Page 277 of Sinister

“Yes.”

“I did. And I know you were not there,” I burst out, tears falling down my cheeks again.

He taps his head against the wooden frame of the door a few times.

“Except I was.”

“W-what?”

“I would not expect you to remember that. You were far too hurt, in pain . . .” His voice is strained as he speaks. “It is my fault for arriving there too late. That, I accept, and trust me, I have beaten myself over it time and time again over the last hundred years. I should have been there for you when you needed me the most. I failed you, Petra, and you have no idea how sorry I am for it.”

“That doesn’t erase the fact that I died!”

“No, it does not.” He pauses. “Now that you’ve seen with your own eyes what happened in the past, I can finally give you my side of the story—fill in the gaps.”

I let out a dry laugh. “Really? So kind of you,” I say ironically.

“Petra . . .” His voice sounds weary, old. Not at all the cheery, jocular voice I’ve gotten used to. But I suppose that is to be expected since this is not teenager Sin.

This is immortal Sin, one over a hundred years old.

“You think I did not want to tell you everything sooner? You think I wasn’t dying on the inside seeing you try to make sense of everything and knowing I had the answers—or, at least, most of the answers?”

“Why didn’t you, then?”

“There are a few reasons why I did not—why I could not.”

“I’m waiting,” I reply flippantly.

“The first is the most obvious one. You would not have believed me. If you had not experienced the past for yourself, if you had not seen that things are not as they seem, that the normal most people take for granted is just an illusion, you would have never believed me.”

I bite my lip as I consider his point. It is true that I would have never believed him if he came up to me and said, “Hey Petra, I’m Sin, your past life-lover. Oh, and I’m also immortal, and I kill people.”

I would have likely thought him insane and never spoken to him again; perhaps I would have gotten a restraining order against him.

“I will accede to that point.”

“In addition to that, I wanted you to fall for me as myself. Before you knew about the past, about our connection. I did not want you to feel compelled to be with me under any other circumstance but the fact that you wanted me.”

“Really? Are we forgetting the fact that you manipulated my entire life? That you basically ensured my parents moved to Radcliffe, that I attended St. Anselm Hall . . . that I was named Petra?”

“I may have engineered the circumstances, but that was only to gain proximity to you. Perhaps I did a thing or two to bring you by my side, but the fact that you came to me, of your own volition: That is all you.”

Once more, I roll my eyes.

“And the night at Elias’s party? You got me drunk and slept with me! How is that me coming to you? That’s you taking advantage of me in a vulnerable position.”

He makes a tsk sound.

“Perhaps I did do . . . some underhanded things to be close to you, to touch you, feel you again. I can only blame that on my own eagerness and the fact that I’ve missed you so damn much. And then there you were, so beautiful, so comfortable with me. I did take advantage. I admit that. But I am not sorry about it.”

“You got me pregnant!”

“Another reason to not feel sorry about it,” he adds casually. “Although I will say, I did not even think that was a possibility. It was not on purpose. But I am very happy it happened.”

There isn’t much I can say to that since I am quite happy it happened, too. I press my hand to my stomach, caressing it lightly.

From the scared teenager anxiously buying pregnancy tests in a pharmacy to the expecting mother I am today . . . I feel like I am an entirely different person. And the realization that there is another life growing inside of me has had a lot to do with my growth.