Or I’ll buryyou.
I had. I’d done exactly what was expected of me. I’d buried it all. And now it was clawing its way back up, dragging Sinclair’s voice with it like a lifeline and a death sentence.
I leaned forward and choked on a sound that wasalmosta sob but caught in my throat like glass.
He kissed me and I kissed him back. Not because I was weak but because I had never been free. For those stolen moments, I’d felt like Icarus soaring too close to the sun.
All I wanted to do was burn.
But I was afraid of what would happen to me when I fell. But maybe to finally be free I had to fall and end it all.
CHAPTER 9
SIN
“You’re spiraling.”
Thalia didn’t look up from the stack of receipts she was sorting, but the edge in her voice cut through me anyway.
I slumped against the bar, groaning. “I’mnotspiraling.”
“Sin, you’re pacing. You only pace when you’re trying to decide if you’re going to kiss someone or burn the building down.”
“Can’t I do both?”
She shot me a look, then went back to her receipts.
