Page 76 of Wicked Sins

He grabs the sleeve of her dress—she being the closest stationary thing.

She lands on the grass beside him, a rip down the shoulder of her dress, blue eyes wide with shock.

The sound he makes when he hits the floor is something I’ve never heard him make before.

Pain.

Shock.

Not a trace of anger.

Blood drains from my face, and my flesh tingles with dread.

There were a few gasps from the crowd of mourners who’d gathered to pay their respects to my dead sister. Now there’s just this awful, penetrating silence. Even the guys lowering the coffin have stopped, staring over at me with part shock, part disgust on their faces.

My father pushes up from the ground with a groan, and then gets his knees up, dangling his hands from them.

“Wayne, your back!” Diana appears out of nowhere, falling to her knees beside my father.

Hisback?

I glare at Diana, then my father, then Candy when she sits up and tries to push her dress back up her shoulder.

Why is everyone looking at me like that? I just shoved him, for fuck’s sake.

“I’m okay. Just…could you get one of the guys to help me up, please?”

I let out a bark of a laugh, shaking my head. When in the fuck did he become an Oscar award-winning actor? My father used to play state football. Fuck, he even won second-place at a jiu-jitsu tournament back in the day. Now he’s sitting there on the ground like I’ve gone and broken his fucking hip or something?

The guys who’d been lowering the coffin hurry over, and with a groan that sounds like something out a fucking Hitchcock movie, they get my dad to his feet.

Someone’s laughing, which is only right, because this is some kind of joke.

Candy stares at me like she’s never seen me before. She shakes her head and mouths, “no.”

I step back, bumping into someone behind me. They move, but I turn and head for the car.

That laughter follows me, and it takes me a few steps before I recognize the sound.

Well, fuck. I guess Dad’s slapstick performance only resonated with one person.

Me.

Chapter Thirty

Candy

There’s a shuffle behind me, and I turn and smile up at Wayne as he comes through the sliding doors and heads toward me. I had no idea what to do with myself after the funeral, so I came to sit on the patio and watch the sunlight dancing on the pool’s surface.

Is it morbid of me, staring at the place where Emma died?

“How are you feeling?” I ask, my mouth turning down at the corners as Josiah’s father shuffles awkwardly over to the patio set.

He lowers himself with a grimace onto the sofa beside me and lets out a long sigh. “I’d feel much better soon as these damn painkillers kick in.”

I stretch out my hand, but retract it before I can touch him. “I’m so sorry,” I say.

“Nothing you did,” he says. There’s a line between his brows that’s been there ever since Josiah shoved him to the ground at the funeral.

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