Page 65 of Wicked Sins

We could probably have snuck back inside our lodges, but not without leaving traces behind. Damp footprints on the carpet, leaves, sodden clothes in the bathroom.

I’d been heading for the laundry room where, if luck was on our side, we’d at least have one set of dried clothes waiting to be ironed by someone unlucky to be stuck with laundry-room chores tomorrow after school.

“That’s what this is about?” she demands, stopping less than a foot away from me. “You’re pissed at me because your plan backfired? Because we’re both here, and not just me?”

I laugh, but I cut the sound short out of lack of interest. “You reallyarea crazy fucking bitch.”

This time, she slaps me.

The punch I could handle. But the moment her palm connects with my cheek, it’s as if I’m right back there in the kitchen with Dad.

What do you do when you don’t have enough balls to punch someone? You fucking slap them, or you backhand them.

Neither are meant to hurt—just to humiliate.

Candy gasps when I ram her against the closest tree. She squirms, trying to get a knee up, but I kick her legs open and slide between them, so there’s nowhere she can reach that’ll hurt enough for me to let her go.

When this doesn’t stop her fighting back, I grab her wrists and slam them into the bark, stretching her until she goes onto the tips of her toes.

“Stop!” she manages, breathless and frantic.

A breeze toys in the leaves above us, causing moonlit shadows to dance over her face. Her eyes illuminate—first one, then the other—but just long enough so I can see the stark fear painted over them before she’s cast in shadow again.

“You ruined my life,” I tell her in a furious whisper, my forehead touching hers as I try to see into her shadow-obscured eyes. “All I ever did was to try and help you, and this is how you repay me?”

She shivers under me, but stays quiet.

“Candy!”

Her body jerks like I’ve struck her. Something that could have been a sob escapes with her pathetic, “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not. If you were, then you’d have put up more of a fight. You’d have done whatever you could to set the record straight with Da—” I cut off with a growl. “With my dad.”

She splutters, wrenching at her hands as if she’s strong enough to pull them out of my grip. “What? You know I tried to—”

I slam her wrists against the tree, and she cuts off with a hiss. “I underestimated you, darling,” I say.

Something’s wrong with me. I’m untethered. Somehow, I’ve lost touch with the thing that’s kept me calm and centered since I was a kid.

How is it that Candy always manages to unravel me and then acts like it’s nothing? She’s like a kitten toying with a ball of wool.

Moonlight plays over her face again. In stark contrast to the shivering wreck I’d expected, she looks morbidly fascinated with me.

So my lips move, and my throat works, and I start telling her things I shouldn’t.

“I thought you were just a silly little girl,” I murmur, ducking closer again as the moonlight snuffs out behind a screen of swaying leaves. “I never realized how much power you had.”

She lets out a bitter laugh, but I don’t let her cut me off.

“Oh my God,” she says quietly. “You think this was all part of someplanI had?” She struggles again, but not as strongly as before. More as if she’s testing to see if I’ve gotten tired since she last tried.

I haven’t.

I won’t.

Not again.

Not ever.

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