Page 57 of Sinners Atone
Suddenly, he slams a hand against the wall by my head so hard the whole booth rattles. The vibration rumbles from my scalp to my toes, snapping me out of my trance.
I bring my forearms to my face, bracing for impact.
Instead, the door flies open.
“Walk.”
I grab my bags and shoot past him into the night, faster than a bullet from a gun.
The icy air kisses my sweaty nape and fills my lungs. It does absolutely nothing to calm me. I’m buzzing—part adrenaline, part disgust. I move on autopilot in a half walk, half jog toward the promenade.
Christ. I’m sick in the head. And not just because I didn’t think twice about hopping over the blood splatter on the sidewalk.
“What were you doing out here?”
I glance down at the walkway, and with a sinking feeling, realize Gabriel’s shadow is stretching alongside mine. “Volunteering.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?”
I am now.
Though my feet throb in these heels, I don’t dare stop to put on my sneakers. Don’t want to risk him picking me up again. So I keep my head down and sheepishly keep moving, warily watching his shadow on the coattails of mine.
His heavy footsteps, my heavy breaths. It’s awkward and uncomfortable, so I do what I do best.
I force myself to lighten the mood.
“And what about you? Were you out partying tonight?” The moment the question leaves my lips, I know it’s a ridiculous thing to ask. There’s no parallel universe in which I can imagine Gabriel Visconti two-stepping on a dance floor, beer in hand, having a good time. But for once, I have no other conversation starters in my locker, so I carry on. “I bet you get free drinks everywhere. Um, not because you’re scary or anything, but because you’re a Visconti. Your cousins own most of the bars in Cove, right?”
As expected, there’s no reply from behind me. Just frosty silence and a shadow haunting my own. It follows me from one end of Devil’s Cove to the other. When the glitzy lights abruptly meet the road leading out of town, my heart lifts an inch with the hopeful thought he’ll leave me from here.
A rough tug on my wrist spins me around and snatches my next breath.No such luck.
It feels instinctive to yank myself from his grasp, but the fury pulsating from his palm stops me. I must be more tired than I thought, as my gaze has no business dropping to his large hand around the cuff of my glove, and my imagination has no right to run in the direction it does.
I drink in black symbols and wonder what they mean, then scan silver scars and wonder what he did to get them. His busted knuckles, protruding veins, thick, swollen fingers. I wonder if he punches every man who follows women into phone booths. I can’t imagine hands like these being anything but weapons, and now I’m wondering what else they do.
If they’re capable of a light caress, of skimming along the soft curve of a hip. If they ever slide south, under lacy fabric, and bring pleasure.
A wave of hot jealousy comes out of nowhere.
Jesus. I’m not tired. I’m out of my damn mind.
I move to pull away, but my eyes snag on the rivulet of blood trickling between two of his knuckles. It slowly drips over his thumb, then down the side of his hand. I still don’t move when it slithers, hot and wet, over my skittering pulse and into the cuff of my glove.
A tingle of unease and something darker hums through me as the blood trickles along the length of my palm. There’s that spark again. He punched a man, forme.
My gaze snaps up to meet his. He swallows whatever he turned me around to say and studies me instead, something between curiosity and regret flickering over his face.
He snatches his hand away and balls it into a fist by his side.
With a curt nod over his shoulder, a black car pulls off the curb and crawls toward us, its headlights illuminating the path ahead.
“Walk.”
