Page 60 of Sinners Atone
So what was it about me folding her into my trunk that has her squealing like a little pig?
It could be the accumulation of events, of course. Three-chances-and-you’re-out kind of thing. But then I remember her reaction to the last time I’d picked her up and headed toward a waiting car. How she fought and begged andtouched me, and I can’t help but think, that somehow, it all leads back to her secret.
“Butwhy?” Rory topples a box of screws as she passes. “WhyWren? It’s Wren, for goose’s sake.”
A dark wave of irritation brushes my skin, and not because she’s stomping toward my tool cabinet.
I did it because she couldn’t tell me what she’d do if someone tried to hurt her.
Because the sound of that fucking whistle snapped my one and only nerve.
Because I didn’t force her into my trunk after the explosion, and I needed to prove to myself that I could.
“I let her out, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, well—” Rory huffs, reaching for a hammer. “You made her cry, so now I’m gonna makeyoucry.” She swings it into the wall with so much energy, yet so little strength, that the impact doesn’t even crack the bricks.
I’d laugh if She hadn’t got me so fucked up.
Last night was a rare moment of weakness.
The silence was too loud. Her voice even louder. No sins coming through the hotline were bad enough to drown out the feeling of her weight in my arms or the sight of her dress sliding up her thigh.
So I did what I’ve resisted doing every damn day for the last three years: I googled her.
I drag my teeth over my bottom lip, bitterness brewing in my chest.
Turns out, ignorance really is bliss. The only thing worse than finding something is finding nothing.
No news articles. No family tree to climb.
No secret.
There’s barely any trace of her on the internet. In fact, typing in her name only brings up one result: Her Instagram profile.
She’s lucky I was out of my mind last night. While I was zooming in on cheesy selfies, reading every pun-filled caption, and rolling my eyes at photos of every meal, coffee, and cocktail the girl had ever shoved into her fucking mouth, she’d posted again.
It was yet another picture of herself. On apublicInstagram profile. And if that wasn’t stupid enough, she’d tagged her location.
And clearly, I wasn’t the only man with ill-intentions to take advantage of it.
My thoughts shade black at the memory. Standing under a punched-out streetlamp in the alleyway between Moodys bar and the Irish pub, I watched as he fed her an act even a five-year-old could have seen through. Then I watched in disbelief as he led her to a phone booth and slipped in behind her.
I grind my molars and reach for the matchbox on the side shelf to light my cigarette. Then Rory gives up on trying to smashopen the padlock to the guns cabinet and upturns a jerry can instead, so I think better of it.
“Oh, sparrow,” she mutters as oil splashes on the cuffs of her joggers. She lifts her gaze to mine and puffs out a breath.
“You done?”
“No, I’m taking a break.” She wipes her arm across her brow and glares at me again. “You’re going to apologize.”
I laugh. Hell will freeze over before an apology of any kind leaves my lips.
“I’m being so serious. You know she’s scared of cars, right?”
A familiar itch crawls over me. The fresh scab I’d picked at last night starts to crack. It covers a wound three years deep that just won’t go away.
The Google search didn’t heal it. Finding her Instagram account only sliced it wider.
