Page 83 of A Sinner's Saint

As everyone starts chatting and the attention is finally off me and Cammi, I fill her plate with food before loading up my own. Then I lean into her ear. “If you don’t pick up that fork and eat, I won’t either.”

“Is your family always this… much?” she asks me.

“Always. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I think it’s amazing.” Cammi smiles as she grabs her fork.

Chapter Thirty-Six

“No, no!”

I wake up with a start at the sound of Vin’s scream. I reach out, about to touch him, and then stop and gently climb out of bed. I can’t wake him up. Last time I did that, it broke us. I won’t make that mistake again. Instead, I move to the sofa and sit down. I don’t know what else to do,so I just sit here and watch as the man I love is terrorised by a nightmare of his own making.

Tears fall down my cheeks. I want to help him. I want to jump into his brain and eradicate every single one of the monsters haunting him.

I jolt in my seat when Vin bolts upright in the bed, his eyes roaming around the room with a crazed urgency. Until they land on me. “Cammi?”

“Sorry. I didn’t know what to do,” I tell him as I get up and approach the bed.

“I woke you up?” he asks.

“I didn’t know what to do,” I repeat. “I need to know what to do.”

“Come back to bed.” Vin pulls the blankets aside. “I don’t need you to do anything. Just be here.”

I climb onto the bed. “Want to talk about it?”

“No.” His response is firm, quick, before he adds, “Sorry.”

“How often does it happen?” I ask him.

“Every night.” Vin rolls over. “They never used to come when I slept next to you until that one time in France.”

“Are we really that broken that I don’t bring you that peace anymore?” I say the words that plagued my mind the entire time I watched him from that chair.

“You do. You are the only thing that brings me peace. They’re not the same. Like I said, they’re different now. Because you’re in them.”

“It’s not real,” I whisper.

“I know,” Vin replies, but I don’t think he does know. I think he’s waiting for his nightmares to become a reality.

I want to be able to help him. I just have no idea how. “We’re not too broken, are we?”

“No,” he says. “I think we’re perfect.Youare perfect.”

“Mmm, my parents are going to freak out, you know,” I tell him.

“What happened with them? Why are they divorcing?” Vin asks.

“My dad cheated on my mum with his secretary.” I sigh. “I really thought they were the real deal. They were young like us. They loved each other, but it wasn’t enough.”

“My father killed my mother when I was only a few months old. He told me…” Vin says, then stops. “When he would take me to that house, he’d tell me that it was my fault. He had to kill her because of me, that I was being punished for it. That’s why he took me there.”

I don’t say anything. I don’t want to interrupt him when he’s opening up. So I listen. Fighting the tears that want to escape. Vin doesn’t need that right now. All he needs is for me to listen.

“He said that I wasn’t really his. That my mother cheated on him and I was the result. It’s why he killed her…”

“That wasn’t your fault, Vin.”

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