Page 62 of In the Light of Sin

No response. My eyebrows pinched together. She never ignored me. My nerves were rising at the thought of it. Did I do something that pissed her off? “Joslyn.”

Still, nothing. Gnashing my teeth, I walked over to her, tapping her shoulder and making her jump. “Joslyn.”

Her face morphed into an expression I never wanted to see from her: fear. Her dainty hands went up to her hearing aids in a panic. She began fiddling with the volume before frowning. Flicking them a few times, flinching when the high-frequency pitch sounded. She looked up at me, a meek smile on her mouth. “Sorry, did you say something?”

Did she think I was just going to ignore the fact that her hearing aids didn’t work? “What’s wrong with your hearing aids?”

“Ahh.” She looked away, a tad embarrassed. “They’re old. Sometimes they don’t work.”

“When are you gonna get new ones?” I don’t know if she was choosing not to respond to me. It was pissing me the fuck off, making me duck down and pinch her chin between my fingers, demanding, “Answer me.”

“I can’t afford them.” There was a red hue on her cheeks as her eyes looked at anything but me. “I doubt I’ll ever be able to.”

“So what are you gonna do when they give out?”

No answer. She wouldn’t look at me, which told me everything I needed. I hadn’t really thought much about her hearing aids. I only knew she was sensitive to loud noises, like the first time she was on the back of my bike. Other than that, she didn’t complain. In other words, she was good at masking her pain. So good I didn’t even see it.

Oh,hellno. I knew she downplayed the pain she was in daily because of those things. It wouldn’t surprise me if she was so used to it that she was able to ignore it. My mind drifted to the first time she was ever on my motorcycle. The tears she shed out of pure pain–

The thought of her being in more pain than she already was with those damn things wasn’t acceptable. My mind was made up as I stood up straight, turning to walk to the front door before calling out to her, “Let’s go.”

“Go where?” I knew she was confused. I was myself.

“Your ear doctor.”

She laughed, thinking I wasn’t serious, but I sure as hell was. I never wanted to see that look of terror in her eyes when she realized her damn hearing aids didn’t work around me. When I didn’t move, her laughing stopped. “They won’t have an opening for months.”

I didn’t reply to her, pulling out my phone and shooting a text off to Knight. If he called me ‘whipped,’ I was going to show him what it was actually like. “Yeah, they will. Let’s go.”

I could sense her skepticism. Hell, I would, too. But she still trusted me enough to follow me. After Jordyn left her at the mall, she went radio silent, which is what we expected. Joslyn’s been down, refusing to tell me what happened between them, but I knew something did. And I would break Joslyn down until she gave in.

And then I would probably go kill her sister.

Especially after what we found. Still makes my gut churn just thinking about it. How we just walked into a set trap that they failed to execute. We found out what Chasm meant in the blueprints we found at Joslyn’s parents’ house. Chasm was meant to be a housing unit for breeding. Not breeding animals. Breeding people.

People were so fucking sick. Everyone at church felt the side effects of the thought of something so heinous. Joslyn would never know about the truth of what we found. She was gonna think that night was full of orgasms and bittersweet memories and random fucking blueprints.

Not the fact that it was a trap we’d willingly walk into, one I was still kicking my own ass for. I projected anger onto her when I found out she was ditching me to be with her sister.

Pulling up to the audiologist’s office, I could tell she was still convinced we would get laughed out of here for thinking we could get a same-day appointment. Even if Knight couldn’t work whatever the fuck he did on computers, my size was enough to get me in anything I wanted. I rarely use that as leverage, but this would’ve been for a special reason.

When she approached the counter and said she was there for an appointment, the receptionist smiled at her and confirmed. But when she looked at me, she cowered and pretended she was busy with whatever the fuck it was they did.

Joslyn handed the paperwork in, and we sat down in the uncomfortable as fuck chairs; they needed bigger chairs in these places. I felt the legs of the chair bending. I stood up, going to the open wall space by Joslyn, ignoring her amused snicker as I leaned back against it, crossing my arms over my chest and ignoring the stares of the other people in this shitty office.

I glanced down at Joslyn, whose hands were folded neatly in her skirted lap as one side of her pink lips was tilted at the corners. Why the fuck was she happy about being in a doctor’s office?

Or was she happy because this was the first nice thing someone had done for her in fuck knows how long?

That thought made me angry, but I couldn’t dwell as her name was called. I stood up with her, and she looked slightly surprised by my actions. Did she think I was gonna let her go back there alone? Or was she afraid I’d kick the doctor’s ass if he did something I didn’t like? That was an option, though. I had a hair-trigger temper.

We sat in the patient’s room, waiting around ten minutes before the doctor popped in. “Hello, I’m Dr. Regal. What brings you in here today?”

“Her ears hurt,” I gruffed out, ignoring her snort before she properly explained. “I’ve been deaf since I was a few months old. My hearing aids keep going in and out, and as Darin said—my ears hurt. Especially with loud sounds.” Fucking loved her calling me Darin.

“I see. You shouldn’t be having any pain with your hearing aids. ” He rolled on his stool over to her with his otoscope, stopping immediately when he saw her ears. “They aren’t properly fitted. When was the last time you got new ones?”

I didn’t miss the way she bit her lip, a nervous habit of hers, as she counted on her fingers. “It’s been years.”

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