Page 45 of Born Sinner
Her back arches.
My mind is drunk.
Turns out, she doesn’t hate me that much, after all.
She hates me even less when, lying tangled up in sheets and exhaustion, I give her my knife and instruct her to carve an L into my chest.
My oath in blood, just like I promised.
Two letters.
Two lives.
Two hearts that refuse to beat for a war that tries so hard to define them.
Chapter Eighteen
Lola
While my beautiful captor slept,I dressed in darkness and spilled our truth onto a dirty piece of motel stationary.
Now, standing by the bed and clutching the note in my hand, I’m as stained as the white sheet covering Sam’s newly branded chest. Unshed tears burn the back of my eyes as I reach down, tracing a feather-light touch across the dark red L bleeding through the cheap linen.
“Mine,” I whisper, echoing his earlier claim.
He doesn’t respond. Those intense eyes remain closed as I trail my hand from his chest to his face. He’s too lost in the depths of a dream to know what’s about to happen. To understand why I have to go through with what I’m about to do.
It’s not in spite of him. It’sforhim.
He asked me to give him the night, and I did. I gave him that and more. I gave him me—body and soul.
And heart.
And whether or not he believes it when he wakes, I’ve already given him all of my tomorrows. Every single one. But defiance always comes with a price, and ours is one I must pay alone.
For me.
For him.
For peace.
And for a chance at happiness for either of us.
I wish I could tell him goodbye, but I know he’d just try to stop me. He’d argue we could simply keep driving. Away from New Jersey. Away from Mexico. Away from the loyalties and responsibilities tying us to both.
But it would never be far enough.
Deep down, both of us know you can’t outrun Valentin Carrera or Dante Santiago. Eventually, we’d be found, and depending on who got there first, one of us would answer with our life.
That’s no way to live.
However, I’m leaving here more confident than I arrived. Thanks to Sam, I’m no longer afraid of who I am. By weakening me, he strengthened me.
Because of him, I found my voice.
Besides, if I’ve learned anything while being in America, it’s that when something blocks your path, you don’t try to run through it…
You find a way around it.
