Page 17 of Sin

“Think of it as my version of hitchhiking.”

He rolls his eyes, and we crawl into the spacious back seat. As Cassidy settles in, I grab a beer from the minifridge for me and a sparkling water for him.

“I need to talk to you.”

Cassidy side-eyes me. “You better not be about to offer me money to disappear again.”

“So you can donate it to another pet charity? I think I learned my lesson.”

“Which is?”

“Don’t mess with you. You’re tougher than you look.”

Obviously pleased, his lips turn up in a cute, dimpled smile. “What do you need to talk to me about?”

“Stay away from my father.”

Cassidy instantly loses his smile. “I’m not trying to take your place or get between the two of you.”

I laugh. “I know that, and even if you were, the state of Texas wouldn’t be far enough between us. I just don’t want you to get caught in the crossfire.”

Cassidy studies me for a long moment. “May I ask you a personal question?” he asks, biting his lip.

Only seventy-five percent distracted by the way he’s abusing his lip, and thinking of how I could excel at the task so much better, I respond, “Go for it.”

“If you hate Gideon so much, why do you still live in his house? Why do you keep attending his services when you clearly don’t want to be there?”

“It’s not that easy.”

“But it is,” he insists stubbornly. “You have your own money. You could get a place on campus, or anywhere, really, and live a completely separate life from him.” He pauses like he’s weighing his next words. “It doesn’t seem like the healthiest action on your part,” he says earnestly.

I let out a long laugh. “Healthy? Definitely not,” I agree. “Except calling me twisted might be a better way to put it.”

Cassidy’s eyes go big with distress. “I wasn’t?—”

“Relax,” I tell him. “No offence taken because you’re right. I hate those fucking Sundays, but for now, my father needs to think he has me on a leash. That I’m just a bad puppy who pulls and barks, and occasionally bites, but whom he ultimately owns and controls.”

“But why?”

I’m shocked at the urge I have to tell him everything. To let him see all of me. Oliver and his ex-partner are the only ones whom I’ve told about my mother and the circumstances around her death. They don’t know everything, though—thecorrectionsand the mental warfare that eventually made me the blighted soul my father always told me I was.

I want him to see every bad part of me.Because on some primal level, I know he’d accept them.

He places his hand on mine. I can feel the warmth of his touch travel through me. “You can tell me anything.”

His touch acts as a release button, and I begin to speak. “Because I was born ba—” I stop myself. I won’t do that to him.Burden him with my story. Make him feel that he needs to heal my darkness.

I can tell by the frustrated line marring his usually smooth forehead that he can sense I’ve reinstalled and reinforced the wall between us. I move my hand out from under his. “That’s a story for another day.”

Predictably, my answer doesn’t satisfy him. He looks like he’s about to question me, so I answer his other question.

“I stay in the house because my mother left the house to me, and the land my father built his church on. Unlike my grandfather’s estate, which was run by an outside trust I received on my eighteenth birthday, the land and the house is controlled by a trust my father is in charge of until I turn twenty-one. That’s how he’s been able to make so many god-awful changes to the property. I refuse to leave the land my mother wanted to be mine. It’s my birthright.”

He takes in the information. “What will happen when you retain ownership?”

By then, my father should be loc—” Again, I stop myself from telling him too much and get back to the important part of the conversation. “I’ll tackle that when the time comes. For now, I just need you to avoid him as much as you possibly can.”

“We live in the same house.”

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