Page 51 of The Lies Of Omission (Without Limits #3)

The apartment was modest. Clean lines. Honest in its simplicity.

Hardwood floors, pale walls with just enough imperfection to remind me it wasn’t trying to impress anyone.

The kitchen was compact—sink, stove, some cupboards—but functional.

Nothing about it screamed opulence. Which was, strangely, comforting.

I hovered near the entrance while Sin moved through the place like he was checking for ghosts—or maybe just making himself feel useful. He opened a closet, knocked on the walls like someone on the TV, and muttered things under his breath with a furrowed brow.

I couldn’t help it—I grinned. “You don’t actually know what you’re checking for, do you?”

He looked over his shoulder, mock-offended. “Shut up. I watched like… two episodes of that reno show. I’m basically an expert.”

His confidence was ridiculous. I loved it.

He moved into the larger bedroom, and I followed, my nerves loosening a little as I watched him.

He didn’t treat this like some massive, intimidating life change.

He made it look… doable . Like we could just decide to live different lives and then go do it.

A second later, I heard him whoop from the other room. “This bathroom?” he called. “It’s basically a spa. Huge tub. Separate shower. You could host a damn pool party in here.”

I laughed. For real. The kind that cracked open your ribs and let air into all the places that had been suffocating. “That’s your measuring stick for livability? Bathtub size?”

“That and natural light,” he called back, appearing in the hallway again. “Oh—and no kitchen bleach required. That’s a goddamn miracle. Ask Claire about the state of ours when she first moved in.”

“I will… eventually.” I muttered and leaned against the doorframe, watching him move through the space like he belonged here. Like we belonged here. My chest tightened with something warm and unfamiliar.

This didn’t feel like failure. It felt like the start of something. Not perfect. But real.

“I want it,” I said, barely above a whisper.

Sin stopped mid-step. Turned slowly, eyebrows lifting. “You sure?”

I nodded, more certain than I had been about anything in weeks—apart from him. “Yeah. I don’t want anything from that house. Not the furniture. Not the art. Not even the cutlery.”

His brow arched. “You mean metaphorically or…?”

“Both.”

We signed the papers that afternoon. Corryn looked like she wanted to squeal with glee, but I calmly slid her an NDA and made her sign it before she even uncapped her pen.

If word got back to my father too soon, he’d unleash hell—and I wasn’t ready to fight him.

Not yet. Not while the cement on this new foundation was still wet.

By the time we stepped back out onto the street, the city had slipped into dusk. Sin turned to me, fingers curling into the lapels of my coat, and kissed me in the middle of the sidewalk like the world owed us this one small victory. And maybe it did.

This was us finally claiming something it never intended to give us. We were thieves of our own freedom. And this time… we weren’t giving it back.

My house felt like a museum when we walked back in after the viewing. Cold, echoing, and filled with things that meant nothing to me anymore. The silence here wasn’t peace—it was pressure. Heavy and constant.

Sin stood in the doorway of my bedroom, arms crossed, gaze slowly scanning the space. “It’s weird,” he said finally. “I always thought this place would be more.”

I huffed a quiet laugh, crouching beside the shelves. “That’s because it should have been. It’s less alive and more… embalmed. Picture perfect doesn’t make a home.”

One by one, I slid books into a small pull-along case. Only the ones I loved. The ones that had gotten me through sleepless nights and long lectures on legacy and performance. I skipped all the hardcovers that were chosen by decorators. The ones with untouched spines and titles that tried too hard.

Sin walked over and helped fold my clothes into the suitcase on my bed. We didn’t speak for a while, the quiet between us gentle this time.

“This it?” he asked eventually, zipping up the case.

I nodded. “That’s all I want.”

He didn’t argue. He just nodded once and looked around. “Right. So that just leaves?—”

A loud thump and a guttural, annoyed mrrrowr cut him off. We both turned. Winston—the smokey gray, overfed demon I called a cat—had just launched himself on the top shelf of the wardrobe in my walk-in closet, and was glaring down at us like a dragon guarding its hoard.

“Oh no,” I muttered. “He knows.”

Sin blinked at him. “You didn’t tell me we were dealing with a war criminal.”

I sighed and grabbed the cat carrier. “Last time I tried to move him, I had scratches on my arm for a week.”

Winston’s tail swished like he was winding up for violence.

Sin took the carrier from me, setting it down quietly before rolling his shoulders like he was about to enter a boxing ring. “You get the front. I’ll take the flank.”

“What the hell is the flank of a cat?”

But before I could argue further, Sin darted forward.

Winston made a break for the dresser, but I intercepted, throwing a towel over him like a net.

There was a brief scuffle—a yowl, a hiss, some claws in unfortunate places—but after an ungraceful wrestling match that involved me swearing and Sin laughing way too hard, we got him in.

Winston settled into the carrier with a dramatic sigh of betrayal.

“You good?” Sin asked, brushing cat hair off his hoodie.

“I think I lost the respect of my only dependent.”

“He’ll forgive you. Eventually.”

I looked around the room one last time. Everything else—my suits, the crystal chandelier, the inherited oil paintings—they could all rot.

I had what I needed: the books that mattered, a few items of clothing, and Winston, still grumbling quietly in his box like he knew he’d just been evicted from the monarchy.

Sin touched my elbow gently. “Ready?”

I hesitated, just for a second. Then nodded. “Yeah. Let’s go home.”

That night, I couldn’t stop touching the keys. Every few minutes I’d check my pocket, slide my thumb over the teeth like I was convincing myself they were real. Not just some daydream I’d conjured up on the drive over. Not some temporary escape. But mine .

My place. My choice. My life.

It still didn’t feel natural in my mouth—“mine.” Not after a lifetime of having everything handed to me with strings already knotted tight. But this? This I paid for with the sale of my car, the last thread connecting me to the life I’d just severed. It felt right. Raw and terrifying and right .

Sin tossed another box onto the floor and flopped down beside it with a groan. “You officially have more books than you have forks. Which, to be clear, is a big fat zero.”

I snorted. “That’s because forks don’t make me feel like I might understand myself better.”

He gave me a look. “That’s the most pretentious thing you’ve ever said.”

“Is it?” I asked, quirking a brow. “You did once describe me as a human library with daddy issues and a leather fetish.”

“Fair,” he said, and leaned back on his hands like he owned the room.

He kind of did. It was weird. Watching him make himself at home somewhere that technically belonged to me now—but somehow never felt like it really would until he walked into it.

A man like Sin didn’t belong to anything. He just was . Fully and completely himself. Chaotic, sure, but unapologetic. It made me ache with jealousy and adoration in equal measure.

We’d hit up Target on the way back. A cart full of mismatched items, two mugs with flamingos on them for no reason except that I’d smiled at them, and gray towels we couldn’t agree on but bought anyway because compromise, apparently, was a thing couples did.

I hadn’t realized we were a “we” until the cashier asked if we were moving in together and Sin said, “Something like that.”

It made my chest ache—in a good way. In a real way.

After that run, the unpacking, the triumphant pizza delivery (Sin insisted on tipping 50% because, “this dude is delivering to a fifth floor walk-up with no elevator, he deserves hazard pay”), we sat shoulder to shoulder on the hardwood floor—because I didn’t have a couch—our legs stretched long in front of us, beers in hand.

I let the condensation drip down my knuckles and stared at the bare wall ahead of me. “I’m not scared,” I said out loud, almost surprised to hear it.

Sin glanced at me. “No?”

“I thought I would be. Thought I’d wake up panicking. Thought I’d beg someone to take it all back.”

He nudged his knee against mine. “But?”

I looked around the apartment—the empty corners, the scuffed floorboards, the single chair we’d found at a sidewalk sale on the walk back and carried between us like a throne.

“But, nothing. I’m not. I’m… relieved.”

He let that settle for a moment. “You know what that means, right?”

“What?”

“It means you never really wanted their life. You just didn’t think you had a choice.”

I stared at him. The sharp line of his jaw. The quiet fierceness in his gaze. He said it so simply. Like it wasn’t something that had taken me years to unravel.

I swallowed. “You were always the choice. From the beginning.” He blinked, a little stunned. I clarified. “You were never something that just happened to me. I wanted you. Even when I was too much of a coward to say it.”

Sin looked away then. Cleared his throat. “Jesus, Theo, warn a guy before you go all Notebook on him.”

I leaned over and kissed his cheek anyway. “Thanks. For helping me carry all this.”

“The boxes?” he asked, pretending not to know what I meant.

I nodded toward the beer. “That too. But also… everything else.”

The weight. The grief. The identity I’d been dragging behind me like a second spine. He didn’t ask me to drop it. He just stood there when I finally did.

Later that night, when he was brushing his teeth with a drugstore toothbrush and humming off-key, I stood leaning against the doorframe and watched the shadows move across my new bedroom.

It wasn’t beautiful. Not in the way I’d been raised to think beauty meant—no chandeliers, no velvet drapes, no sweeping view of the skyline.

But it was mine. And that was enough .

I slid into bed—just a mattress on the floor, nothing glamorous—and Sin climbed in beside me, hair still damp from his shower, smelling like peppermint and something that felt like home.

He didn’t say anything. Just curled up close, one arm across my stomach, and let the silence speak. My father would lose his mind when he found out. Let him. This life? My life. It wasn’t his to ruin anymore.