So the truth spills out because it has nowhere else to go.
“He came into the bookstore where I work,” I say. “Asked what I liked to read. Actually listened. Made me feel... noticed.”
My voice cracks on the last word.
I press my lips together.
Sin’s gaze doesn’t move. “You didn’t deserve what he did.”
The words are so simple they make my eyes burn.
I blink hard. “I should’ve seen it. I should’ve known.”
Sin’s voice turns rough. “Stop.”
I freeze.
“That’s what you tell yourself when you’re trying to make it your fault,” he says. “It isn’t.”
My chest aches. I don’t know what to do with a man who won’t let me carry blame that feels familiar.
I swallow. “I’m twenty-three.”
His expression doesn’t change.
“I’m still a virgin,” I whisper, shame and heat tangling together. “And he told them. Like it was a prize.”
Sin’s eyes go dark enough to shrink the room.
His hands curl once, then loosen again, like he’s keeping something caged.
“I know,” he says, voice low.
I swallow hard. “I’m sorry.”
That makes him look at me like I’ve said something impossible.
“For what?”
“For being... this.” I gesture at the hoodie, the shaking hands, the mess of me. “For being a problem.”
Sin’s jaw flexes. “You’re not a problem.”
I let out a shaky breath. “You didn’t have to pick me.”
The words hang there, raw and humiliating.
Sin looks at me for a long second, and the room goes still around it.
Then he leans his head back against the wall, staring at the ceiling like he’s measuring his answer.
“I didn’t pick you,” he says at last. “I pulled you out.”
It’s a correction.
It still feels like something else.
The fire crackles softly between us.
