Page 92 of Sinners Atone
I bite my tongue and white-knuckle the wheel, trying to concentrate on steering away from the yacht and not the fluff of her coat tickling my arm.
With a clear path, I yank the throttle, partly in the hope she’ll fall back and out of my orbit, and partly to get back to shore and get her off the boat as soon as possible. But no jolt or jerk disturbs her. She simply stares over the windscreen, the wind ruffling her hair, that stupid smile still dancing on her lips.
“You won’t get in a car, but you’ll get on a boat.” I take a sharp turn, for no reason other than to try and throw her off balance. Doesn’t work. “Make it make sense.”
“Did you kill him?”
I squint. “What?”
Her gaze lifts to mine under a cupped hand. “You heard me the first time, Gabriel. Did you kill him?”
My full name on her tongue, and in thattone,slides under my skin and chills. Her brazenness both unnerves me and pisses me off, and it takes a few seconds for me to realize she’s not talking about the dude in the body bag behind us, or the guy from the phone booth, but Seb.
I glare back out to sea. “No.”
The silence hums louder than the engine. I feel the memory of that night crackling between us, and shit, I feel almost…embarrassed.Like a teen caught jerking off to his father’s porn mags in the garage.
The sun beats down on the back of my neck. “Forget about that,” I mutter.
“Forget about what?”
I let out a hiss through my nostrils. This chick’s really going to make me say it.
“That night,” I grit.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
What?I turn as she lifts her face to the sun and closes her eyes as if she said nothing at all.
I study her for a moment and suddenly realize what she’s playing at.
“If it happened in the dark, it didn’t happen.”
Fuck.
That’s why she never told Rory about the incident in the garage or the night I showed up at her house and taught her how to get out of the trunk.
The girl’s taken my father’s rule and spun it into a whole new meaning. And—dare I even let myself think it—she’s into the fucking idea.
Is she?
Electricity laced with ill intent zaps through my core and swells in my groin.
No.Christ.
I resist the urge to slam my head against the dash to knock the ungodly thoughts out of it so they can’t come back to haunt me later. Or to reach over and finally cut out her tongue like I threatened to. Because her saying that is the last thing I need. It’s too ambiguous, too bad for me. And no sin, even Mildred’s, will ever be good enough to drown out my imagination when it festers on all the bad things I could now get away with doing to her in the dark.
My right hand is going to have a field day.
“Have you ever killed anyone?”
I’m barely listening. I run a clammy hand down my throat and consider strangling myself with it. “No.”
“Then why do you carry a gun?”
“It looks cool.”
“Oh. And why do you always wear black?”
