Page 27 of Two Sides of Sin

June

It’s been six months, but the silence still has a sound. It’s a low, constant hum, like the static on a television screen after the broadcast has ended.

I’ve tried to keep myself busy. I’ve scrubbed every inch of Nana’s house, I’ve read every book on my shelf twice, and I’ve walked until my sneakers have holes in the soles. Yet, that day in the rose garden repeats in my mind like a scratched track on my record player. It’s the same way I remember the last time I saw Annie—an indifferent “before” and “after” that I can’t seem to stitch back together.

Julian has kept his distance, technically. He hasn’t touched me. He hasn’t kissed me. But his presence feels more suffocating than ever. I see his car parked at the end of the street sometimes. I feel his eyes on me when I’m at the grocery store. He’s always within arms reach, a shadow I can’t shake, but he’s never actually accessible.

It kills me. Every day, it feels like a new bruise forming. But I refuse to let him see. I’ve spent this time coming to terms with how truly I’d built my entire existence around him and Cain. Every memory I have, every milestone I’ve hit—they’re there, standing in the background like twin architects of my life.

Now that I’m on my own, everything is falling apart. Uni feels like a beautiful, distant dream that slipped through my fingers whilst I was busy looking at Julian. My daily routines, the ones I held so close to my heart, have become ghosts. I miss him more than words can describe, but for the first time in my life, I have to be selfish. I have to move on.

He keeps trying to talk to me. He shows up at my door with that pained look on his face, but I shut the door before he can speak. How he thinks we can just go back to being friends after the carnival, after the way he touched me, I don’t know. Maybe he really did always see me as just the annoying neighbourhood girl he was obligated to protect. Maybe the carnival left him disgusted. Maybe he looked at me and finally saw the nuisance Cain always treated me like.

I smoothed down my skirt and took a shaky breath, looking at my reflection in a shop window. Today was going to be different. I was walking to a local diner for a job interview Nana had lined up. A friend of hers is the manager's grandmother, and he’d told her to send me in. My hands were trembling, but for the first time in months, there was a spark of something inside me that wasn’t grief.

It was excitement. I needed change, and this was something that finally didn’t revolve around the manor or the twins. No grey stone walls, no Billie Holiday records, no heavy gazes from across a study.

Maybe I’ll meet someone new. Maybe I’ll make a friend who doesn’t share my DNA or a dark secret. God knows I need it. I reached the door of the diner, the smell of grease and burnt coffee hitting me like a welcome reality check. I pulled the handle, the bell chiming above my head, and stepped inside, leaving the shadow of the boys at the door.

The interview was a blur, but a good one. Jimmy, the manager, was a no-nonsense guy with a kind smile that didn’t feel like it was hiding something. The staff seemed like a tight knit crew, laughing over a broken milkshake machine in the back. They hired me almost on the spot.

“Can you start tomorrow morning, June?” Jimmy asked, handing me a crisp, folded uniform. “We’re short-staffed on the breakfast shift.”

“I’ll be here,” I said, a genuine smile tugging at my lips—a sensation so foreign it almost hurt my face.

I left the diner clutching the uniform to my chest, feeling a strange, fluttery sense of optimism. For the first time in forever, I felt like I was building something for myself. I was halfway home, the sun beginning to dip below the horizon and painting the sky in purple hues and deep oranges, when the peaceful feeling vanished.

The streets were darkening quickly, the streetlights flickering to life with a buzzing hum. Then I heard it. A low, sinister rumble. A growl that vibrated through my body before it reached my ears. I didn’t need to turn around to know what it was. That engine was a signature—a warning I’d learned to recognise in my sleep.

Cain.

I felt a shiver race down my spine as the dark car pulled up alongside me. He cruised past without slowing down, leaving the windows up and ignoring me completely.

The predatory silhouette of the vehicle hovering right beside me. I could feel him in there—cold, calculating and watching me from behind the tinted glass like I was an insect inside a mason jar.

He kept pace with me for a couple of minutes, the silence of his presence louder than any shout. Then, as quickly as he’d appeared, he floored it, the exhaust echoing off the quiet houses as he sped away into the night, leaving me chocking on the fumes he left in his wake.

I hugged the uniform tighter to my chest. My breath came in short anxious gasps. I hurried my pace, nearly running the rest of the way home grasping at my chest.

Why couldn’t they just leave me alone? I was trying so hard to find the exit, but it felt like the walls of the manor were taunting me, stretching out to swallow every street I walked on.

Chapter 22

Julian

It’s like the colour had bled out of the sky the moment I watched her leave the garden, her shoulders shaking with sobs I wasn’t allowed to soothe. Everything feels pointless. Every meal is tasteless, every conversation is static noise.

I’ve found a new way to endure the painful silence. In the months she’s been gone, I’ve started marking myself. My skin, once as clean and as cold as Cain’s, is now a canvas of my betrayal. I didn’t even realise it at first, but my body was becoming a map of us—a collection of her favourite things, her scribbles, the poems we whispered in the dark. Every time the needle bit into my skin, I felt a twisted sense of relief. On my arm, the beautiful sketch of a crow she’d drawn in the margin of my Poe collection. On my ribs, the lines from Annabel Lee in a script that mimicked her neat, looping cursive. I am literally wearing her ghost.

I regret what I did. I regret it every single second of every godforsaken day—but that’s just me being selfish. The human part of me wants her back, but the part of me that’s bound to Cain knows this is the only mercy I can offer her—distance. If I can’t change her fate, the least I can do is stop pretending we have a future. I tell myself it’s for the best. I tell myself that distancing her now will make the final snuffing out of her light less torturous for her. It’s a lie, of course. I’m just prolonging the torture. I still harbour this pathetic, dying hope that I can find a loophole in the Ritual, a way to swap her soul for someone else’s, but Cain is right: she’s the marker. She’s already bound.

I was sitting in my car, parked half a block away from the diner, watching her walk towards the entrance. The morning air was crisp, and the sun was just beginning to peek over the buildings. She looked so small, so determined, and so incredibly cute in her new uniform.

A sharp pang of pain surged through my chest—a constant ache that never really went away. Being this close to her and yet worlds apart is a slow motion execution. So many nights over the last few months, I’ve stood outside her bedroom window in the dark, just leaning against the siding of Nana’s house just to feel her heartbeat through the wood. I’ve nearly climbed through that window a dozen times just to hold her while she sleeps. Some nights, I’d hear her crying, the muffled sounds of her heartbreak echoing through the walls, and I’d have to grip the windowsill until my knuckles cracked to keep from breaking in and apologising for everything.

I watched the bell chime as she disappeared inside. I wouldn’t miss my baby girl’s first day of work for anything in this world. I know it’s wrong; I know that I’m a stalker, a ghost haunting a girl who deserves to be free, but I have to make sure she’s being treated right. I have to see who’s looking after her.

I stepped into the diner, the smell of cheap coffee and bacon grease thick in the air. I found a booth in the corner, sliding in so my back was towards the kitchen, but positioned so I could see her in the reflection of the napkin dispenser. I watched her for a few minutes, seeing the way she moved—efficient, a little nervous, but glowing with that quiet strength she’s always had.