Page 13 of Beautiful Sinners

He takes a lock of my hair and examines it.

I like the red.

I smile up at him. “Me, too.”

His throat must be hurting again, and I try to recall what I used to do to help him. It hits me at that moment that my interest in taking ASL classes in high school wasn’t because of the kind elderly woman at the grocery store. It was because of him. Constantine was right. I hadn’t really forgotten them at all. Small remnants of each of them stayed with me.

I take a good, long look at the boy who would serenade me with his guitar. A boy who has grown into a man even more beautiful than the memory of him allows. A decade’s worth of time has changed him. Hardened him. His face is colder and more distant, his gaze filled with sadness and pain, his aura tainted by a haunting darkness. They’re what frightened me the most when we first met.

But I didn’t just meet them. God, everything is so fucking confusing.

Stepping into him, I hug his warm body. Once I walk out of this bathroom, a new reality will be waiting for me. But so will Tristan and Hendrix, which is why I let Constantine go and open the door.

I’m overcome with joy when I see them sitting on the bed. My lost boys. My childhood friends who have become my lovers. Dangerous men I was inexplicably drawn to from the second we met.

My anxious heartbeat counts off every second when nobody says anything. I honestly don’t know what I would say or how to act. The stuff that’s happened between Hendrix and me, the fact that Tristan went down on me, what I willingly let them do, what happened between us last night, what happened with Constantine just now—it all coalesces into a giant ball of uncertainty.

“Hi.”

Tristan is the first to move.

“Fuck that. Come here,” he says, opening his arms wide.

But before I can go to him for the hug I so desperately want, Constantine yanks me back.

I frown in confusion when he signs,Stay here with Hendrix.

“Why? What’s going on?”

Constantine snatches a pair of sweatpants from a pile at the end of the bed that wasn’t there before and looks at Tristan. “Talk. Now.”

Tristan and I share a baffled look.

“Now,” Constantine gruffs out when Tristan doesn’t move.

“What the fuck for?” Tristan asks, but Constantine is already walking out of the bedroom. Tristan turns and asks, “Did something happen?”

I’m about to say no when Hendrix says, “Other than them fucking?”

My eyes snap to him, embarrassed heat creeping up from my neck to my cheeks because clearly, he and Tristan heard us.

Tristan kisses the side of my head. “Let me go see what’s up. Stay here, okay?”

It’s not like I have any other choice. I still don’t know wherehereis.

“Okay.”

He quietly closes the bedroom door behind him, leaving me in awkward silence with Hendrix.

I glance at the pile of clothes, hoping there’s something I can wear. “Do you mind if I get dressed?”

With a devious grin, he leans forward on the bed, slams his hand down on the stack of folded clothes, and slides it out of my reach. “What you’re wearing is fine.”

My eyebrows shoot up because I don’t know whether he’s joking or being serious.

“I’m wearing a towel.”

His gorgeous blond head cocks to one side, and those exquisite blue eyes sear me with a stare that sends goose bumps marching in formation down my body.

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