Page 30 of Blind Sin

“Funny. It looks like the sandwich I taught Lauren how to make yesterday.” He smirks and heads to his own room, leaving me with the aforementioned boner and sandwich and a whole lot of fucking pent up stress.

19

LUCINDA

Iwipe away the tears that have appeared since I started chopping onions. I'm tired of depending on others, especially Mercier who insists on cooking every night. I've never mustered the courage to whip up a full meal for myself, let alone for anyone else, and it's high time that changed. Mercier offered to teach me cooking while we were on the boat. Maybe I'll accept, but tonight I want to do something simple on my own. We found a tiny bookshop on the mainland and I could buy a cookbook. I’m following it to the letter, figuring I can’t fuck it up if I follow it exactly. With a swift toss, I hurl the diced onions into the sizzling pan and start stirring. My eyes move upward to the weirdest scene of domestic bliss I’ve ever seen. Alexander is on the sofa, his feet up on the coffee table, laptop balanced precariously on his knee and Nolan is sitting with Lauren, both of them with a book on their laps. It’s impossible to tell what the pair of them are reading as both books are in Braille and therefore printed on white.

“Good book?” I ask, not sure which one I’m talking to.

“Kit just threw a ball for Sam,” Mercier chimes in with a grin.

Beside him, Lauren rolls her eyes. “We're not there yet. I'm still learning the alphabet.”

“I’m a fast learner. This book is outstanding. I can’t wait to see what Sam does with his balls,” Mercier says with a wink.

Now it’s my turn to roll my eyes. I’ve been subjected to Nolan’s weird and often gross humor for most of the day. I’ve also had tears running down my face at the amazing impressions he did of Josh, Alexander and pretty much any famous person I threw at him. As I watch the pair of them, sitting happily together with their books, my heart hurts with how much I should have taught her and couldn’t. My father checked my credit card receipts. There was no way I could have gotten away with buying anything written in Braille, but as I watch her struggling with the bare basics of reading and Nolan doing with her what I should have done years ago, it brings a lump to my throat. I misjudged him. Maybe I misjudged all of them. The Braille books weren’t a snap decision to buy in the shop. Nolan ordered them and picked them up in the small store by the marina. Inside the package he picked up were five Braille books and several PNR books, which he let me borrow.

It’s almost like being in a weird family, except I don’t really understand the concept. My family is as fucked up as they come. I never knew my mother, my father treats me like a possession and no one except the people on this island and my father knows Lauren even exists. I let myself imagine what it might have been like if my mother had survived our birth, but knowing my father, she’d just be another prisoner of his.

I look up from the browning onions. The only one missing is Josh. I’ve wanted to speak to him alone since we got here, but thinking it and doing it are two different things and I can’t bring myself to walk the small path round the house to the servant’s quarters.

“Do you think we should invite Josh to dinner?” I ask. “I bought enough for all of us.”

“And strip him of his self-contained, self-righteous misery?” Alexander glances up. “He revels in being miserable; it gives him a sense of superiority. If he comes out here, he'd actually have to speak to you, and that would challenge his belief that everything is your fault.”

My heart feels heavy in my chest. I don’t know what to think about Josh. He’s done some horrible things, but all of them I can understand. What I can’t understand is how he can drag this out. We were in love once. Once upon a time he was my everything and now he won’t even speak to me.

“Maybe I should go talk to him then?”

Nolan closes his book and rests it on his knee. “He’ll come in when he wants to. I wouldn’t bother prodding the bear until he’s ready.”

I repeat that last day Josh and I shared together in my mind and the horrific aftermath. As an adult, I know that there was nothing I could have said or done differently, but that doesn’t stop the guilt eating away at me. For five years, he thought I was the one who brought his father’s company down. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so depressing. I thought he knew me, but then again, back then I barely knew myself. Every single decision I’ve made in my life has been made for me by someone else, usually my father. This meal is the first meal I’ve had that I’ve made the conscious decision what to eat. I let the corners of my lips rise slightly. If my father could see me now, he’d scream blue murder at me for eating pasta. It was on the very long list of things I wasn’t allowed to consume. I think back to all the times I had to stand naked on a scale in front of him and his staff, to satisfy him that I hadn’t lost or gained a pound. That’s why I chose to cook pasta and to finish it off with ice cream for dessert.

I cast my eyes back up to Lauren and Nolan. He leans in to Lauren and opens his book. My heart clenches as he takes her hand and guides her finger over the words, whispering them in her ear. It’s such an intimate moment that I feel like I’m intruding, but he’s not hurting her. There’s nothing sexual in his actions and I have no more ammunition to throw at him. I look to my sister. Her eyebrows are pinched together and she’s biting her bottom lip in concentration, but she’s not uncomfortable with Mercier being so close to her. In fact she looks happy. Isn’t that what I’ve always wanted? To get Lauren away from my father and to see her happy and healthy. She’s never looked so healthy in her life. Her deathly pale pallor has gone and now, thanks to short moments of exposure to the sun, she’s gaining a little color.

I push down the jealousy I feel at watching the pair of them together. I have no right to it and I don’t want it. Lauren needs company from people that aren’t me. She needs to learn how to live, and it’s only now that I see that I can’t be the only person in her life to help her do that.

20

DACRE

It’s getting harder and harder to pretend I don’t give a shit about Lauren all whilst playing the role of... I don’t even know what Lucinda sees when she looks at me, at any of us. We’re all playing our parts well, not showing any kind of interest in either of them, while all the while the three of us want her sister. I think Lauren is loving this. Teasing us, knowing we can’t have her. She’s come a long way from the terrified little girl she was when we first met her. I hate how she knows she has us all on a short leash and there’s not a damned thing we can do, but I love it too. It’s been a fucking thrill to watch her bloom and this morning when she came into my room, she knew exactly what she was doing. My eyes are drawn to her mouth and the way she bites her tongue while she’s deep in concentration. What I wouldn’t give to bite down on her, taste her. Her fingers run lightly over the Braille and she mouths the letters as her fingers pass over them. I wonder what it would feel like to have her fingers run over me. I’m fucking getting hard just thinking about it, so I turn my gaze to where Lucinda is cooking in the kitchen. Her hair is frizzed up with the heat and her lips are curled down at the edges as though in quiet introspection. She looks less the supermodel and more normal. It’s a good look at her.

She wipes the sweat from her brow with the back of her sleeve and raises her eyes. “I don’t suppose you know if these onions are cooked?”

She directed her question at Mercier, but something has me jumping up and rounding the kitchen island to help her. Mercier gives me an odd look, which I ignore. “They look good,” I mumble.

“If they turn to ash, you've cooked them too long,” Mercier interjects unhelpfully from his place on the loveseat, accompanied by a smirk from Lauren by his side.

Unfazed by their reactions, I offer, “Why don't I keep stirring them? You can move on to the next step.” I shoot a pointed look at Mercier as I nod toward the cookbook.

Lucinda's face brightens with gratitude, and she swiftly moves to the other side of the kitchen to attend to another task. “What are you doing?” Mercier mouths at me.

I hold up the pan. “Fucking doing your job!” I mouth back, glad that Lauren can’t see our silent discussion.

“You wanna...” He motions to his dick, then to Lucinda.

I shake my head, then nod toward Lauren.

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