Page 43 of Wicked Sins

Candace forced Josiah to bring her here to fetch them.

Candace regrets.

I’m so caught up in the woe-is-me rhetoric playing through my mind, I don’t even register the bunch of guys walking up to me until they’re close enough to recognize.

And by then it’s too late.

Sean’s grin turns my insides to stone.

I’ve been avoiding them like the plague ever since the party—easy enough, seeing as they’re a grade ahead.

“Got your message,” Sean says, a dimple forming in his cheek as his smile goes a little lopsided. He waves out behind him, taking in the smoke and the bits of charred paper and the concerned expressions of the teachers clustered around my burned-out locker. “Hope you get mine, cunt.”

He pushes past me so hard that I stumble to the side and bounce off the wall. My backpack thumps to the ground, but I leave it there, too shocked to do anything but stare after Sean and his posse as they leave the way I came in.

My…message?

“Shit…”

I turn my head. Josiah ambles up to me, wearing a faint grimace. His eyes harden as he faces me and reaches into his pocket. “What will Dad think when he finds out you’ve destroyed school property?”

It’s the first time he’s called Wayne my father.

Honest to God, I hope it’s the last.

He hands me my phone. “You dropped this.” It’s warm from being in his pocket.

I already know what I’m going to find when I unlock it.

To:Sean

You’re not getting away with this. I’m telling the principal — Candy

Chapter Sixteen

Candy

My body goes ice cold when I hear tires crunching over gravel. Wayne and my mom are home. Despite my hands being in fists, they still feel like they’re trembling when the front door opens. I’m standing on the landing, too nervous to wait inside my room for the sentence about to be handed down.

Wayne glances up as if he can sense me, and his mouth thins into a grim line. He beckons me with a flick of his fingers, and Mom follows him into the kitchen without looking up at me.

My insides quiver like jelly as I take the stairs. If my jaw hadn’t been clenched so hard, my teeth would be chattering.

Soon as I round the corner and catch sight of my mom, my eyes start filling with hot tears. “I didn’t do it!”

She doesn’t look at me. Instead, she goes to the wine cooler and grabs a random bottle by the neck. I flinch when she puts it down with a loud clack, fully expecting it to explode from the impact.

“Sit.” Wayne’s voice makes my heart thump too hard against my chest.

I creep closer, head down and eyes on the floor as I slide into a bar stool opposite my stepfather. “I didn’t do it,” I whisper. “Please, you have to—”

“They sent me a quote for the repairs,” he says. “I’ll be taking every cent from your allowance until you’ve fully reimbursed me.”

A tear races down my cheek, but not because I’m terrified. I’m pissed off as all hell.

I guess it didn’t help that I’d started yelling at the principal after they’d herded me into his office and accused me of setting fire to my own locker.

“Why would I do it?” I ask quietly, trying to sound calm and reasonable, not at all like the kind of person who likes to set things on fire. “All my stuff was in there. Stuff Iliked. Doesn’t it make more sense that someone else—?”

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