Page 5 of Sin (Salvation #1)

Cassidy

Gideon’s service is finally over, and I sneak off to make my escape. I’m worn out and feel the need for a shower to wash away the last two hours of Gideon’s rantings. I’m not sure I can do this every Sunday.

I’m not officially out yet, but this isn’t a safe space for me or anyone else who wants to live their truth. Sin somehow manages to flaunt Gideon’s rules and embody everything he preaches against, but he’s bold, rich, and can leave any time he wants.

I have less than two hundred dollars in my bank account and no place to go if Gideon and my mother kick me out. I promise myself I’ll pick up as many tutoring gigs as I can manage this semester so I can save up to move out and sever my association with anything to do with the Citadel.

Except for Sin. I don’t know if there’s any severing of the connection I feel to him.

Speaking of Sin, I’m not sure where he disappeared to.

In the middle of the service, he stood up and strolled out the door, seemingly uncaring of his father’s glare from the pulpit, or the fact that every eye both inside the Citadel and the ones watching on their televisions and computers watched him as he left.

I’m just about to reluctantly ask my mother for a ride back to the house when I spot Sin outside.

He’s leaning against the wall of the church, looking like a model with his cool and distant stare, Berluti sunglasses hiding his eyes. “Need a ride?” he asks, his voice flat.

“If you’re going back home, I’d appreciate it,” I answer gratefully, not wanting to be stranded here with Gideon and my mother.

He doesn’t say anything, just pushes himself off the wall and takes off for the car, which is still parked in front of the main church entrance.

I follow after him, and once when we’re both in the car, I turn to him. “Is everything all right?”

He doesn’t answer, just blasts his music and peels off, racing through the twisty private road that leads back home.

I try to yell over the music a couple of times, but he just looks straight ahead, jaw clenched.

I finally give up and spend the rest of the journey going over the whole day from the moment I woke up to now, trying to figure out what happened to make him go so cold toward me.

Isn’t that what always happens, a cynical voice in my head whispers to me . He draws you in and then shoves you away.

He pulls into the garage, a huge structure that houses both Gideon’s and Sin’s collections of expensive cars, and slides into his parking space.

I release my seatbelt and start to open the door so I can put some distance between us.

I don’t want Sin to see how much he hurt me—again.

I click the door release, but just as I do, he hits a button locking me in.

My head swivels toward him. His expression is blank, and he’s still wearing those damned sunglasses. “Let me out,” I shout over the music.

He pushes another button, and suddenly the car is silent. “Let me out,” I repeat.

He turns to me. “You and I need to have a little conversation first.”

I throw my hands up in exasperation. “I tried talking to you the whole way here.”

He doesn’t acknowledge my frustration. He just stares at me through his sunglasses and begins speaking. “You came home. You saw your mother. Now it’s time for you to leave.”

“Leave?” I repeat, his words creating a sick kind of déjà vu of three years ago. “Your father already hijacked me from Belmore and enrolled me at Thurston. I can’t go back to Massachusetts. It was a super-competitive program. I’m sure they’ve already filled the opening.”

“I don’t mean go back to Massachusetts,” he corrects me. “I want you to disappear.”

“Disappear?”

He nods. “I’ll have a car here for you tonight to take you to the airport. From there, you can get a ticket to wherever the fuck you want as long as you go no contact with our parents or with anyone you know until after your birthday.”

“I don’t have enough money for bus fare, let alone a plane ticket.”

Sin reaches behind him and pulls out his phone from his back pocket. “I created a Venmo account for you earlier.”

“I don’t need one of those.” It’s true, I don’t have enough money to need an app like that.

“You do now.” He turns his phone around. On the screen is his Venmo account, and it’s authorizing a transfer to me for sixty thousand dollars. He holds it out to me. “All you have to do is hit send.”

I just stare at his phone screen and all those zeros.

“That’s just to tide you over until you turn eighteen. After that, I’ll pay for you to go to college and then med school, wherever in the fuck you want to go. All expenses paid.”

The enormity of what he is offering me is huge.

I’ve always known that realizing my dream to be a medical scientist will come with a hefty load of financial debt that I’ll have to carry through most of my life, because research is not one of the more lucrative medical fields.

That’s not what hits me the most about his offer, though.

“You hate me bad enough that you’re willing to bribe me to go away?” I ask in a voice that holds competing amounts of incredulity and pain.

“You need to be gone from here,” is all he says.

Gone from being anywhere near him. Gone from his life for as good as forever.

I sit there looking at the screen for a long time. At all that money. Then, slowly, I extend my hand out, palm up, and he slaps his phone on it.

“Did you know I was born in Chicago and lived there with my dad until he died?” I ask.

“I did know that,” he says.

I nod my head as I type information into his phone. “Then you probably also know that Mom lived in Lexington, Kentucky, and I only spent a few weeks out of the year with her, sometimes not even that if she was busy.”

He shuffles in his seat. “I don’t see what this has to do with anything.”

I look up at him. “Oh, trust me, it has a lot to do with everything,” I assure him, then resume my typing. “Keep listening.”

Probably realizing he’s not going to get what he wants until he gives in and lets me finish my little monologue, he rests back in his seat and motions for me to continue.

“Anyway. Right after the funeral, I get in my mom’s car thinking we’re going back to my dad’s house. It wasn’t until my mom got on the highway and I tell her she’s going the wrong way, that she informs me we aren’t going back to Dad’s place. That we were going to Lexington.”

I take a deep breath. Even though that day was more than five years ago, I can still feel how lost and alone I felt when I learned I’d never go back to the only place I’d ever called home.

“I didn’t get to go through my dad’s stuff and keep anything to remember him by. I didn’t get to say goodbye to my friends I’d known since I was in kindergarten, or to Buffy, my calico cat, who mom took to the shelter because she said she was allergic to pet dander.”

“Cassi—”

I don’t let him stop me. I just barrel on with my story.

I’m not sure I could stop even if I wanted to; I’ve kept it in for so long.

“I hated Lexington. It was a total culture shock from Chicago, and the kids there liked to bully the northerner with the thrift-store clothes who liked to read way too much and always had to carry an inhaler around with him.

It was really bad, but I just kept telling myself I was lucky that my mom came for me.

That she might as easily have abandoned me the way she did my cat.

Then, like eight months later, she and a man I’d never met pick me up from school in a chauffeured limousine, and I’m told to sit up front with the driver while they ride in the back all the way to Nashville.

That time, I didn’t even get a suitcase packed up for me, but I tried to make the best of it.

I tried to make her happy and fit into a whole new, strange life again.

” I look up from his phone and twist toward him. “You know what, though?” I ask.

“What?” Sin asks carefully, maybe knowing how close to breaking I am.

“This time, my whole world turning upside down wasn’t so bad.

Sure, no matter how hard I tried, Mom didn’t seem to care about me very much.

Your father was distant and mean, the house with all its long halls and hidden alcoves was super creepy, but I started to think that I was lucky because—” I pause and take another deep breath, readying myself for the truth I’m about to admit to him.

“Because why?” he demands.

“Because I had you, Sin.” I give up and stop fighting the emotions that threaten to choke me. “Because you were in my life.”

Across the console from me, Sin tenses. I wish he weren’t wearing his sunglasses so I could see his reaction.

“I felt a connection to you right away. Sad thing is,” I give a chuckle that sounds too much like a sob, “I thought you felt connected to me, too. Even though you were older and way cooler than me, you hung out with me and didn’t mind me tagging along with you all summer while our parents were on their honeymoon.

You even took care of me when I had my asthma attacks.

I thought we were close, and I hadn’t felt close to anyone since my dad died. ”

Sin takes in my words, his body completely still except for the steady tap of his hand on the steering wheel.

“But then, when they came back, you made your father send me away to Bellmore. I blamed myself for screwing things up with my new stepbrother. I was too needy. I followed you around too much. I shouldn’t have wanted y—” I cut myself off and hurriedly move on.

“And every summer I came back thinking I could fix it. Fix us…but this year I’d given up. I wasn’t going to come back.”

Sin’s head shoots up in surprise.

“I was going to start working toward a future that couldn’t be taken away from me by you or my mother’s whims. Then, like clockwork, two days ago Gideon totally demolishes my plans and calls me back home, and the stupid thing is, I didn’t even question his orders.

I just hopped a plane and came home to Nashville because a stupid, foolish part of me was glad Gidon called me back.

I thought that maybe, just maybe, I could find that connection we had that summer and be—” I fumble for the word, and in the end pick the safest, if not most accurate description of the bond I wanted with him, “Brothers again.”

I laugh and shake my head at my naivety, “And less than twenty-four hours home and you’re bribing me to leave again.” I shrug. “But I guess this time there’s money.” I let a bitterness into my voice that I’d fought off for so long.

“Then you’ll take the offer?” Sin prods coolly as if I hadn’t just spent the last twenty minutes baring myself to him.

I let out a long, defeated breath. “Unlock the car door and I’ll hit send,” I tell him.

He nods, and a second later the lock clicks open.

I hit the send button. “Here you go.” I throw his phone back at him. Sin catches it easily and looks down. His forehead creasing as he reads his screen. “Gigi’s Rescue?” he says with confusion.

“It’s a Nashville pet rescue organization,” I inform him. “You just made a very large donation to help shelter animals find their forever homes.” I push open the door of the car and jump out. “I put it in Buffy’s name.”

I practically run out of the garage and just make it out into the covered walkway that leads to the front door.

“Cassidy,” Sin calls, grabbing me by the shoulder and spinning me around, his touch sending sparks through me. And that’s when I ignite. He just tried to bribe me to disappear because he doesn’t want me anywhere near him and still— still —Sin can make me crave him body and soul.

“Fuck you,” I fling him back from me with a surprising strength fueled by rage, “and fuck your money.”

He just stares at me through those goddamned glasses.

I reach over and pluck them off his face, throw them to the ground, stomp on them thoroughly, and receive an evil satisfaction from hearing the crunch of thousand-dollar glasses under my feet.

I’m not surprised to see his now uncovered, handsome face not react as he watches me destroy his property.

Sin, even at his wildest and most uncontrollable, keeps a careful chain on his feelings, never letting anyone see more than what he wants them to.

It’s seeing the storm of pain brewing in his gray eyes that surprises—no shocks—me.

The fury fueling me begins to dampen, but then a voice of reason saves me.

He’s manipulating you. He couldn’t buy you, so now he’s trying to play you. He knows he’s your weakness.

The idea of it adds gasoline to my fury. I’m done being weak. I’m done chasing Sin. There will be no more waiting for a smile, a word, or a touch that tells me I matter to him.

“I don’t care how much money you offer me,” I yell at him, “I’m not taking it.” He begins to speak, but I cut him off. “You don’t want me anywhere near you? Then stay the hell out of my way, cause I’m not going anywhere.”

With that, I turn and start walking away from him, and realize I have one more piece of business. I whip back around. “Tell me what the doctor’s visit cost this morning, and I’ll start a payment plan. It might take most of my life to pay you back, but?—”

“That appointment was to make sure the next asthma attack doesn’t end up killing you,” he interrupts, sounding almost as angry as I am. “I don’t want your money.”

“Too bad,” I tell him. An hour ago, I thought the connection I had with him couldn’t be severed, but I’ll hack away at it and my debt to him a millimeter at a time if I have to because I don’t want to be tied to him anymore in any way. “I don’t want to owe anything to you. I’m done with you.”

I storm off, and it’s not until I’m almost to the main entrance that I notice Gideon pulled his car up to the house instead of the garage.

From the surprised look on my mother’s face as she’s exiting the passenger side of the Mercedes, they probably witnessed most of my outburst. Maybe I’ll care later, but for now, I ignore my mother calling my name and rush past their car and into the house, where I can go to my room and try to forget Sinclair Brandt once and for all.