Page 58 of Wicked Sins

He’s at the basin, brushing his teeth. I do a double-take. He’s not in boxers like I’d expected, but jeans and a shirt. I push the door closed behind me and lower my voice. “Where you off to?”

He pauses with the toothbrush in his mouth, and grins at me around the handle. “Bed,” he says.

I was never truant a day in my life…until I came to this place. Serves them right—our handlers sleep like the fucking dead. It’s piss easy to climb out the window and wander around getting up to mischief.

Waving off his lie, I head for the toilet and take a leak.

“Wanna come?” he asks and then spits into the basin.

I’m already on thin ice with Brian, but fuck it. I know sleep is hours away while I try and ponder out Emma’s mysterious message…May as well get some fresh air.

“Sure.”

Sylvester wipes his hand across the back of his mouth, his grin deepening. “Awesome.” His grin hitches up a bit, and then he heads back into our room.

Strange to think that he was sent here because of anger management issues. From what I heard, he broke a kid’s back during a football match during a particularly violent takedown. We’re about the same size, but he’s got thighs like tree trunks from all the squats he does. I haven’t spent much time training in this place—it’s too painful, that reminder of times gone.

My chest tightens. I thump my fist into it as I grimace at my reflection in the mirror on my way back to the bedroom.

Candy’s the reason I’m in here. My life was perfect before she came along. I had a loving father who always showed up at my football games. We’d talk strategies and plays at the dinner table, and then go watch a match on cable. Emma would always be there, and Dad would be patient with her. He’d let her eat with her hands if she wanted, and never tried to wrestle her into a conversation when she didn’t feel like talking.

For years, that had been our routine. Our life.Myfamily.

Then that bitch Diana came along, stole his heart, and inserted her and her scheming daughter in our lives like a knife through a rib cage.

And now look where I am. Climbing through a window after curfew with a guy who has a manslaughter charge on his record, about to get up to shit that’ll probably dig me even deeper into this hole.

I’ll be thanking you later, darling.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Candy

“Are you crazy? I’m not getting in there,” I whisper, tugging away my hands before Haley can grab hold of me again.

“Why’re you being such a little bitch?” And she doesn’t bother lowering her voice. I know we’re not exactly in earshot of the lodges, but this place could have like security guards and shit, I don’t know. What if someone’s on patrol and they see us?

Happy Mountain Youth Center is nestled in a tiny valley in the middle of red-neck hick-county nowhere. The scenery’s pretty enough, if you like the wilderness. Only a few acres around the buildings and lodges have been cleared, a field or two for the cows and horses. The rest?

Spiders.

Poison ivy.

And squirrels.

I’m pretty sure I still have a spider in my hair from the walk through the bit of tangled woods we took to get here.

There’s a loud splash and then a giggle. Like a ripple, all the girls in the dam start giggling.

“I’m trying to get out early for good behavior!” I snap at Haley when she makes another grab for me. “I don’t want to end up staying here until I graduate!”

“No one’s gonna tell,” she says, teeth flashing in a wicked smile. “Come on!”

It’s too dark to make out much more than their silhouettes, but there must be girls from three or more lodges in the water.

“I’m not wearing a bathing suit.”

Haley pauses in the act of tugging down her pants. Her pale underwear glows neon in the dark. “Yeah…no one here does.” With a flip of her blond hair and a roll of her eyes, she tucks her clothes over a low branch and climbs over the moss-and-lichen infested wall of the dam.

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