Page 94 of Sinner (Priest 2)
She bends down, jerkily grabbing at her clothes. “This was a mistake,” she says. “This whole month was a mistake.”
“So now you’re just writing me off? You’re just going to quit me because it’s gotten hard?”
She whirls on me, eyes blazing underneath her tears. “I’ve never quit a fucking thing in my life because it was hard. I’m cutting you out because you’re hurting me. Because I thought you were the one person who knew me and understood what I wanted, and now I know you’re only thinking about yourself!”
“You asked me to do this precisely because I don’t understand why you’re doing it,” I retort, leaning in. “You can’t be upset that I still don’t understand.”
“No,” she whispers, her voice fading. “The problem is that you understand, but you still want me to be something different. And that’s worse than not understanding at all.”
That silences me faster than a hand around my throat.
She pulls her shirt and jumper on and steps into her sneakers. “I’m going to swing by your apartment tonight to get my things. Please don’t be there.”
There’s a moment, both grossly selfish and possibly righteously hurt, when I think about my mom in her new ICU bed—and then I realize Zenny doesn’t know. I didn’t tell her this afternoon; there wasn’t a good time and I didn’t want to weigh her down with it, and I just feel like there has to be a rule against having your heart broken while your mom is dying.
Except when I open my mouth to say that, nothing comes out. And it shouldn’t. I don’t want Zenny to stay with me out of pity. I don’t want this heartbreak hanging over my head like a sword of Damocles while I wait for my mother to get better. No, it’s better if she doesn’t know Mom’s in the ICU, it’s better that she’s able to be honest here, no matter how much her honesty drills right through my guts.
“Zenny, please,” I say. I beg. My voice is strangled. “Wait—”
“It was going to end next week anyway, Sean,” she says, not meeting my eyes. “We might as well do it now.”
“It won’t change it,” I say. “That I love you. Just tell me, please, before you go—do you love me? Could you ever love me?”
For a fleeting moment, I think she’s going to answer. Her eyelashes flutter and her breathing catches and her face is all delicate longing and hope and pain.
But then it shuts down, snuffed out like a candle. She pushes past me without answering, and I’m left in the kitchen, naked and alone and—for the first time in my life—utterly heartbroken.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Aiden’s farmhouse is mostly dark when I pull up, with only a single bedroom window upstairs glowing faintly against the night. Everywhere else there are stars. Stars and stars and stars, and as I park my car and climb out into the warm summer air, I think I can almost understand why he likes it here. It’s like another world, and right now, another world is exactly what I need.
My hands are shaking as I try to hit the lock button on my key fob, and I make myself stop, take a moment to drag in a long breath of air. It smells like grass and wind and Kansas.
No city.
No roses.
No Zenny.
I finally succeed in locking my car and make it onto the porch, letting myself inside with the key Aiden keeps under a planter filled with dead plants. It might be ridiculous that I’ve driven almost an hour outside the city just to use my brother’s shower and steal some of his clothes, but Zenny asked me not to be at the apartment, and Sean Bell that I am, I still don’t feel comfortable sitting in my mother’s ICU room smelling of sex and used vegetable oil.
So shower and fresh clothes it is.
It is literally the only thought I’ve let myself have since Zenny left me naked in the shelter kitchen. The only decision I’ve allowed myself to make. I’m buried in the rubble of my own making, the destructive wall of my anger and love and need, and I can’t breathe. I can’t live.
Just get to the shower. Shower and then go to the hospital. Don’t think about her don’t think about her don’t think about her…
“Aiden?” I call out, tossing the key onto his coffee table. The man makes a lot of money but he’s too scattered to do things with it, like furnish his house properly. His coffee table is made from nailed together wood crates, and his couch is a stained lump from his college apartment. His walls are still the basic farmhouse white they were when he bought it.
“Aiden?” I call again, getting ready to go up the stairs. I saw his car in the driveway, but with Aiden those usual signs of human behavior are completely useless. He might have decided to Uber to Canada or go cow-tipping a mile down the road, there’s simply no way to tell. And just when I think for sure that he’s not here, a light flicks on and he comes skidding out of his doorway, still yanking up some pajama pants. A penis definitely flaps around in the process.
“Aw, Jesus,” I say, throwing my hand up over my eyes. “Why, man? Why?”
“What do you mean why, you—you cat burglar!” he splutters, stomping down the stairs to me. “Haven’t you heard of fucking knocking? I don’t know, calling maybe?”
I drop my hand, assuming it?
??s safe, and then Aiden pauses on the stairs, looking at me.
