My Beautiful Sin

by J. Kenner

  “Brandy,” I repeat, this time more softly. “What is it?”

  Her lips move, but no sound comes out. It doesn’t matter. I can discern the word from the movement of her lips and the fear in her eyes. Him.

  I reach across the table and take her hand. “Him?” I repeat? “Walt?”

  She’s shaking, and I twine my finger with hers. “He can’t hurt you,” I say. “You’re safe.”

  It’s just Brandy and me, everyone else forgotten, and so I jump about a mile when I hear Devlin’s voice, low and harsh. “Dark hair, blue shirt, nursing a Scotch?”

  Brandy swallows and nods.

  “It’s him,” Devlin says, and the words aren’t a question. “He’s the guy who—”

  “Yes.” The word is lower than a whisper, and no sooner does it pass her lips than Devlin’s chair scrapes back and he’s crossed the room. Before I can even blink, he has Walt by the collar, lifting him up so that the guy’s toes are barely brushing the ground.

  I don’t even realize that I’m out of my chair until I’m right beside them, and while the guy protests and the bartender threatens to call the cops, Devlin drags him toward the door, with Walt whimpering for help as shocked patrons stand by with their hands over their mouths or their phones out, filming it all.

  I race that direction, pushing blindly through the crowd as I try to get to Devlin. Then I see Lamar coming out of the restroom, and I shift my trajectory toward him, calling his name and pointing toward Devlin. “It’s Walt,” I say, and to his credit, Lamar assesses the situation in an instant. Brandy doesn’t talk about what happened with Walt much with either of us, but Lamar knows the basics. He’s even spent some time over the years trying to track the guy down. Trying to find justice and closure for Brandy.

  Now, I see his face harden as he flashes his badge, shouts for the bartender to call 911, then bellows for the crowd to get out of his way. It works, too. The bar’s patrons scatter, as if he were Moses parting the Red Sea.

  “Hurry,” I cry, as I catch up with him on the sidewalk. “I’ve never seen Devlin so furious.”

  “Right there with him,” Lamar says, his voice rough with emotion. “She’s sure?”

  He glances quickly over his shoulder, and I nod. “You would be, too, if you’d seen her face.”

  “Where the hell did they go?” We’re beneath the awning, and from this perspective, everything seems like a normal night. People strolling. Laughing. Talking.

  But about half a block down there’s a small crowd, and a hell of a lot more lit phones than I’d expect. I take off with Lamar right at my heels.

  “Police,” he calls as he approaches. “Police. Clear the scene. Coming through.”

  Devlin and Walt are behind a trash bin, and my first coherent thought is that Devlin looks unharmed. My second is relief that, considering the size of the bin, I doubt there will be many good pictures floating around. Only last do I consider Walt, whose face is swollen and bloody, with a split lip and one eye already swelled shut.

  “He attacked me,” Walt sputters, seeing Lamar. “This fucking cocksucker jumped me. You are going down, man,” he says to Devlin. “My dad’s gonna make your life fucking miserable.”

  “I think you’re the one going down, my man,” Lamar says, getting in close with his badge as I take Devlin’s arm and pull him off the guy. “Maybe you weren’t aware, but we don’t really have a statute of limitations on rape in California.”

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  “Well, let me tell you, then. What’s your last name?”

  “I don’t have to tell you shit,” he says, then growls as Devlin pulls his wallet from his back pocket.

  “William Alexis Tarkington,” Devlin reads, then tosses the wallet on the ground.

  Lamar snorts. “Guess that explains why I couldn’t find a record of a Walt or Walter in town that matched the description.” He clears his throat. “William Tarkington, you and I are going to have a little talk.” As if on cue, the wail of police sirens fills the air.

  “What the fuck? I didn’t do any—”

  He freezes, his eyes aimed not at Lamar or Devlin, but toward the end of the alley. I follow the direction of his gaze and see Brandy standing with Christopher beside two uniformed cops.

  “I didn’t do anything,” he says again, but with much less conviction.

  “No? Well, let’s get out of this crowd and we’ll talk about it some more.” He signals for the uniforms, who leads Walt to the car. “I’m going with them,” he says to me.

  “You’re not arresting him?”

  “Not yet.” He nods toward Brandy. “If we do, she’ll have to testify. I want to give her time to think about that. In the meantime, Walt and I will have a nice little talk. And who knows? Maybe now that I know his name, other victims will come forward.”

  I nod, then hug him. “Thank you.” I look to Devlin. “Thank you both so much.”

  Their eyes meet, but they say nothing. Lamar just shakes Devlin’s hand, then gives Brandy a quick hug and a kiss on the forehead before sliding into the car next to the cuffed Walt.

  Brandy runs to Devlin, who pulls her into a hug. “You’re going to be fine,” he says, and she nods, her sobs muffled from the way her face is pressed against his shoulder. After a moment, she pushes back. “You shouldn’t have beaten him up. He’ll probably press charges or—I don’t know—drag you through the mud. It’s going to be bad for the foundation.”

  Devlin shakes his head. “He got what he deserved. Call the cops first, and he doesn’t pay. Not the way he should.” His eyes go hard. “He still hasn’t fully paid that debt.”

  I want to argue—to tell him that isn’t the way the system works—but the words don’t seem to come. Not now, with Brandy looking at him like a hero.

  “Thank you,” she whispers again, then kisses him on the cheek.

  When she backs away, Devlin gently leads her to Christopher. “I froze,” Christopher says. “Even once I wrapped my head around who that prick was, I completely froze.” His eyes go to Devlin’s face with something akin to hero worship. “Thank you so much for standing up for her.”

  “My pleasure,” Devlin says. “You can repay the favor by helping me keep an eye on this one.” He glances sideways at me, and I manage to restrain myself from rolling my eyes.

  Christopher hesitates, probably feeling silly saying that he’ll look after me when I obviously want to shout that I can look after myself. But then he extends his hand to Devlin’s and says solemnly, “I owe you, Saint. You can absolutely count on me.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Devlin is silent on the drive back to his house. Christopher has taken Brandy back home, and Anna stayed behind to take care of the bill. Lamar, of course, had gone to the station.

  Beside me, Devlin practically vibrates with energy, but whether it’s fury, frustration, or something else altogether, I’m not sure. I stay quiet, too, though, knowing that he needs time.

  Once we’re through his front door, I can’t hold back, and as soon as he’s closed it and locked us in, I press against him, my arms going around his waist as I look up into his face. “You’re an exceptionally good man, Devlin Saint.”

  He makes a low, guttural noise. “Am I? Sometimes I’m not sure. But every once in a while, I think I do a good thing.” He takes my chin, then studies my face. “I didn’t think you would approve of my method tonight.”

  I shrug, not quite meeting his eyes. “Maybe I shouldn’t,” I admit. “Maybe we should have let Lamar handle it. Told him about Walt and then watched as he arrested the fucker.”

  He tilts his head, his eyes narrowing just slightly. “But?”

  I exhale. “But I’m not sorry.”

  He cups my cheek, his touch tender. “Because she matters to you.”

  I nod.

  “She matters to me, too. Because you love her and because she’s a good woman who doesn’t deserve the shit she’s been through.”

&nbs
p; “I know,” I tell him. “It means so much to me that you like my friends.”

  He chuckles. “I’ve liked Brandy since I was Alex.”

  “Fair enough. It means a lot to me that you like Lamar.”

  “Tolerate him,” Devlin says, but I can see amusement in his eyes and know he’s only teasing.

  He strokes my hair. “I do like Brandy, but that wasn’t the only reason I went after that guy tonight.” His hand fists in my hair, forcing me to tilt my head back and look straight at him. “I kept imagining that it could have been you.”

  There’s an unfamiliar intensity in his eyes, and I try to shrug off his words. “I’m not Brandy. I can take care of myself.”

  “You can,” he agrees. “Until the time you can’t.” He releases me, then turns away.

  I watch him pace. I’m certain that he’s thinking about the years when he wasn’t around and couldn’t watch over me. And even now, when someone is sending me harassing texts or aiming SUVs straight at me. “I’m fine,” I say gently. “The Range Rover incident was scary, sure, but you can’t be beside me every moment. And I promise to be vigilant.”

  “Sometimes vigilance isn’t enough.”

  “Devlin, I—”

  “I know you were almost gutted in New York. He had a knife. He could have sliced your throat. Or worse.”

  My blood turns to ice. “It was you. Oh, God, Devlin. It was you.”

  My legs are shaky as I walk into the living room. I feel heavy and sluggish, as if I’m pushing through the mire of those long, lost years. I settle onto his couch, then kick off my shoes and pull my knees up and hug them to my chest. “I looked right at you—at that larger than life man who’d rescued me—and I didn’t even recognize you.”

  He sits on the table opposite me, then leans forward and presses his hand against my bare foot. “I didn’t want you to.”

  “How often did you watch me?” We’ve talked about this a little, already. About how he kept an eye on me over the years. At first I’d been angry, because I’d been so alone, with no idea where he’d gone. But that anger faded to sadness and even a bit of sympathy. Because I’d been blissfully ignorant, whereas Devlin knew where I was and what I was doing. He knew if I was safe or in danger.

  And yet he couldn’t speak to me. Not if he wanted to keep me safe.

  Not if he wanted to keep his secret.

  “You shouldn’t have done anything,” I say now. “I might have recognized you. Someone else might have recognized me, then put it all together and figured out you used to be Alex.”

  He shrugs. “You’re right. But do you really think I could stand by and watch you getting hurt and not do anything?”

  I’d been looking down at my hands, but now I lift my head and meet his eyes. “You left, didn’t you?”

  “Ellie…”

  I draw in a breath. “I know. I get it. I do.” I mean the words, too. But that doesn’t change the fact that I wish things could have been different. At the very least, I wish we could get back the ten years we lost.

  We’ve talked about this before, too. What I do—or what I did before Devlin came into my life. The way I chased danger. But I was always in control. Like the guy with the BMW my first night in Laguna Cortez. That was me calling the shots.

  At least, it was until Devlin showed up.

  Until I came to Laguna Cortez, I took what I wanted. It was my game. My way of telling fate or death or whatever to go fuck herself.

  “You wanted the thrill,” Devlin says, understanding me well enough to know where my thoughts have gone. “You wanted the danger.”

  “Always,” I say, and I hear the defiance in my voice.

  “But you didn’t really want to die.”

  I pull my hands free and hug myself. “Didn’t I?” It’s a real question, because I’m not sure I know anymore. I don’t want to die now; of that much, I’m certain. But back then? When I was all alone? When everyone I’d ever loved was either dead in the ground or dead to me?

  “Not everyone,” Devlin says after I tell him as much. “You had Brandy. Lamar. You were alone in New York, maybe, but you weren’t alone.”

  “It was still too much,” I say. “It was all too much. I remember going to the museums in Manhattan or the zoo and thinking that my mom would never see it. I remembered how much my tough cop father had loved opera. But he never went to The Met. And Peter—he’d been before, and he used to tell me that we’d go. That he’d show me all the cool places tourists don’t see. But that wasn’t going to happen, either.”

  “No,” Devlin agrees. “It wasn’t.”

  “So how the fuck can you know what I wanted back then? I was alone and lonely. I spent my days in a haze, and the only respite was school and the magazine and the nights I went out.”

  I’d been wilder in New York than I had been in California. Working as a cop had calmed the beast that lived inside me somewhat, but once I was in Manhattan, I was alone with no bad guys to chase. I was living in an incredible town, pursuing a life I truly believed I would love. I went home to a small but decent apartment, courtesy of Uncle Peter’s financial planning.

  On the surface, I had a good life. But my family was dead.

  And, yeah, I thought I wanted to be, too.

  “You didn’t,” Devlin says after I make that horrible admission aloud. “You wanted the danger, sure. But you wanted to win. You wanted to tell death to go fuck itself.”

  “That’s now,” I say. “Back then…” I trail off with a shrug. “I don’t think so.”

  “I do.”

  I frown as his hand tightens on my leg as if he’s using the connection as a buffer against an emotion too tense to go unchecked.

  “I watched you, remember? You craved the danger. Survivor’s guilt, right? And God knows I knew where that came from,” he says. “But you never completely crossed the line. You never surrendered to the worst that would come. Never truly craved being powerless. You wanted to get close and say fuck you. But you never craved being a victim. That wasn’t what you were about. Getting knifed? Maybe getting raped? Not even close to being on your agenda.”

  I swallow. “How can you be so sure?”

  “I told you. I know you. And I watched you.”

  “Devlin…”

  He draws in a loud breath. “That night—in an alley in Manhattan—I watched you fight for your life. I saw the terror in your eyes before you ran and I—”

  “What?”

  “I killed him, El.”

  I wait for the reaction. The protest to rise to my lips. The horror that he’d taken somebody’s life.

  But there’s none. Only a hint of relief.

  His forehead furrows. “You didn’t know?”

  I shake my head. “I wasn’t working at the magazine that week. Meetings at school with our advisors. So I wasn’t reading the news. Just working on school stuff.”

  That’s a lie. Or almost a lie. The truth is that I always read the news, no matter how busy I was. But that week I hadn’t. And now I’m certain it’s because I knew what I would have found, and I didn’t want to feel obligated to tell the police anything.

  “The guy deserved to be dead,” Devlin says. “And you were fine with his killer walking free.”

  “Stop reading my mind.”

  His lips twitch. “I’m not. I just know you.”

  I make a derisive noise, but I can’t argue. He definitely gets me. He’s the only person who has ever understood me so completely.

  “You don’t know everything,” I tell him. “You don’t know why I hooked up with him. Max,” I add. “That was his name.”

  “Tell me.”

  I draw in a breath, then tell him a truth I haven’t thought about in over five years. “It was because of you.”

  His hand tightens on my knee. “Alex, you mean.”

  He makes the words a statement, but I shake my head. “No. Devlin Saint. A billionaire philanthropist who’d just burst onto the scene.”

  I shift on the
couch, tucking my feet under me and taking one of his hands in mine. I stroke his thumb as I talk, my attention on his perfectly manicured thumbnail instead of his face. “I probably wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t been in New York for some event with Carrie as your date. But I saw a picture of you two, and so I read the article. Do you remember what you announced while you were in town?”

  “Of course. We’d just selected the site for the Foundation.”

  “That’s what really caught my eye. Because it was our place. Mine and Alex’s.”

  He makes a small noise in his throat. “The lot. Of course I built on that rundown old lot. Where else?” He lifts our joined hands and kisses my fingers. “Do you know what I did after they poured the foundation?”

  I shake my head.

  “I used a nail and wrote El and Alex’s place in the cement. It’s hidden under the reception area tiles now, of course, but I wanted it to still be there, even though the original chalk words you’d written had long since washed away.”

  It’s only when his face becomes blurry that I realize I’m crying. I brusquely wipe the tears away, then manage a smile. “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  I nod. Now that I know how much our parting wrecked him, too, I do believe it.

  “Go on,” he says. “You paid attention to me in New York because I was prick enough to steal the lot you and Alex had christened.”

  “And one of my friends,” I add. “Carrie was with you. Although to be honest, we weren’t ever that close, and we’d lost touch years before. Still, she was a connection. I’d left Laguna Cortez behind, and then there it was, all in my face again.”

  “So you went out that night, planning to say fuck you to the past.”

  “Pretty much.” I let the memory play out in my mind. I’d started first at bars, then moved to some of the more hardcore dance clubs. The underground kind with a seedier clientele. The kind you have to know someone in order to learn those hidden clubs even exist.

  I hadn’t known anyone. Not really. But you pick a guy up at a bar, and he’ll tell you a few things. Maybe even take you somewhere to loosen you up before taking you home.