Page 7 of Wicked Sins

New friends.

I’m scared and excited. I’ve missed a lot of school over the years while Mom and I hopped from state to state.

Wayne retracts the glass. I’m on my feet a second later, snatching it back.

I catch a faint scent of ice cream, and I’m desperate to know what it tastes like. Desperate to prove that I’m sophisticated enough to enjoy a nightcap.

He laughs when my hands close over his, although his are twice my size, and releases the glass. “You sure? I don’t want you getting in trouble.”

I nod, bite the inside of my lip, and gingerly take a sip from the crystal tumbler.

My eyes flutter closed. God, it tastes just like ice cream too. With a bit of a bite to it, of course, but…hmm…

“Candy for my Candy,” Wayne says.

My eyes pop open, and a laugh escapes me before I can stop it. “I know what you’re doing.” I point at him as I take my seat, moving as gracefully as possible. “But I’ll kick your butt even if I’ve had a few.”

He shrugs broad shoulders, a smile ghosting around his expressive mouth. “Can’t blame a guy for trying,” he says.

I keep sipping at my delicious drink as he sits down opposite me and studies the chessboard. I let out a happy sigh into my glass, rippling the surface of the liqueur with my breath as my stepfather tries to puzzle out his next move.

When Mom first said she’d met someone, I thought it was just another fling. Oh, she’d claimed Wayne was different. That he was successful—arealman—and nothing like the others. And boy, had she had a lot offriendsover the years. They weren’t all bad, but none of them came close to Mr. Bale.

It’s no wonder she married him as soon as she could. In fact, I think he proposed the day after our two families met for dinner that one night.

I couldn’t be happier for her.

But, honestly? I couldn’t be happier forme. A guy like Wayne doesn’t throw you out of his house because he thinks you snorted the last of his coke. He doesn’t throw your mother around the room because she wasn’t in the mood to suck his dick.

No. A guy like Wayne? He’s the kind of guy that holds you tight as he whispers,I love you’sinto your hair.

I squirm in my chair and press the back of my hand against my cheeks. I wish I had enough guts to ask him to open a window—with the fire blazing in the corner and everything closed up tight, it’s way too hot in here.

But the last thing I want to do is inconvenience him by asking him to open a window or to put out the fire. I slip out of my cardigan and lay it over the arm of my padded leather chair.

“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” Wayne muses quietly, as if to himself.

I giggle and quickly drown the sound with a gulp of my drink. A milky ice cube bumps against my lips. Wow, that went a lot faster than the glass of red wine Wayne lets us have at dinner each night.

“Aw,” I murmur sulkily, peering theatrically inside the glass with one eye open, the other squeezed shut.

A strong hand wraps around the crystal. “Promise not to tell your mother?” When I look up, Wayne’s staring at me with an expression I can’t quite read.

I nod.

“She doesn’t seem to like it when you drink,” he says, quirking up an eyebrow.

I nibble at my bottom lip.

Mom is a goddamn hypocrite, but I would never dare say that out loud. She doesn’t like it when I drink? Well, guess what, Wayne? It annoys me when she gets stoned on coke, or mainlines some horse, and I can’t stand the smell of weed. But yeah, I get that she doesn’t like me drinking. People do stupid shit when they’re drunk.

She nearly had a fit when Wayne poured me half a glass of wine the first time we sat down for supper. But he explained to her that Josiah and I are teenagers, and if we don’t get exposed to alcohol in a family setting, we will take the first chance we got to abuse it.

She’d flinched when he’d saidabuselike she didn’t like the word one bit.

Despite the heated monolog rattling through my mind, I force a smile, nod quickly, and then lift a hand, my first two fingers intertwined. “Scout’s honor, Sir.”

Wayne’s eyes grow hooded, his mouth smoothing into a line. But then he smiles and heads back to the drink cart.

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