Page 13 of Wicked Sins

I expect makeup to appear next, but either she forgot it at home, or she’s decided not to risk taking out an eye as I race us to school.

We arrive seconds before the homeroom bell.

Candy’s got her backpack in her lap, ready to go, but starts fumbling with the seatbelt, trying to get it to unlock.

With a sigh, I lean back inside the car, grab her buckle, and unlock it.

She smooths back a hank of hair that’s somehow escaped the messy prison on top of her head with a timid smile that makes her one slightly crooked tooth poke against her lip.

No fucking wonder she couldn’t unlock it—she’s shaking like a three-day drunk who couldn’t find their bottle of spirits. Trust me to get shacked up with an alcoholic stepsister.

Will Dad keep pouring her wine at dinner each night if he knows?

I go around, and wrench open her door in case she starts fumbling with that too. But before she can climb out, I lean in really close and wait for her to make eye contact.

“I’ve got practice this afternoon. Keep yourself occupied until I’m done. I’ll meet you back here at three.” I rummage in my blazer and pull out a stick of gum. “Open.”

She blinks her big blue eyes at me, her lips parting with an unspoken question.

Unspoken, because I grab her jaw, tug it down, and slide the gum between her lips before she can embarrass us both with her rhetorical idiocy.

“This happens again, and I’m selling you out so fast your head will spin.” I step back, sneering at her when she doesn’t move. “You’re not a fucking kid anymore. Stop acting like one.”

Chapter Five

Candy

Isigh as I fall tummy-down on my bed and burrow my face into the cool silkiness of my pillows. I haven’t even bothered taking off my school shoes, my blazer, undoing my hair.

All I want to do is sleep.

Which is weird, because I’ve overslept a few times this week already, and I’m sure I’m in bed before ten each night. I even catch the odd nap during lunch when I don’t have a test to study for.

But every morning when I wake up, my eyes feel like they have sand in them. My mind’s slow, and my head is all fuzzy.

Thankfully, Mom and Wayne are attending some charity dinner or something for Wayne’s work—they’ll only be home later.

I could go to sleep now and only wake up at noon tomorrow.

TGIF, right?

And that’s what I was about to do when someone opened my bedroom door.

I twist my head the other way, groaning low in my throat when I see Emma peeking around the corner of my door.

“What do you want?” I didn’t mean to sound so bitchy, but God, I’m tired.

Emma scans the room as if she wants to make sure we’re alone before creeping in. I watch her coming closer and push onto my elbows when she stops a yard away from my bed. “What?”

“Wanna swim,” Emma says.

I roll my eyes at her and flop back onto the bed. Mr. Bale handed down the law when Mom and I got here a few weeks ago. One of them was to never let Emma go swimming alone. I didn’t make much of that rule at the time—but this kid wouldlivein the water if she could. Doesn’t matter how bad the weather is—every day at three, she insists on splashing around in the pool.

“Go ask your brother,” I mutter.

“Busy.”

“Yeah, well, so am I.” Honestly, I’d take her if I didn’t feel like a regurgitated frozen dinner, but I’d probably nod off while she was swimming and let my new stepsister drown.

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