Page 96 of Sinners Atone
It was everything I’ve never had nor wanted, and still, his touch chased me home and through the front door, where I barely made it to my bedroom before my hand was between my thighs and my ragged breaths were dampening my pillow.
Finn’s question is a simple one, but it twists my gut into knots. We’re close, sure, but his coldness is a direct result of the only other time I felt like this, so I flash him a weak smile instead.
“I’m a busy bee, honey. What’s up?”
If he notices my tone is tighter than usual, he doesn’t mention it. Instead, he ducks out of view, then reappears holding a stack of books.
He drops them on the desk with a deft thud. “I’ve dug out some of my old textbooks from my pre-law days at Silvercrest. They’re a little dated, but I’ve spoken to Professor Barton, and he’s confirmed the syllabus hasn’t changed all that much. I thought it’d be good for you to get a head start on the reading material before the fall.” He looks up at me, expression hardening. “What do you think?”
The silence crackles between the paper skyscrapers and sagging brown boxes. I see his chest tighten beneath his cable-knit sweater. I know he’s readying himself to jump down my throat the moment my usual excuses start pouring out of it—I can’t say that I blame him.
Despite having deferred my place at Silvercrest for two years in a row, following my uncle’s footsteps into law was actually my idea. Initially, I just wanted to live out my Elle Woods fantasy,but when the midnight emails started coming in, I realized being a defense lawyer for the voiceless is the ultimate good deed. It would shatter that one sentence, five words, and thirty-five characters, including spaces, into a million pieces, and finally make the emails stop.
Though my GPA was good and I took part in every extracurricular that didn’t involve sweating, I was far from an Ivy League candidate. It took a little discretion and a whole lot of nepotism to secure me my place. Uncle Finn pulled strings like a master puppeteer. He called in a favor from his golf buddy on the Silvercrest admissions team, and another from a former classmate who works on the American Bar Association’s scholarship committee.
Finn has put everything on the line for me, and more times than I deserve.
I can’t let him down again.
He’s still staring at me across the office, his jaw locked and loaded for a fight. So I swallow the familiar knot in my throat and grind down the rising panic between my back teeth.
“I think that’s a great idea, thank you.”
As his face spreads into a broad grin, emotion prickles at the back of my eyes. I love it when Finn smiles.
After the incident, he didn’t smile at me for months.
“Phew.” He leans back in his chair and puffs out a breath, blowing away all the tension between us. “I’ll drop these off on your porch in the morning, then.”
I nod and move farther into the room, straightening piles of paperwork and picking up empty coffee cups. The modern, minimalist design throughout the rest of the cottage stops sharply at his office door. Behind it, it’s forever September. It smells like the first day of school, like sharpened pencils, leather-bound books, and dust.
“Speaking of things showing up on my porch.” I shut a cabinet drawer with the bump of my hip. “Why’d you leave your boots on my porch this morning? I hope you weren’t expecting me to clean them.”
He frowns. “What boots?”
“Those hideous black lace-ups.” I screw up my nose at the memory. “I mean, honestly. Do you really need steel toes to hammer a few shelves together?”
He lets out a dismissive laugh, opens his MacBook, and lazily scrolls through a document on the screen. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, Wren.”
I open my mouth to call him a liar, but a sudden realization severs my vocal cords.
The boots waiting on my front porch this morning aren’t Finn’s.
My heart kicks my sternum, and a cheap high rushes through my bloodstream.
Of course they belonged to Gabriel. But why? Was it some sort of threat? Part of another lesson? A cryptic game I didn’t know we were playing?
It doesn’t make sense, but then again, nothing about Gabriel Visconti makes sense.
Gosh. Maybe I was right—this man reallydoeshave a crush on me.
I feel like I’m floating, delirious at the mere thought. Catching my breath, I concentrate on the bookshelf behind Finn’s desk to stop my thoughts from spiraling. I read the title on every book spine and the looping signatures on every certificate. I scan from left to right, and when I reach the end of the middle shelf, I freeze.
My mother’s staring back at me.
I set down the coffee cups and reach for the photograph with a trembling hand.
She and Finn are sitting on the front steps of a Georgian house. Her head rests against his and her arm is tightly wrapped around his shoulder, as though she’d yanked him into frame.
