AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He crosses his arms over his massive chest encased in a solid black T-shirt. It heaves with amusement that I’m positive will disappear with what I have to ask. “Spit it out, Sin. Whatever it is, it can’t be as bad as…” He looks uncomfortable, as if he’s said something he shouldn’t have.
I seize on it, remembering the anxiety he’d hidden behind his eyes, which he’s now letting me see openly for the first time. “Bad as what, Royce?”
He lowers his gaze from me to focus on his crossed arms, shaking his head. His damp hair rolls like dark waves. “I guess I better go first after all.”
He stays silent while my heart thumps so hard; I feel its beat in my toes.
“What is it, Royce?” Fear of the unknown rushes the words from my mouth faster than the speed of light. “What happened?”
My gaze shifts from the worry on his face to his arms, where his nails look embedded into his skin.
I can’t take the suspense, and I reduce myself to begging. “Please, tell me. Don’t—
He cuts me off as his words come out like sawed-off bullets. “Gene-Gene-Genesis… I… I… I’m ge-ge.” He lifts his head. After a barely discernible shudder, he swallows thickly.
Even in the dim light, I can see the huge ball of apprehension go down his throat. To make matters worse, his stutter is so thick, it takes all my faculties to understand him.
The obvious stress he is going through has me near tears and my hands grow damp with sweat with every millisecond that ticks by. “Royce… take a deep breath. Relax. I’m not going anywhere.”
With another swallow, and his speech slower than a turtle’s pace, he says, “I’m... get...ting...m...married.”
Chapter Thirteen
Lights. Camera. Action.
Royce
“I’m...get...ting...m...married.”
I struggled to keep the anxiety from my voice, and did a piss poor job. It shook and wobbled like a baby learning to walk.
Sin’s face crumples like a used tissue thrown into the trash. Tears fall from her big brown eyes and I curse myself for allowing my stutter to come back, messing up what I should have said. At least the weight is off my chest enough to where I can speak without having things get misconstrued.
“Sin… it’s my Gramps’s wish that I marry a woman he has chosen for me. When I return from Austin, it’s true that I’m supposed to get married, but I’m not.”
Sin swipes her tears away. When her full expression is visible, her face screws up and her anger bursts forth like fireworks on the Fourth of July. “What the fuck, Royce? What kind of game are you playing?”
This is not the time, Lord knows it’s not, but she looks so damn sexy in her anger I wish I was there to pound her into oblivion.
If I could bottle up the feeling she gives me when she says my name as she comes, I wouldn’t sell it. I’d hoard it like a miser, taking whiffs to shore myself up when doubts and insecurities creep in.
Like now.
“Will you listen—“
“What the hell could you possibly say to make everything alright?”
Uncrossing my arms and leaning forward, I say with all the sincerity I feel, “I love you and I’m not going to lose you.”
On the way to New York, I thought about everything I would lose if I didn’t give her up.
Not much when I compared my losses to not seeing Sin’s brow scrunch and her tongue touch the corner of her mouth as she puzzles out a problem. The way her hair spreads across my arms and over the pillow as she sleeps, and how when she wakes, her eyes don’t spring open like the rest of the human population.
No, Sin is always unique.
Her lids flutter like butterfly wings and her long eyelashes create a whirlwind on the other side of the world.
Right now, her expression of bewilderment isn’t one she’s shown me before, and the protective side of me doesn’t like that I’m the cause.
