Page 36 of Wicked Sins

Dad’s eyes flicker to me. “Lay off on your sister,” he says.

I nearly choke on my chicken pie. “She’s had like three—”

“Josiah.”

My mouth snaps shut when I recognize the warning in my father’s voice. Strike two—one more, and I’m grounded.

The urge to tell my dad about the party, about what Candy let happen to her like the dimwit she is—

I shove it away like I always do.

This is war. I won’t sacrifice ammunition just to win this battle—not unless I’m guaranteed a victory.

I didn’t know what to expect when Candy came downstairs tonight and took her usual seat at the dinner table, a seat that had been unoccupied for so long that Diana hadn’t even bothered setting her place.

But five minutes in, everything was back to the same fucked up normal. Dad and Candy laughing at their own private jokes. Emma and I rolling our eyes at each other. Diana getting more and more drunk as supper progressed.

I seem to be the only person who notices that Candy’s barely touching her food, or the dark shadows under her eyes. I still take her to and from school every morning, but it’s as if I’m chaperoning a corpse. She stares out the window and doesn’t say a word, regardless of how I goad her.

“I’ve lost my appetite,” I announce to the table at large. “May I leave?”

Dad waves a hand, eyes still fixed on Candy as she takes a sip from her glass. Diana looks up at me, and seems to surface from whatever well of introspection she’d fallen into. “Have you done your homework, dear?”

“Course,” I tell her through a grimace, hoping she’ll take the gesture as a smile. “Would you like to see it?”

“Go to your room,” Dad says.

“That’s the plan.” Blood rushes in my ears as I storm up the stairs. I barely stop myself from slamming a door—an act of defiance that I know would have landed me in deep shit.

I throw myself on my bed and stare at the molded ceiling, hands under my neck and my knees up and knocking together.

If she’d been even a little more complacent. Just a little demure…then I might have let this all slide. But that fucking thorn is back and an inch deeper than before.

Fuck all I can do about it.

See, this is why people have friends.

Anything I do to give Candy grief can be traced back to me. I’d always be the first name on the suspect list, regardless of the crime. I couldn’t even—

No.

Wait.

I sit up in a rush, staring sightlessly at the curtain opposite me billowing in a breeze.

Candy and I aren’t friends…but I’m also not her worst enemy.

If I made it look like she was going to cause trouble for Sean and his buddies for what happened at the party…I mean, how far would Sean go to protect his reputation as Maple Ridge’s heartthrob quarterback?

He’d make her life a living hell.

And all I’d have to do was pitch up and watch those flames consume her.

I strip and change into a pair of clean boxers. After a quick wank, I’m pretty ready for dreamland. Even when I hear the unmistakable sound of my dad’s heavy footfalls, followed by Candy’s lighter steps, as they head upstairs, sleep snatches me moments later.

Chapter Thirteen

Candy

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