Page 10 of By Sin To Atone

He was crossing the room toward me but pauses. I would laugh at his apparent fear of the word puke, but I can’t.

“I must have had bad shrimp for dinner,” I lie. I lay one hand on my stomach and cover my mouth with the other as if another wave is coming.

“For fuck’s sake, that’s disgusting,” he says, turning away.

“It passed. It’s okay.” I take a deep breath. “I’ll just brush my teeth and get back out there.”

“No, that’s fine.” He hasn’t moved closer and is regarding me differently than usual. Not leering. If only I’d known he was so squeamish from day one. “Go home. I’m not cleaning up puke.”

“I’m just glad I didn’t hurl all over Mr. St. James,” I say, feeling a chill when I say his name out loud.

“Christ. Like I needed to deal with that.” He shakes his head.

“Which one was he anyway?” I ask before I can stop myself.

“Both. They’re brothers. Jericho and Ezekiel. They don’t come in here often. I guess they won’t be back since your little incident.”

“Brothers?” I knew he had a brother but didn’t know they hung out together.

He nods. “They left. I sure hope they’re not going to file a complaint.”

“They’re both gone?”

“Yeah.” He turns toward the door but stops before he walks out. “Get out of here. If it wasn’t the shrimp and you have some bug, I don’t want you infecting the other girls.”

“Thanks for your concern.” Asshole.

“You can make up your time this weekend,” he says as he walks out the door.

I flip him off. Well, I flip off the door as it closes behind him. I won’t be back this weekend. Or ever. Tonight’s incident changes things. My plan was Canada but without that money, it’s not happening. I can’t take Wren. If it were just me, I wouldn’t care, I can sleep on the street. But Wren can’t fend for herself. Not after what happened, how she is now. Canada was going to be more permanent. I can’t just keep moving her. She won’t understand and she needs stability. Some sense of security and safety. The facility she’s at now, Oakwood Care Center, it’s a decent place and Rudy is great with her.

Does she remember or even understand what’s happened anymore? Or has her brain shut that part of her life off? Has it erased the memories? God. I fucking hope so.

I rinse my mouth once more and pull my hair out of the tight bun. I rub my scalp and ruffle my hair. I cut it shorter, so it just brushes my shoulders. I turn my face a little, touch the scar that’s still somehow visible beneath the thick layer of foundation. I finger-comb my hair toward my face a little. It’s not for the sake of vanity. I’m not vain. I just don’t like looking at it. So, I turn away, slip off my heels and scoop them up on my way to my locker. I pull my sweatpants back on and put on my raincoat, then step into my sneakers. Grabbing my bag, I walk out of the changing room and toward the glass doors where I watch rain coming down in sheets. I guess I can’t ask Craven for another ride, so I push the door open and hurry out meaning to run to the bus stop across the street. But before I’m even a few steps away, the Rolls Royce pulls up. The same chauffeur climbs out of the driver’s side and hurries to open the back door for me.

“Oh, thank you!” I say gratefully. Maybe Craven has a tiny bit of humanity in him after all. He has nothing to gain by having me driven home, that’s for sure.

I get in, my feet wet in my ratty shoes, my hair soaked and sticking to my head. I push it back from my face as the driver pulls out.

“God, I’m drenched. Thanks again,” I say, but get no answer which isn’t unusual. I notice the men of The Society, even staff in most cases, don’t talk to us women. We’re not quite first-class citizens here.

I push my hand into my bag and rifle through it to get my phone. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Ezekiel St. James had just made a mistake and has actually made the deposit and I’m just being paranoid. That could be it, couldn’t it? I covered my tracks.

My bag is overfull of junk mostly, and as I rummage, I notice the driver take a left where he should take a right.

“You should go right there. It’s faster. Just take the next turn. The roads connect,” I say.

He glances into the rear-view mirror and it’s the same man, I’m sure, but he doesn’t give any indication he’s even heard me. Well, I guess he gives one. A divider tinted a smokey black begins to go up from a pocket behind the front seats.

I watch it, confused, my mind slow to catch up as my body begins to pump blood faster, sending adrenaline through my veins, sounding an alarm I’m too slow to hear.

Danger.

Second time tonight I feel that word in my bones.

“What are you doing?” My arm shoots out, fingers curling around the glass to stop it rising. It’s almost to the roof of the car and it doesn’t stop neither does the man answer. I pull my fingers back, grabbing for the door handle, pulling and pulling, knowing it will be locked. Some stupid part of my brain that hasn’t quite caught up tries to tell me it’s just because we’re in Drive. The locks always engage. It’s a safety feature.

“Shit.” I dump my bag out on the seat, my hands shaking hard. Half its contents spill onto the floor. My wallet, lipstick, powder, pens, gum, a half-eaten granola bar. Shit. The driver takes a turn and I look out the window but recognize nothing. Nothing except the lights of the city fading as we drive out onto quieter roads. Where houses are bigger. Where twelve-foot stone walls with tall iron gates cut them off from the rest of the world.

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