by Sam Mariano
Oh, God.
“I realize how this sounds,” he says, glancing at me again.
“I’m still listening,” I assure him.
He nods, dropping the wedding band on the blanket and looking at it. “Eventually, it got almost normal. Time passed. Her love didn’t come back, she didn’t even like me anymore, but the baby was growing in her belly and she was changing. I won’t lie, I was pretty excited to be a father, regardless of how it all went down. The baby would still be half her, even if it wouldn’t be half me. And then she was born. Ellie. My sunshine.”
He looks sadder now than he ever has in my presence, and I can’t help leaning over and wrapping my arms around him. Before, I needed a hug, but now I sense he needs one.
“She was perfect. As soon as I saw her little face…” Sin stops, shaking his head and clearing his throat. “She was mine. It didn’t matter if she wasn’t really mine, that was my daughter, and I loved her. More than anything. Once Ellie came, everything changed. I took care of her every minute I was home. I’m the one who put her to bed every night. We finally felt like a normal family—maybe not the happiest family, but hell, every marriage has its rough patches.”
I lift my eyebrows, not entirely sure his situation falls under “rough patch,” but sure, I guess we’ll go with that.
“Paula was less hostile because she had a baby to love on, and I think seeing how much I loved Ellie finally softened her toward me a little. I could have still been an asshole to her about what she did, but I wasn’t. I just wanted to give Ellie a happy life, I didn’t want to fight over shit that couldn’t be changed. I had this idea that maybe being a family would make her fall back in love with me. That didn’t happen, but she did grow to tolerate me. By that time, I wasn’t forcing her to stay anymore, she just… stayed.”
Now he pauses to sigh and drag his hands over his face in such a way that it’s impossible not to feel dread. A knot of it forms in my stomach, because I have a bad feeling I know where this is going, and while it’s certainly not a dealbreaker, it is going to stress me out. If Paula left him and took that baby with her, I am going to have to accept that even if Sin is mine now, there will be a part of his heart out there in the world that I will never be able to touch. What if she came back? What would happen to us then?
Moving his body, he looks back toward the tattoo on his back. “Ellie’s favorite song was You Are My Sunshine, so I got this one for her.”
I examine the tattoo, running my finger over the symbol in the center of the sun. “Why is this in the middle?”
“It’s a trinity knot.”
“Like, the Holy Trinity? I thought you weren’t religious.”
He shakes his head. “That’s not what it meant for me. It was three separate entities knotted together. It represented our family to me. Me, Paula, and Ellie. Bound to each other. It was an unbreakable bond.”
At least, to him it was an unbreakable bond.
“So, anyway, we made it through Ellie’s first year. Threw her a big birthday party in the backyard. Things were finally good again—not perfect, but good. When Ellie was opening her presents—she had a ton of presents, just so much stuff—we lost track of who some of them were from. Some had arrived in the mail that week from out of town. She got bored of opening them before she finished anyway, so I helped her. One of the unmarked boxes had three little coffins in it, nothing else.”
Dread sinks into my gut again, but before I have time to let my imagination run wild, he starts talking again.
“About a month later I came home late from work one night and the house was dark. It was late enough that it was dark outside, but not so late that Paula should have been in bed. Her car was in the driveway, so she had to be home. The house should not have been dark. A sick feeling came over me. I knew something wasn’t right.”
“Oh, God,” I murmur, covering my face with my hands.
“When I opened the door, I was hit by the smell. It wasn’t a sickening stench, but it smelled off. The house was hot. The air had been turned off, and Paula never turned the air off. She liked it cold. The heat was why it already smelled, though. Someone wanted the house to smell when I walked in. They wanted me to know what I was going to find before I found it. I turned on the light and walked up the stairs, and right at the top, lying face-down on the hardwood floor… Paula. Her eyes were open. Cloudy. She was lying in a pool of her own blood. She’d been brutalized before they killed her.”
“Oh, Sin…” I have no idea what to say, and I’m terrified to hear the rest. Terrified.
“I ran upstairs. Paula had obviously been dead for hours, but I didn’t know… I didn’t know if Ellie was okay, or if they took her. Then I opened her bedroom door…” He stops, bowing his head and massaging his temples. “They killed her, too.”
I’m sick to my stomach, tears burning behind my eyes. I need air, I need to get away from this horror, but I can’t. He needs to finish.
“I lost my fucking mind. They left their calling card in her room for me to find. I guess they didn’t know Ellie wasn’t mine. It probably made more sense to them to think she was—that after Paula cheated, she stayed with me because she was pregnant.” Shaking his head, he says, “Anyway, it was retaliation. Paula and Ellie were dead because I killed the asshole she cheated with. At first I thought they only left me alive because I wasn’t home—the three coffins—but it didn’t take long before I realized what they did to me was worse than death. They took everything I loved and made me survive it.” He shakes his head, looking down. “I had to have retribution, but I couldn’t take them on myself. I took it to the Morellis. Rafe helped, he convinced Ben we could squash them. We did. We took them all out. I got my revenge. Didn’t matter though. Didn’t bring my family back.”
I can’t hold back tears any longer. Burying myself in his side, I wrap my arms around him and hug him. “I’m so sorry, Sin. I don’t… I have no words.”
He pushes my hair back over my shoulder, tips my head up so I’m looking at him, and shakes his head as he brushes away my tears. “Don’t cry for me. It was my fault.”
“No, it was not. If it was anyone’s fault, it was Paula’s. She was your wife. She didn’t have to cheat.”
“And I didn’t have to kill the bastard,” he reasons. “But I did.”
37
Laurel
The idea of him taking responsibility for this atrocity, carrying that on his shoulders for all these years, hurts my heart. He said he hasn’t kissed anyone in a long time—did he mean since Paula? Did he ever move on from this, or did he just stop living when they died? Maybe if he blames himself, he thinks he deserves that.
“Sin, you can’t blame yourself. What happened was not your fault.”
“My actions had consequences. Her actions had consequences. Before that, our inaction had consequences. We both knew we weren’t happy, but we didn’t fix it. It was a chain of consequences, it wasn’t just one thing, but mine is the transgression that resulted in their deaths. Mine.”
I shake my head, climbing on his lap and wrapping myself around him. “I’m so sorry that happened to you. That’s horrifying. I literally don’t know what to say. That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard. It literally breaks my heart that you had to go through that, especially alone. I wish I had known you then. I wish I could have been there for you.”
“You were a kid,” he points out. “That would’ve been weird.”
“I don’t care,” I mutter. “I could have still been a shoulder to cry on.”
“I would not have cried on your 15-year-old shoulder.”
All I want to do is comfort him, and I can’t find the words to do it. Instead, I press tender kisses along his jawline, caressing the other side of his face with my free hand. I want to wrap him up in my love and protect him from the pain of his past. I want to rewind to the times I may have said unknowingly hurtful things and shove all the words back inside my mouth.
There’s one in particular I need to
take back. Leaning back just enough to meet his gaze, I tell him, “You’re not a monster. I’m so sorry I said that to you. I didn’t know… but I shouldn’t have said it anyway. My feelings were just hurt, and—”
Sin cuts me off with his finger against my lips, shaking his head at me. “You don’t have to apologize. I was a dick. I deserved your wrath.” Running his fingers through my hair and regarding me curiously, he says, “This is not the response I expected to that story.”
“What did you expect?” I ask. “For me to run away from your house screaming?”
“I don’t know, less affection, more caution. I just told you I cuffed my wife to the wall and made her watch me bludgeon her lover to death.”
“In your defense, she shouldn’t have had a lover for you to bludgeon to death,” I point out.
He stares at me. “Laurel.”
Sighing, I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know what to tell you. I know who you are, Sin. I know the violence you’re capable of. I didn’t expect you to be a big loving teddy bear 100% of the time.”
Cocking an eyebrow, he says, “I hope your expectation there is closer to 0% of the time, because if not, it’s wrong.”
I want to crack a smile, but I can’t. I’m still too sad from his story, and the fact that he’s been suffering over it for so long. “I mean, it’s not a nice story, but… it’s yours. I would never make the decisions she made, so it isn’t relevant to me. I would never put either one of us in that situation to begin with.”
“Some people considered it an overreaction,” he tells me.
I shrug. “I’m not your judge and jury. I’m not here to tell you what’s right or wrong. You responded emotionally to someone ripping your heart out. I would too. I mean, I’d probably just slash tires instead of actually killing someone, but we’re different people. It’s weird, but that’s your life. I get that. I sort of joked about wanting to kill Marlena when I thought you were hooking up with her, and you weren’t even mine, as you pointed out. I can only imagine how crazy I would feel in your circumstances. But I would never put you in that position. Not ever.”
His arms are wrapped around me, his hands caressing my lower back as I talk. Now that I’m done, he warns me, “This part won’t last forever. The fascination. The excitement. You won’t always feel addicted to me.”
“I’m not sure about that,” I tell him, resting my arms on his shoulders. “You’re pretty addictive. I trust Paula’s choice in shoes, but not men—not if she had you and she went looking elsewhere. Maybe it was her. Maybe she needed a lot of male attention. I don’t. I’m happy to just have yours.”
“Or maybe you just want to blame her and let me off the hook,” he suggests.
“It’s possible,” I admit, leaning forward and catching his lower lip between mine, sucking on it then releasing it and kissing the corner of his mouth. “Either way, this hasn’t changed anything for me, so if this is what you were waiting for... We’re good.”
“You’re sure?” he asks.
I nod my head. “Super sure. I was worried for a minute that story was heading in a different direction that would have made me more nervous, but as you told it, nothing I can’t live with.”
“Where were you afraid it was going?” he inquires.
Grimacing, I tell him, “I can’t tell you that now. I don’t want to offend you.”
Drawing me close until my breasts are crushed against his chest, he demands, “Tell me.”
I sigh, but as his hand moves up my back and his eyes bore into mine, insistent, demanding, I relent. It’s too hard to deny him. “Don’t be mad. When you were talking about how she had cheated and you went into a rage fog, I thought maybe… you might have killed her.”
That’s not exactly a nice thing to say to someone, but he doesn’t get mad. “Makes sense. Definitely didn’t do that, but I can see how you’d get there.”
Reaching back and grabbing his wedding ring, I move it to the end table so it doesn’t get lost. I’m not entirely sure where we’re supposed to go from here, what should follow a story like that one. When I look around this empty house now, it looks a little bit different. I wonder what it looked like when he had a wife, a family, a whole life. I wonder if the sparseness now is intentional, if in some quiet corner of his mind he feels he deserves the emptiness.
He doesn’t deserve emptiness. This may be the man who kidnapped me, but this is also a man capable of loving women who fuck everything up, fathering babies that aren’t his. He’s incredible, and I don’t care how fucked up his moral compass is. I’m not here to play morality police. I got knocked up by a mob boss during a one night stand, for fuck’s sake. So Sin murdered the dickhead who had sex with his wife—that’s not so crazy, given what he does for work. That dumbass should have known better than to fuck with Sin.
There is nothing in his past I’m interested in holding against him. I want his present, I want his future. I want to fill the empty rooms in this house once more; I want to creep down the hall and stand in the doorway, spying on him while he puts my baby to bed in its crib.
My heart aches with how much I want all that.
I can’t believe he thought I would greet any of this with anything less than tenderness and sympathy.
I catch his ruggedly handsome face between my hands again and just look at him. I admire the perfect amount of stubble dusting his strong jaw, his soft lips, his gorgeous eyes. I rub my cheek against his to feel the scratch, then—because I can now—I brush my lips against his.
When I pull back I catch his big hand in my smaller one and drag it down, placing his palm over my abdomen. “I know it’s messy, and I know it would be nicer if you were the baby’s actual father, but… this one needs a daddy.”
He smiles, catching the back of my neck and tugging me in for a kiss. After a few soft kisses he murmurs, “Oh yeah?”
“Mm hmm,” I murmur, resting my forehead against his. “And if your help the night I had Skylar was your tryout for the position, I have to tell you, you’re a shoo-in.”
“A shoo-in?” he repeats. “That implies I have competition. Didn’t you hear that story I just told? I’m not a big fan of competition.”
“Nah, just Rafe, and I wouldn’t consider him competition. I think he’ll be more of a fun uncle than dad material. Babies just aren’t his jam.”
“His loss,” Sin tells me, rubbing my still-flat belly.
“I’m not sad about it,” I assure him. “Can I stay here now, or do I have to go back there?”
Sighing, Sin says, “You’ll have to go back to his house tonight. As long as everything goes according to plan, this is the last time though. Tomorrow you’ll be coming home with me to stay.”
“I like that a lot. I would like it better if I didn’t have to go back, though. I don’t want to sleep next to him another night, I’d rather be here with you.”
“Trust me, I would like that better, too,” he assures me. “It’s just one more night.”
The day slips away faster than I want it to. Sin and I spend most of the time in bed talking and cuddling. He drifts off at one point and I let him sleep, figuring he probably needs it. I’m content to lie in his arms, listening to the beat of his heart, the steady sound of his breathing.
He hasn’t told me what the plan is, but it’s impossible not to worry about it. Before, he said we couldn’t be together, and now he says we will be starting tomorrow, so what changed?
I know there is probably nothing I can do about it and worrying won’t help, so I try not to. I think about the nights I stayed here with him before and look forward to the nights we’ll have after tomorrow. It’s crazy that we have spent so few nights together. I’ve spent many more nights with guys I liked much less, but Sin is in a class of his own. I’ve never known anyone like him in all my life, and I know I never will again. He’s one of a kind.
I don’t know what my sister is going to say about this though. Actually, I think I do, and that’s the problem. When I tell her I�
��m going to move to Las Vegas to be with a man she has never even heard of—and no, not because he knocked me up, he works for the guy who knocked me up—she is going to have a freaking heart attack.
Maybe I should take a picture of Sin’s super sexy body to show her and help her understand. She’s always joking that Vince gets away with more because of his six-pack, and Sin is way hotter than Vince. Or, I guess I should think that, given Vince is my brother-in-law.
But also, no, he just really is. No one is hotter than Sin. I know I’m biased, but I’m also pretty confident in this assertion.
Once I show her all he’s got going on, I can add in the stuff that matters—when Rafe failed to impress, Sin stepped up and wanted to parent this baby with me, even though it’s not his responsibility. He’s so protective of me that he would literally kill anyone who tried to hurt me. Hell, I can even sell him as a gentleman, since we haven’t had sex yet. He’s waiting for me—even though I definitely don’t want to wait. I won’t tell her that, because then she’ll get all suspicious about his issues, and those are none of her business.
I will definitely leave out the fine details of that situation, but a widower who lost his family? She should feel softer toward him after hearing that.
Yeah, I can totally make her like Sin. Hopefully they don’t discuss any of the many things she would hate about him. Maybe I can prepare him before her visit. Then again, what can I say? Don’t be yourself? Can’t ask that. I doubt he would, anyway. He may protect me, but he’s no pussycat; he’s going to do whatever he damn well pleases. My sexy, stubborn caveman. I don’t know what I’m gonna do with him. Maybe I can introduce Carly from a distance and just have her wave at him, then hurry her out to go baby shopping.