Page 20 of Sin (Salvation #1)
Sin
Two Months Later
Each minute feels like an hour. My mouth is dry, and my palms are sweaty. I don’t remember that ever happening before. I’m a hot box full of emotions on any given day, but nervous isn’t usually one of them.
I take a swig from my Stanley and surreptitiously dry my palms on my jeans, but it doesn’t help. So I start tapping my foot impatiently. The woman who’s reading her Kindle next to me looks up and gives an irritated sigh.
I start tapping louder, and this time with a flamenco beat. She eventually stands up, giving me a dirty look, and goes inside.
That does help.
Finally, after what seems like hours, Betty Jo pulls up to the curb, and I hold my breath.
It shouldn’t matter so much. It’s just a driver’s test, but it’s also that I want Cassidy to succeed in all the things that are important to him.
For someone who excels at learning and tests, he’s been super stressed over his driver’s exam.
He’s walked around for weeks with a manual in his hand, practically memorizing the whole damned thing.
I keep telling him he’ll ace it, and it’s true. He’s a good driver. A little too cautious and law-abiding for my tastes, and he struggles with parallel parking, but hell, that’s why they invented valet service.
For some reason, he gets super flustered when I tell him that and begins studying more.
The driver’s side door opens, and Cassidy jumps out of it.
I don’t need the thumbs up he flashes to tell me that he passed his driver’s test. Not only is he smiling, but his eyes glow with a wildness that appears only when he’s truly happy.
Or when he pleasures himself in front of his open window at night.
They’re the few moments when he forgets to be the cautious, well-behaved boy he had to be after his father died.
I want to see that look in his eyes all the time. I want to be the one who puts it there.
“I did it!” he calls out to me.
I let out a whoop and give him a victory salute, then rush over to him.
Every part of me has to fight the urge to wrap him up in my arms and kiss him. I hate fucking self-control, so I compromise with myself and give him a bear hug.
“I told you, you’d fucking nail it,” I say, after reluctantly releasing him.
You’re right.” He grins. “I fucking nailed it. Even the parallel parking.”
“‘Cause you’re a bad ass.”
“I need a t-shirt. So everyone can know, and you can’t ever forget.”
“No chance of that,” I say, planning on ordering a t-shirt and having it delivered immediately.
“Come on, I have to go inside to get my official picture taken, and then they’ll give me a temporary paper ID.”
“Great. More waiting.” I huff out but follow him inside.
Another half hour later, he emerges from the line, folding a little piece of paper and putting it in his wallet along with his new, temporary driver’s license. “What’s that?” I ask.
“It’s a form I need to fill out and send in to get my voter registration.” Excitement fills his eyes, even more than when he was talking about getting ice cream. “In three weeks, I’ll be legal to vote.”
Three weeks until his birthday? That can’t be right.
I glance at the date on my watch. Fuck.
How can the date that I’ve been focused on for the last three years be so close and me not realize it? What in the hell have I been doing?
Driving Cassidy to and from school and teaching him how to drive.
Getting in water fights with him and taking joy rides in Betty Jo.
Going on fake tutoring sessions, that Mercer was right, were really poorly disguised dates, and then walking him to the door and dropping light, but life-changing kisses on his lips.
Then, walking to the back of the house and watching Cassidy as he touches himself while he fully knows I’m there watching from the shadows.
That all ends on his birthday. It has to.
In three weeks, Cassidy will be free of his legal chains to my father.
He needs to be free from me too. I’m his stepbrother.
I’m also my father’s son. Gideon’s tainted blood runs through me, my heart so full of hate and revenge, I’m willing to do anything to see my father burn.
With Cassidy eighteen and no longer under my father’s legal thumb, I can finally turn in the evidence I’ve collected against him, proving what he did to my mother.
I will have revenge.
Cassidy deserves better than someone consumed by hatred. He is good and sweet and brilliant. I refuse to ruin him.
I know he won’t want to leave. Getting away from my father and distancing himself from the disappointment of being around his mother causes him will be easy choices, but I know he won’t want to leave me.
After the first night I watched Cassidy in his window, I recognized what I’d been hiding from myself for a very long time.
Cassidy wants me. Cares for me. Now that I let myself see them, the clues are obvious.
The way his eyes trail over my body, the blushes whenever I’m near.
His smile whenever I walk into a room. I revel in them.
I’m addicted to them. I’m going to have to kill them.
“We’re still going right?”
“What?” I ask, realizing Cassidy had been carrying on the conversation the whole time.
“We’re still going to Freedom Fest in Lexington, right?” He asks, his face hopeful, and at the same time scared, his life teaching him not to count on anything. “You said if I passed my driver’s test, you’d take me to my first concert.”
Fuck. Freedom Fest falls on his birthday . I really was burying everything that pointed to my time with him coming to an end.
“Yeah, we’re definitely going. I got us VIP passes.”
Cassidy looks at me like I hung the moon. Maybe it’s wrong, but I can’t help wanting that for a little longer. “I also booked a suite near the festival.”
At that, he blushes and suddenly looks nervous. “Is that okay?” I ask. “It’s on the top floor and over two thousand square feet. There should be plenty of room for the two of us.”
“No, that’s fine,” Cassidy says, his voice squeaking. He reaches out and places his hand on my arm. “It’s gonna be the best night of my life.”
I try to smile back at him, knowing it’s going to be one of the worst nights of mine.