Page 17 of His Reluctant Savior

I said nothing, debating on how much to tell him. He was right that he should learn the details if he planned to truly help me. But this could be his way of getting information out of me and learning how much I knew before he killed me and ran off with everything.

And what would happen to Owen if I died? Would Sid kill him, too? Was he that cruel? My gut told me no, but I struggled to trust anyone as things stood.

Sid stood and walked over to a bar tucked into a corner. “Can I get you a drink? I figured we could use some winding down, and we’re safe here for now. I’ve got a security system that reaches across my five acres of land. Anything that sneezes will send me an instant notification.”

Maybe the place was safe, but was I safe from Sid? Still, I could really use a drink after everything, so I chose to trust him for now.

“Do you have any bourbon?”

“Makers?”

“Sure, with ice.”

Sid walked over and handed me a tumbler filled halfway with the amber liquor and one large, square cube stored in the small refrigerator.

“Is it poisoned?” I asked, only half joking.

“Well, that would be murder. If I want you dead, it would have to appearaccidental.”

“I feelsomuch better…” I took a sip, anyway, letting the warm burn travel to my stomach.

Sid sat next to me on the couch, crossing his legs and also taking a sip of his drink.

“Dinner was good,” I said.

“Told ya.”

I exhaled a humorless laugh, stretched out my legs, and rested my head on the back of the couch, holding the tumbler on my chest. “Why are you helping me, Sid? If that is, in fact, what you’re doing. I still have my doubts.”

He rested his ankle over his knee, staring across the room at the bookcases filled with books that looked unread. “I have my reasons.”

I rolled my head to glance at him. “But you’re not going to tell me.”

“It’s a long story,” he said with a sigh. “But aren’t all personal stories long?”

“You’re so different from how you used to be.”

He looked at me with a twinkle in his denim-blue eyes. “I know.”

“You used to hate me.”

“I know,” he said again.

I took a hard look at Sid. He’d always been attractive as a teen, but because of my intense dislike for him, I hadn’t been into him until the kiss that night. Kissing a boy for the first time had changed everything. Seeing his pain had changed my view of him. I hadn’t forgiven him, but I’d been willing to give him a chance to do better.

Sid’s light brown hair was neatly cropped, shorter than mine. He wore thick scruff that glinted hints of gold from the softly litlamps. And he was huge, broader than I remembered. He definitely didn’t have tattoos back then. Now he had tons of them. I could see them more clearly when he was wearing only a T-shirt. Both of his arms were covered in them, like sleeves made of art.

“What changed?” I asked. “Better yet, what happened to you after that night? I never saw you again. Admittedly, I thought about you a lot in the beginning, wondering where you’d gone and what happened between us at the party.”

Sid held up his glass, also holding some bourbon, and stared at it, huffing a laugh. “I was so fucked up back then, Dalt. Very few people learned about my past and what happened to me.”

“In other words, you won’t tell me.”

He looked over at me, frowning but giving nothing else away on his face. “No, I’ll tell you because I need you to trust me, and you have to trust me so we can get your life back. Getting your life back will hopefully allow me to get mine back, and I don’t need your mistrust hindering things. Just understand that I’m going to tell you this begrudgingly. There’s nothing I enjoy less than rehashing my past from hell.”

I said nothing, waiting him out as he stood and walked over to the window, staring out at the dark night, sipping his drink.

“Everything fucking changed that night. Leaving the party… I was so confused, yet, for the first time in my sorry life, I had a flicker of hope. You gave it to me like a goddamn gift I didn’t deserve. No matter how poorly I treated you, you were still willing to give me the benefit of the doubt and a chance to redeem myself. No one hadeverdone that for me. It was like you saw through me and recognized something good in me, something I didn’t recognize in myself. So, I drove home that night, imagining waysto fix my life, but I didn’t know how. My life was so fucked up. All I understood was that I wanted to kiss you again, and I would do anything to get that. You were the only one willing to. You were the only one unafraid of me.”

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