Page 191 of Sin With Me

“I don’t remember that.” He kissed mylips.

“You’re stalling.”

“With you underneath me, all hot and wanton, it’s difficult to concentrate.”

“I’m the wantonone?”

“Aren’tyou?”

Of course I was, but so was he, and he’d changed the subject again, raising his arms to reach underneath his head, making those muscles underneath his arms widen. I lay on his chest, looking up into the sky as the stars twinkled above us. As I admired a cluster of stars, Eric lifted his hand above us both. A necklace with a sparkling horseshoe dangled on his finger. “For you, to remind you of me and tonight and thefarm.”

I held my breath, watching the sparkles around the trinket sparkle in the dim light.

“It’s beautiful. Thank you, but you know I could never forgetyou.”

“That’s good, Em, because I certainly wouldn’t forgetyou.”

There was an awkward silence between us, as if each of us wanted to say more but didn’t know how to doso.

“Do you ever wonder what it’d be like to have Skyler around?” I asked.

“All the time. Annabelle and I would both have had an older sister to look up to. Maybe she could have heard him coming? I think she’s somewhere up there, looking over us, though.” He nodded toward thesky.

“After the kidnapping, how did they findyou?”

Eric sighed deeply. “I failed Annabelle. Once the girl let us out, we wandered through the forest at night. My sister was frail and weak. We sat down underneath a large pine when we heard Huntz following us. Annabelle could no longer move. She insisted I go ahead and find help. And I left here there, Emma. I fucking left my sister on her own, nearly freezing and so close to the bastard. It was twelve hours before I saw her again. Claire found her wandering on a road beside the forest. I have a feeling that whatever had happened in those twelve hours Annabelle has kept inside her all these years. She told me she waited until Huntz passed, but I don’t believe her. And it’s all my fault.”

Eric’s pain flew through me. The guilt and regret of him leaving Annabelle on her own clearly tore through my soul. Was there anything I could say to ease his conscience?

“Maybe she’s telling the truth. And if she isn’t... You didn’t have any choice. You went to gethelp.”

“Except that I couldn’t help, Em. I couldn’t even fucking remember where I’d lefther.”

“Eric, you need to let this go. It’s not your fault. The stress and fear of the kidnapping would have traumatized anyone. And you were only fifteen!”

He shot up and sat, leaning his head on his knees, shaking his head. “I shouldn’t have lefther.”

I uncoiled his arms from around his knees and took his chin into my hand. “Look at me, Eric.”

His gaze lifted, and bright eyes shone with forced back tears.

“You’ve done nothing wrong. This isn’t your fault.”

“What about all those girls at the camp? We could have saved their innocence, but held back. Em, can’t you see I failed everyone? Can’t you see I’m going to fail youtoo?”

And it all started making sense. Eric’s fear of failure had been developing since childhood. First, it was Annabelle and his mother when they were kidnapped. Then the camp where he witnessed the brutal murder and rape of not only boys but also girls, and now he was afraid to open up fully to me as I was the one working on his case. He thought I’d get close to Huntz, who would inevitably hurt me, and he was taking unnecessary blame for the future into his heart.

I took a deep breath in. After the trauma Eric had gone through... If that had happened to a kid in New York, a therapist would have talked to him, would have helped him heal. Instead, all these years, Eric had kept this pain inside him. He blamed himself for others’ sins and had never been able to move on. The layers of guilt crossed and mingled – it would take a long time for him toheal.

“Baby, please.” I smoothed my hand over his cheek. “You’ve done nothing wrong. You cannot predict what could have happened if your actions were different. It could have been worse or better. The point is that lives were saved, and more than likely that was all your doing. You need to let go, baby.” I kissed his hand before leaving it on my knee. “You need to let it allout.”

I crouched beside him, pulling out his legs, and then straddled him right on top of the roof. Smoothing back his dark hair, I drew my fingers under those beautiful eyes, looking deep into them, trying to pull out every secret he’d ever held onto. I needed him to let it allgo.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I whispered. “And if you do fail me, know that my brothers will haunt you and there will be no place on Earth you could hideaway.”

He chuckled before pulling me to him and gently kissing my lips. “I don’t doubt that, Em.”

The touch of his mouth on my cooling skin remained for long after. In fact every single one of his kisses had. On my cheeks, along my neck, and my shoulders once he removed my shirt from my body, and on every single scar I had on my legs from my accident. He called them my beauty marks. I pressed myself to him and gave myself to him, letting him forget and heal as he lost himself inside me, our rocking bodies and tender kisses helping to erase a dreadful past, at least for a moment.

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