Page 31 of Sinners Atone
Oh, God, he’s really going to do it. The Boogeyman is going to kill me.
Any flicker of optimism flew out of the window the moment those knives winked up at me from the coffee table. This isn’t a Disney movie or an episode ofGrey’s Anatomy. He’s going tocut out my tongue,and I won’t survive it. I won’t become the mysterious mute with a sad backstory, I’ll bedead.I’ll fall to my knees and bleed out on my “Thank You for the Music—And For Wiping Your Feet!” doormat. I’ll be an episode of a true crime podcast, or one of thoseNetflixdocuseries everyone talks about onTwitter. They’ll say I got straight A’s in school, and that I lit up every room I walked into.
And worst of all, it’ll ruin Rory’s wedding.
Oh my God, the wedding.
Gabriel’s arm slides across my stomach and lingers on my hip before dropping off.
Metal clanks against metal.
Metal glides along my bottom lip.
It sizzles like rain on hot concrete. I couldn’t move even if I wasn’t locked in this monster’s vise.
They say your life flashes before your eyes when you’re about to die, but when my gaze finds the black sky beyond the pink porch light, all I see is one sentence. Five words, thirty-five characters, including spaces.
A bitter thought, tinged with irony, drifts through the space between my ears.
At least it’ll finally be complete.
He slips the metal between the part of my lips and pushes it down on the flat of my tongue. I close my eyes and tense, waiting for the pain.
It doesn’t come.
Instead, smooth leather glides down to my throat. He pushes two fingers against my clavicle, then the top of my head slams against his collarbone.
The roughness of his beard grazes my earlobe, and his hot breath skitters over my pulse.
“Lock your fucking doors,” he growls.
I stand there, frozen, open-mouthed and panting. Even when his shadow shifts around mine and the wind bites my chest. Even when he slams the door behind him so hard the house vibrates.
Even when his silhouette melts into the darkness beyond my garden path, I stand there not daring to believe it.
The clock behind me starts ticking again, seconds turning into minutes, maybe hours. ABBA floats down the stairs again, belting out track after track, oblivious.
Only when the taste of metal fills my entire mouth to where it burns and I fear it’ll choke me, do I spit it out into my palm.
It’s my house key.
I lock the door and sink—down, down, down, like a deflating balloon.
And that’s where I stay until daylight comes.
The only time I ever have my back to a room is when I’m more concerned with what’s happening outside of it.
There’s chaos on the front lawn. A line of cars wait behind the gates at a makeshift checkpoint. Alek is running plates, and Maxim is ripping apart the interiors.
A distant uncle is palming the hood of his car while Yemi pats him down for weapons, then over on the circle drive, the wedding planner teeters across the gravel path with a stack of boxes sealed with the red tape that lets me know they’ve been checked. She stumbles onto the grass, the cement truck backing up to the dirt pit narrowly missing her.
“Benny fucked our third cousin at the Mirales wedding last weekend.”
“Fuck off. How was I supposed to know? The broad had a different last name.”
“You’ll know in nine months when she turns up on your doorstep holding a kid with three eyes.”
Gruff laughter fills the room. In the reflection of the window, I see my cousin Benny sucker punch his brother Nico in the gut.
