Page 59 of Craving Sin

I’m going to die this morning, and the killer I’ve fallen in love with is the one who’s going to do it.

I pull to a stop, my feet stuck in quicksand.

“What’s wrong?” Rian asks.

The man I love is a killer.

I love Rian.

How can that be true? How can I feel that way about a man who does the things he does? Knowing he will kill me?

“Abbott? What’s wrong?”

“You’re going to kill me,” I say, as though this is news to me. But it’s not. We’re out here…and I’m somehow in love with him.

I don’t know how to make sense of that, don’t know if it’s possible, or honestly, under the circumstances, why it matters.

“Yes,” he answers simply, and I don’t know if I wish I could see him or not. Which is better—looking into his eyes and acknowledging how I feel about him, despite what he does, or keeping this layer of distance between us?

“Kneel,” he says, voice soft and broken.

“Fuck you,” I tell him. “Fuck us both,” and then I simply…do as he says, kneeling there in the dirt.

Tears fill my eyes behind the blindfold, but I refuse to cry so he can hear me. How can he go through with this? Doesn’t he know that I couldn’t hurt him? That I could never hurt his son?

I know what it’s like not to be loved by your father, and I would never do anything to force a wedge in Rian’s relationship with him. It’s partially because of that relationship that I’m able to feel the way I do about him.

My heart thumps in my ear, this loud, drumming sound that blocks out the noise of the forest around us.

I wait for it to happen, wait for him to say something, try to remember what it was like to be touched by him, to make him laugh, to have him share stories about his family, his son…the ways he tried to take care of me.

What it felt like to have him inside of me—filling me. Making me smell like him.

“Do it,” I say, but he doesn’t respond.

Why isn’t he doing it?

I wait as my mouth goes dry, as my racing heart slows, as the blindfold around my eyes is wet.

“Rian?” I say, but he doesn’t respond.

I lift my hand to the blindfold, tug it down, and I see trees, leaves, sticks, brush…on and on and on, but not Rian.

“Rian,” I say one last time, but there is no use.

He’s gone, and I’m alone again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Abbott

It takes me longer than it should have, probably longer than it took Rian, to find my way back to the house. The moment I burst inside, I call out, “Rian?” But I know from the feel of the place, how quiet and empty it feels, that he’s gone.

Rian is letting me go.

Knowing I could turn him in, that I’ve seen Conan and know stories about Cillian and the others. He left me here, in this space, that I know meant so much to him, because it’s where he, Cillian, and Moira spent time—where he came after Moira died.

I could have the cops out here, could invade this place he loved, the place he brought me, and it would be the first step in ruining him, in ruining his whole family. Yet he let me go.