Page 40 of Sinners Atone
It’s a story too similar to my own, and something inside me wants to deflect it, to make it not true. “Can a man not go for an evening walk without being accused of living in a cave?”
He flashes me a look of disbelief. “That’s not all, though. He was topless.”
“Maybe he runs hot.”
“And he was covered inblood.”
My vision swims, and my pulse throbs in my mouth. The panic I felt during the ceremony is creeping back to get me. Now there’s a pattern. The woods, the blood.
And where do the similarities end? How many people has he terrorized in their own home too?
Matt slices through the silence with a dry laugh. He picks up a shot glass, and puts it down again, disappointed that it’s empty. “No wonder they call him the Boogeyman.”
The Boogeyman. Cave-dweller. The Devil works hard but the Devil’s Coast’s rumor mill works harder, and now the lines are blurring between fact and fiction.
A wave of nausea rolls through my stomach, churning the remnants of an eight-course dinner. Darkness claws at my chest.
For once, I was too nice, and to the worst person possible. Though his blood was on my hands, it wasn’t on my conscience. Thank God, because it’s heavy enough. Yes, it was a selfish idea, trying to shift the weight of my secret from my soul to his, but he was meant to die.
He was meant to take it to his grave, and me, I was meant to feel lighter.
But he’s alive. Here. On the coast, at Rory’s wedding, forever in my peripheral. So instead of confessing to a dead man, I’ve given a thread to a living one. He’s had three years to pull on it, to rip back the stitches of my perfectly curated life and reveal the darkness beneath.
I can only hope he wants to avoid me as much as I do him.
“Anyway. Lay off the Viscontis, Wren. There are so many dudes on the coast who have the hots for you, why can’t you go for one of them instead?”
His words are a fast-acting antidote to my panic. My ears prickle, and I sit up straight. “Really?”
“Sure.” He flags down a passing waiter and orders drinks. A lemonade for me, and another three tequilas for himself.
“Like who?”
“What?”
“Who likes me?”
“Oh”—he flutters a dismissive hand—“everyone.”
“Matt, the vagueness simply won’t do.” I grab a napkin and retrieve my eyeliner from my clutch, then put both in front of him and tap the table. “I need names, honey.”
With a groan, he begrudgingly gets to work, fisting my eyeliner like a moody toddler with a crayon. A few moments later, he tosses the napkin on my lap.
Defrosting with excitement, I bring it closer to the candlelight and start scanning the names. There’s Rico, the quiet guy whose family owns the local butchers, and Elliot, the idiot cab driver who looks at me like I’ve hung the moon every time I fold a passenger into the back of his car. Tom—he’s sweet, though I’m sure he moonlights as a small-time drug dealer. Each name injects a shot of disappointment into my heart until it finally pops under the pressure.
None of these guys are The One.
Folding the napkin into my clutch, I flop back in the chair and find Tayce through the crowd, deflated. Despite the blistering cold, she’s somehow managed to get Beefcake to take his jacket and shirt off, and now she’s inspecting a tattoo on his abs with the flashlight on her phone.
We have polar opposite views on love. Tayce is a pessimist, always telling me that meet-cutes, the moment in the movies where two people destined to fall in love meet for the first time, are reserved for rom-coms starring Mandy Moore or Julia Roberts. And that in real life, people meet through mutual friends or on dating apps. She’s a bitter believer that the head-spinning, heart-exploding love I’m holding out for doesn’t exist. She says that, at best, love is a padded lining that softens the blow of your partner’s annoying habits.
She’s wrong—Rory’s proved it. They have the type of love Ineed, and I need it in its most violent form. It’s the only option for me. Not just the earth-shattering meet-cute, but all the clichés that follow. Pebbles hitting my bedroom window at midnight, the yawn-and-reach at the back of a movie theater. Rose petals and candlelight and stolen kisses in doorways while walking home in the rain.
I’ve saved everything for it. Every first, from my first date to my first kiss, and beyond, for it. I can’t simplydate—there’s no maybe-so’s, no settling, and definitelyno friends with benefits.
It’s not in my DNA.
As the band slows the tempo with a Luther Vandross song, couples slip into each other’s arms, and a lethargy sweeps over the forest. Everyone’s drugged on love’s tranquilizing abilities, but now I’m stone-cold sober, sitting forever in its waiting room. Next to Matt and all his empty shot glasses.
