Page 28 of Two Sides of Sin

When she finally rotated to my section, she didn’t see me until she was standing right at the edge of the table. She froze. The colour drained from her face instantly, then rushed back in a hot, angry flush. Her eyes snagged on my right forearm. I saw the moment she recognised it: the messy, charcoal style sketch of the wilted rose she’d drawn on a napkin during a rainy afternoon three years ago. Her eyes widened, tracing the ink down to my wrist where a line of her favourite poetry sat in stark black ink.

She stared. Her hand, clutching the order pad, began to tremble. I could practically hear her thoughts—the confusion and the hurt clashing. She looked back up at my face, her eyes searching mine with a desperate, silent question. Why? Why mark yourself with me if you don’t want me?

I let her look. I wanted her to see that even though I’d pushed her away, she was carved into my very skin. I wanted her to know she was inescapable to me.

“Julian?” she whispered, her voice a mix of shock and irritation. “What are you doing here? How did you even know I work here? This is my first shift!”

I looked up at her, letting a small smirk play on my lips. “I knew you got the job before you even left your interview, Junebug. Word travels fast in this town.”

She glared at me, her grip tightening on her pen. “You’re following me. Again.”

“I’m just here to say congratulations,” I said, my voice dropping an octave, “And to order a cup of coffee from the prettiest waitress in town.”

She scowled, but I saw it—the tiny, microscopic twitch at the corner of her mouth. She was trying not to smile. She hated that I was here, but she didn’t hate seeing me. The realisation was both a victory and salt in the wound. She didn’t say another word. She scribbled something down on her pad with aggressive speed and turned on her heel, walking away into the kitchen without looking back.

I watched her go, the grey in my world flickering into colour just for a moment.

A moment later, she returned with a fresh pot of coffee and a thick ceramic cup. I watched her every move, unable to help the way my eyes traced the lines of her body. The uniform was a size too small, hugging her curves in a way that made my blood pressure spike. As she leaned over to pour, her breasts threatened to spill over the top of the fabric—a sight that sent a familiar yet all consuming, jolt of lust through me.

She was still mine. I could feel it in the air between us, in the way her hand trembled just slightly as the dark liquid filled the cup. No matter how much distance I forced between us, she belonged to me, and deep down, she knew it too. She caught my wandering eyes and straightened up, her expression shifting back to dead serious. She raised an eyebrow, challenging me.

“Is that all?” she asked, her voice clipped.

I looked her dead in the eye, my smirk fading into something more honest. For a second, her expression softened—a flicker of the old June peeking through the walls she’d built to survive me.

“That’s all,” I said softly.

She let out a long breath, clutching the coffee pot like a weapon. “I have to get back to work, Julian. Please… don’t ruin this for me. I need this. Since… I don’t have anything else.”

The words hit me harder than any of Cain’s punches. I watched her walk away, her shoulders stiff, leaving me alone in the booth with a cup of coffee I couldn’t even taste.

I don’t have anything else. She was talking about her dreams, her plans, her life. But mostly, she was talking about the space I used to fill. I’d taken everything from her, and I was still sitting here, being a shadow in her new beginning. I’ve never felt more like the monster Cain wants me to be.

I slipped out of the diner before she could catch me leaving. I needed a distraction, something to ground me, so I drove to Nana’s. I’d made it a habit to keep up with the lawn and the chores around her place still—anything to feel like I still had a right to be in June’s orbit. Usually, when June sees me there, she snubs me, huffing about why I can’t just leave her alone.

But she was at the diner. She was occupied.

I told Nana I was there to fix the leaking tap in the kitchen, and after some small talk, I told her I needed to use the bathroom. I didn’t head for the guest bath. I snuck upstairs, my heart hammering as I pushed open the door to June’s room, the scent of her perfume hitting me like a wall.

I knew it was wrong. I’d already stripped her of every semblance of privacy years ago, but the distance was sending my mind spiralling. I needed to know if the damage was permanent. I found it under her mattress: her journal.

I shouldn’t have opened it. It was crossing a boundary even for a piece of shit like me, but curiosity won. I opened a page, and once I started, I couldn’t stop. All her secrets, all her raw thoughts about me were laid bare in her neat, looping cursive. I read back through the last few months. My heart sank as I saw how happy she had been before the garden, how much she truly liked me. It was a knife in my chest, twisted slowly.

But then she wrote in vivid, heart-stopping detail about her dreams—the naughty ones she had about me and that night at the carnival. Seeing my own actions through her eyes made my skin burn with a mixture of lust and self-loathing. I skipped to the most recent entries, and my self-hate reached a new level. I knew I’d ripped her heart out, but I wasn’t ready for her to describe the wreckage. The last paragraph caught my eye, and the world seemed to stop.

She wrote about her need to move on. About finding new friends. About finding a real boyfriend, someone who wasn’t embarrassed of her.

My eyes filled with hot, blurred tears. I felt physically sick. I have lost her. Worse than that, she wants to be found by someone else. What have I done? But then again… what the hell did I expect? I pushed her into the arms of the world to save her from mine, and now that she’s going, I can’t breathe.

Chapter 23

Cain

The neon sign at cherries diner flickered overhead, casting a sickly, artificial red glow across the pavement.

I leaned against the rusted trunk of a sedan across the street, lighting a cigar just to watch the smoke drift towards her.

Inside, June was wiping down the counter. A new job. A “waitress” at a grease-trap diner. How fucking cute. I watched her tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear, her movements stiff and exhausted. She was playing house with a life that didn’t belong to her, trying on a normal existence like a costume that was three sizes too small.