Page 92 of Sinful Desires
“Tell me, soldier.”
Tout ça est de ta faute, Théo.
Tu as détruit notre vie.
On ne te pardonnera jamais.
I looked down at her, legs open, lips parted. “I’m not telling you about my fucked-up past while your pussy’s dripping on my pants,beauté. That story can wait.”
I kissed her once more, hard enough to bruise, like a final taste before losing my mind. Then I pushed her back onto the couch, stood up, and walked out without looking back.
“I’ll wait outside,” I said, closing the door.
The door clicked shut. And just like that, the weight came back.
All of it.
“Théo?”
I brought the phone to my ear and stepped barefoot into the dead quiet of the penthouse. The city was alive outside, lights twitching like a dying pulse. I walked to the window, shoved it open, and stepped onto the balcony. Wind hit my chest like a slap.
“Salut, Maman.”
She laughed on the other end, dry and amused. “I’m surprised. You don’t usually call this late. What is it in New York, two in the morning? Normally at this hour you’re either passed out or physically punishing yourself in silence. Not calling your oldmaman, who’s sitting here with one foot in the grave, still hoping her son remembers her.”
I scoffed. “Maybe I’m closer to the grave than you are.”
She didn’t answer right away.
Just that brief silence. Barely a second. I clenched my jaw, tongue pressing against my teeth.
Putain.I hadn’t meant to say it like that.
“How is he doing?”
She let out a breath, slow and hollow. On the other end, I heard the creak of that old chair—the one no one had dared to throw out. The one that still faced the television like he might walk back in and sit down again.
“You’d know if you came home once in a while.”
Her voice wasn’t angry. That would’ve been fucking easier. It was tired. Frayed at the edges. Like something old that had been stretched too thin.
“It’s been four years since you visited, Théo. You ran off to the military like it would erase everything behind you. Then you buried yourself in that city, in that high-rise life. Haven’t you punished yourself enough? Haven’t you bled enough for it? We forgave you. Alongtime ago.” She paused. And that pause cracked louder than anything she said. “You’re the only one who hasn’t,mon coeur.”
Another silence. Longer.
“I want you home, Théo. Before there’s nothing left of it to come back to.”
Before there’s nothing left of it to come back to.
That sentence alone did the impossible. Made my eyes fucking burn. Made my jaw crack.
They say guilt is a poison. It doesn’t kill you immediately.
At first, it sits quietly in your chest, small and harmless, like something you can control. But it spreads. Slowly, then all at once. It slips into your bloodstream, into your breath, into the spaces between your thoughts. And by the time you notice, it’s everywhere. It’s taken the color from your days, the warmth from your skin, the life from your eyes. It doesn’t scream. It just stays.
And rots you from the inside out.
I’d been dragging this guilt around for damn near a fucking decade. There was no amount of time, no bullshit prayer that could scrape it off me. It was in my blood now.
