Page 99 of Sinners Atone
Her eyes search mine for another beat, then she gives a decisive nod. “Fine. Have you got any pajamas I can borrow?”
“Um, yeah?”
“That aren’t pink and frilly?”
“Oh. Then, no.” I watch as she pops off her earrings and slips them into her coat pocket. “What are you doing?”
“If you’re bailing, I’m bailing too.” She jerks her thumb over her shoulder, in the direction of my house. “We can put on face masks and oil our hair and watchTikTokvideos.” Her nose scrunches. “I’ll even let you put on a musical. Not “Grease!”, though,” she adds with a shudder. “It reminds me of Benny.”
Though it sounds like the perfect evening, I dismiss the idea with a flap of my hand. “You’ve got to go, the dress you bought looks amazing on you.”
She shrugs. “So, what’s new? Everything looks amazing on me.”
“Well, what about Rory?”
“She’ll be fine. Penny’s going, and the two of them have got this whole scam thing going on.”
My ears prick up. “Penny’s going to the poker night?”
“Of course. She’ll be so bummed you’re not going, though.”
“You think so?”
“Oh, I know so,” she says, flicking her long, black hair over her shoulder. “I bumped into her in Cove the other night. She said you’re the kindest girl she’s ever met.”
I straighten up. “Did she really?”
“Uh-huh. She said you’re so pretty too, and that she couldn’t wait to see what you were going to wear, because you always have the cutest outfits on.”
“Yeah?” I’m grinning now, my cheeks hot with pride. “What else did she say?”
Tayce rolls her eyes. “That you’re the biggest compliment fisher on the planet.”
“Well, I did buy the cutest dress,” I muse, ignoring her dig. “It’d be a shame to waste it.” I strum my fingers on the door frame and chew on my bottom lip. “Besides, I’d hate to let Penny down. I really want us to be friends with her, you know?”
A smirk stretches across Tayce’s face, like she knows she’s already won.
I let out a long, dramatic sigh. “Well, I suppose I’m feeling a bit better.”
As I sit on the bottom step, tug on my boots, and shout my goodbyes down the hall to Finn, I try to ignore the screaming voice at the base of my skull. It’s begging me not to go, but Idrown it out with water-thin reasoning and empty promises, like Gabriel will be easy to avoid.
Besides, my dress wasreallyexpensive.
On my first night in Hell, I was tortured by the Devil himself.
He strapped me to a chair in an eight-by-eight cell, stripped me naked, shaved every square inch of my body, then stuck electrodes on my temples, chest, and groin. Someone wheeled in an old tape player and pressed “play”.Roxanneby The Police crackled out of the speakers, and every time the name “Roxanne” was sung, he ran a current through me.
That bitch is mentioned twenty-six times.
He played it for eighteen hours straight.
For years, I thought it was the worst form of torture a man could ever endure.
But then Rafe started throwing parties.
“I’m telling you dude—I had a dream.”
The vocal fry sizzles on my back like hot oil. The man at the roulette table behind me isn’t Martin Luther King, but aCalifornia tech bro who invented a rideshare app and thinks he too changed the world.
