Page 14 of Two Sides of Sin

I read them slowly, my eyes tracking her hopes and dreams. She is brilliant; I have always known that. Julian and I had curated her education ourselves, after all. Her prose was elegant, her arguments well practiced and her desire for a life in the city pulsing through every sentence. She speaks of “growth,” of “discovery,” of leaving the “limitations of a small town” behind.

She is smart, yes, but she was fundamentally naive. She thought the world outside this zip code—the urban cesspits, the crowded lecture halls—would be kinder to her than we were. She thought she could just walk away from years of planning.

“Life is cruel, June,” I whispered to the empty, shadowed room.

She had seen that cruelty recently, hadn’t she? The sudden loss of her precious Annie. The way the world could shift beneath her feet and swallow everything she loved. I wasn’t committing an act of malice. It was merely an act of preservation. We didn’t spend all these years keeping her at arm’s reach, sheltering her from the rot of her addict parents and the mundane filth of her surroundings, just to throw her into a pit of snakes that would ruin her for the cause.

If she hungered for knowledge, we would provide it. Julian could be her muse, her teacher, her private mentor in the dark. He would fill her head with poetry and Poe and art until she forgot the names of the Universities she had pinned her desperate hopes on. We would be her entire world, the beginning and the end of her horizon, until she never had to wonder if she was “enough” for anyone else. She would never need anyone else.

Time is running out. We cannot afford the luxury of her “self-discovery.”

I pulled open the bottom drawer of my desk. It was heavy, reinforced with steel, and required a key I kept on a chain against me at all times. I dropped the mangled remains of her applications—the torn essays, the ruined dreams, the ink-smudged hopes—into the dark, hungry void of the drawer.

I slid it shut and turned the lock. The “click” was the sound of a coffin lid closing.

She won’t leave this town. Not today, not in the summer, not ever. She will stay within the perimeter of our lives until her last breath is drawn. And even then, I have no intention of letting her go.

Julian wants her to love him. I simply want her to be. I’d rather have her body buried in the cool, rich soil of my own backyard where I can walk over her every morning, feeling the vibration of her silence beneath my boots and knowing exactly where she is—than have her living a life I cannot control. Ownership is unwavering. Love is a variable. Possession is a constant. Freedom is a myth.

I leaned back, the silence of the house finally feeling earned, feeling holy. Tomorrow, I would tell her the post office was crowded, that the rain had delayed the mail, but that her letters were safely on their way. And she, in her sweet, tired, broken trust, will believe me.

She will look at me with that dread, and I will smile, knowing that every day she stays is another day she becomes more ours and less herself.

Chapter 12

June

The weeks have bled into a long, miserable blur, and the silence from my applications started to feel like an impending eulogy. Every afternoon, the walk to the mailbox feels like a march off a plank. Day after day, I check the slot with a heart that sits like a lead weight in my stomach, only to find the same mocking emptiness or the colourful, useless clutter of junk mail and pizza coupons.

I was stupid to think I could get out. Maybe the world is finally screaming what I’ve been trying to whisper to myself: that I don’t belong in the city. I’m not meant for the light of an art school studio. I’m meant for the shadows of this town, for the dust of this house, and for the two men who seem to be the only ones who know I exist.

If it weren’t for Julian, I think I’d simply dissolve into the floorboards. He’s become my anchor, my borrowed oxygen. The second he leaves a room, the walls start to lean in, echoing with the hollow silence Annie left behind. He fills the gaps in my life with a quiet, steady presence that I’ve come to rely on more than I care to admit—a comfort that is starting to feel dangerously like a necessity.

“Ready to go, June?”

Julian appeared on the porch, looking impossibly bright and alive. The sunlight caught the honeyed depths of his eyes, turning them into something molten. He’d decided we were going to the beach today, claiming I needed fresh air before I “turned into a vampire.”

The weather was a small blessing. The sky was a perfect, taunting blue, as if the universe were laughing at my grief. By the time Julian had spread the blanket across the sand, the sun beat down, heavy and golden, and for the first time in months, I felt lighter in the chest.

I reached back and pulled my sundress over my head, exposing the black bikini beneath. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the sudden stillness of Julian’s frame. He didn’t make a single sound, but he looked like a man who had just forgotten how to breathe. He’d never seen me like this—so much skin, so little to hide behind—and the intensity of his dark, unblinking stare made my skin prickle.

As he looked at me, a shameful heat flared in my chest. I thought of the nights I’d spent in the hollow dark of my bedroom, lying in bed and tracing the shape of my own skin, imagining it was his hand. I’d spend those hours envisioning the hot slide of his tongue in my mouth and lower, in places that made my breath stutter until my own fingers were a poor, frantic substitute for the man I wasn’t supposed to want. I’d never admit it to him, never let him see the wreck he had made of me, but the hunger was there, clawing at my insides.

“Turn around,” he commanded. It wasn’t a request. His voice had dropped an octave, rough as the sand beneath us. He gripped the sunscreen bottle like it was the only thing keeping him from reaching out and grabbing me.

I turned my back to him, gathering the heavy silk of my dark hair over one shoulder. I expected the usual clinical application, the way he handled me like a delicate, wilting flower. But when his fingers reached the tie of my bikini top, the knot gave way.

I gasped, slamming the fabric against my chest with both hands to keep from being exposed to the open beach, but my entire back was now bared to him.

“Julian?” My chest tightened, refusing to release a breath.

He began to knead the lotion into my skin, his palms broad and heavy, tracing the contour of my spine with a tormenting slowness. His touch was gentle, yet it carried an underlying note of restraint. When his fingers began to creep around my sides, sliding toward the sensitive, electric skin under my arms, a surge of heat flared in my belly. It was a need I couldn’t hide, a physical pull toward him that made my head light.

“Do you trust me?” he whispered. His breath was a warm vibration against the nape of my neck, sending a fresh wave of shivers down my spine.

I couldn’t speak. I just nodded, my chin dipping toward my chest. I felt his fingers move to the final string tied behind my neck—the only thing left holding the world together. He undid it slowly, as if he were savouring the tension. I let my hands drop, the fabric falling into the sand, leaving me exposed to the sun and the raw, hungry intensity of his gaze.

I let him explore. His touch was sensitive, almost tickling, but it felt so incredibly right that I found myself leaning back into the solid wall of his chest. When his fingers found me, rolling the peaks of my breasts between his thumb and forefinger, a low, broken moan escaped my throat.