Page 48 of Sinner’s Torment

And there he was.

My father sat in the old wooden chair beside my bed, the one that used to creak whenever he shifted his weight. The same chair he’d sat in when I was six and had the chicken pox, when I was ten and broke my arm falling out of the old oak tree in the backyard, when I was sixteen and came home drunk from a party and he’d waited up all night to make sure I was okay. He wasn’t moving now. Just sitting there, perfectly still, elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped loosely between them, watching me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. Something between concern and calculation, between love and something darker.

How long had he been there? An hour? Two? Had he been watching me sleep this entire time?

My heart kicked against my ribs, not from fear exactly, but from something close to it. Something adjacent to fear. Something that felt like the moment before a storm broke—air heavy and electric, coupled with the sense that something was coming but you couldn’t see it yet. When the birds stopped singing and the wind died down and everything held its breath.

“Dad?” My voice came out rough, sleep-thick and uncertain. Barely more than a whisper.

He didn’t answer right away. Just kept watching me with those dark, unreadable eyes that had always seen too much. Eyes that had watched me grow up, watched me make mistakes, watched me lie to him more times than I could count.

I pushed myself up slowly, the blanket sliding down to pool around my waist. The movement made my head spin slightly, and I had to pause to let the dizziness pass. My mouth was dry, my tongue thick and cottony. My head was still foggy from however many hours I’d been out. Five? Eight? I’d lost track of time completely.

“How long was I asleep?” I asked, rubbing at my eyes with the heels of my hands.

His mouth twitched—not quite a smile, but close. Something that might have been amusement or might have been sadness. “Long enough.”

The answer told me nothing and everything at once.

I looked around my room, taking in the familiar shapes in the darkness. The dresser with the chipped paint on the corner where I’d accidentally hit it with my softball bat when I was twelve. The bookshelf still holding my old paperbacks and the ceramic horse figurines I’d collected as a kid, lined up in order of size. The poster of some long-forgotten boy band I’d been obsessed with at fourteen, the edges curling away from the wall after years of humidity and neglect. The glow-in-the-dark stars still stuck to the ceiling in constellations I’d made up myself.

“Nothing’s changed,” I murmured, more to myself than to him. It was strange, really, how this room had remained frozen in time while everything else in my life had spun wildly out of control.

“Why would it?” His voice was quiet, measured, but there was something underneath it. Something that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. An undercurrent of tension that thrummed through the air between us.

I didn’t have an answer for that. Didn’t know how to explain that I’d expected everything to be different because I was different. Because the girl who’d lived in this room was gone, replaced by someone I barely recognized when I looked in the mirror.

He shifted then, sitting up straighter, leaning forward so his forearms rested on the arm of the chair. The chair creaked softly under his weight, the sound loud in the quiet room. The movement was deliberate, purposeful. The kind of movement that said we’re done with small talk now. The kind of movement that said this is where things get serious.

“Brandy,” he said, and the way he said my name—low and serious and weighted with something I couldn’t name—made my stomach drop. Like I was ten years old again and had just been caught stealing cookies before dinner. But this was worse. So much worse.

I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly tight. “What?”

“I saw the tattoo on your shoulder.”

The words landed like a punch. Like a physical blow to my solar plexus that knocked all the air from my lungs.

I froze, my breath catching in my chest. My hand instinctively moved to cover my right shoulder, even though the ink was hidden beneath my sleep shirt. Even though he’d already seen it.

The Silver Shadows ink. The club mark I’d gotten two years ago, when I’d still been stupid enough to think it meant something. When I’d still believed I was part of something bigger than myself. When I’d thought belonging to them meant I belonged somewhere, anywhere.

I looked down at my hands, twisting them together in my lap. My knuckles were white from how hard I was gripping my own fingers. “Yes.”

The single word hung in the air like an admission of guilt.

“You want to tell me how you got that tattoo?”

I shook my head slowly, my eyes burning with the threat of tears I refused to let fall. I wouldn’t cry. Not now. Not in front of him. I’d cried enough over the past five years to last a lifetime.

“Brandy.” His voice was firmer now, edged with something that might have been anger or might have been fear. I couldn’t tell. Maybe it was both. “Look at me.”

I didn’t want to. God, I didn’t want to. I wanted to disappear into the mattress, to melt into the floorboards, to be anywhere but here, having this conversation.

But I did.

I lifted my head and met his eyes, and the expression on his face made my chest ache. A physical pain that radiated outward from somewhere deep inside me. He wasn’t angry. Not yet. But he was... something. Something that looked like disappointment and worry and a kind of bone-deep exhaustion that came from carrying too many secrets for too long. Something that looked like a man who’d just realized his worst fears were true.

“How did you get that tattoo?” he asked again, slower this time. Enunciating each word carefully. Like he was giving me one more chance to answer before he stopped asking nicely. Before he started demanding.