Page 42 of Sinner (Priest 2)
That’s the feeling unfurling in my chest right now, fragile and easily blown apart, and the sensation of it is so strange that I’m rendered still, staring at Zenny as if she’s the only thing in the world.
She misinterprets my stillness and laughs. “I was only joking about the children, Sean, don’t panic.”
“I—”
“In fact,” she continues, oblivious to my fantasy and the unfamiliar excitement blooming inside me, “I’m surprised you didn’t give me some speech about how I can’t fall in love with you while we do this.”
“I don’t think that will be a problem for you,” I murmur, kissing her knuckles again so that she can’t see my face. I hadn’t forgotten about the possibility of emotional entanglement—in fact, almost every other book in the Wakefield Saga had a speech to that effect in there somewhere whenever the characters first get together. I’ll pretend to court you for a season, but we mustn’t fall in lov
e, or since I’m a widow, I can teach you how to please a future wife in bed, but of course it will end between us the moment you get engaged. That sort of thing.
But I don’t need it with Zenny. The way she talks, the way she lives her life—I’m never going to be able to compete with her God for love. She’ll fuck me, use me to whatever purpose she needs, and then go back to her church with a deeper faith than ever. I don’t doubt that for a second.
It’s weird though, how quickly that thought wilts my happiness.
“Is that smoke?” Zenny asks, and I turn with some alarm to see a steady white plume coming from my oven.
“Ahhhh shit shit shit.” Zenny slides gracefully onto the sofa and I leap to rescue the pot pie, which I already know Mary Berry would declare “overdone” and our awkward discussion comes to a sudden, smoking stop.
Chapter Twelve
The pot pie is only barely burnt, and I make sure to sprinkle lots of the expensive cheese over the worst parts, and then it’s fine. I dish it out, crack open the beers, and soon Zenny and I are sitting at the small table by the window, looking out over the darkening city.
“It’s strange,” Zenny says, after blowing on a forkful of pie to cool it off. “Even though it was uncomfortable to talk like that, I feel really good right now. Like I’ve just exercised or something.”
I was very busy staring at the little creases in her lips as she put them together to blow, and it takes me a minute to answer. “I agree. I’m glad it didn’t scare you off.”
“I’m not easily scared,” Zenny says as she takes a bite, and I watch the slow slide of the fork’s tines between her lips, the flutter of her eyelashes as she savors the food.
“No, I don’t think you are,” I murmur, knowing distantly that I should stop watching her so intently, but damn, the girl’s fucking gorgeous. I think I could happily sit and watch her balance a checkbook or browse through Consumer Reports, she’s that arresting to watch.
And she’s right. The air between us feels good. Clear and charged with all the right charges.
“This bossiness,” she says.
“Yes.”
She sets down her fork and studies me, a daring glint in her gaze. “So far I’m not all that impressed by it.”
I study her back. “Is that a challenge?”
“Maybe.”
“I haven’t started yet.” I pause. “It’s not one of my finer traits, Zenny. But it’s hard for me to turn it off for people I—” I stop because a very incautious word almost slipped out, and I’m scared at how not scared I am to say it in front of her.
“—people I care about,” I say instead.
“People you care about.”
“My brothers. My mother,” I say. “My sister, when she was alive…much good that it did her,” I add with some old, tired bitterness.
“What do you mean?” Zenny asks, and she asks it without playing into my obvious self-pity. She asks like she’d ask about the weather or about who tailors my suits.
“I mean that I was over-protective and stubbornly in her business all the time. School, boyfriends, what parties she was going to and if her cell phone was fully charged and if she remembered the mugging classes I begged her to take before she came to KU. And the whole time she’d been carrying this wound, this shame, years and years of what this man had done to her, and I had no idea. I had no idea that I’d failed to protect her until it was too late.”
“So you are bossy to take care of the people you keep close,” Zenny says, “but there was a time once when—in your eyes—you failed. And you haven’t let anyone new into that circle since.”
“I—” I break off because…well, she’s not wrong, actually. The people in my life—my parents, my brothers, Elijah—they were already there before Lizzy. I suppose I haven’t let myself get close to anyone new since she killed herself because getting close would mean feeling responsible for them and taking care of them.
