Page 11 of The Sin Eater (Carnival of Mysteries #27)

Ezra

W e eat and we fuck might be the tackiest words to ever come out of my mouth, if for no other reason than there will be no fucking while I’m doing penance.

Despite Damon’s dramatic interference, I’d managed to take on the young girl’s sins.

Even though they didn’t weigh much at all, choking down the cracker in front of witnesses turned me into a ball of anxiety.

Over ten years into the game, and this was as close as I’d come to getting busted.

I agreed to this faux-date experience mostly as a test to my self-discipline. Nothing can happen between us. Not tonight, anyway, and I’m almost glad when he says we can eat and then see how things go. I mean, I hate to make promises I can’t keep.

I swear, when he asked what was going on, I came damned close to telling him. Only imagining the way his expression would change kept me from spilling everything. I already like him too well to handle hearing him call me a freak.

Ain’t nobody loves a sin eater .

My mind is caught in some serious emotional oscillation. Anticipation for the weekend turned to sadness when they brought the girl’s body in. Then the responsibility of eating sin segued quickly into a complete freak-out when I got so rudely interrupted. And on top of it all, dude asks me out.

Lemme off this fucking roller coaster ride .

I could and probably should leave right now. I don’t. It’s raining, I’m hungry, and Damon is hot. Then he opens his mouth and lets out a handful of words that come close to driving me away.

“So tell me about this religious cult you grew up in.”

I squeeze my hands between my knees so tight the knuckles pop. I’m pretty good at spinning a line of bullshit, and since I’d really rather talk about anything else, I go for mockery. “Cult? Yeah, right.”

The waiter saves me from going any further, at least for now.

He’s short and stocky, with thick hair that’s knotted on top of his head and a name badge that says svamp in small letters.

I order a Jack and Coke and Damon orders some fancy-ass beer and a platter of nachos.

Without writing anything down, svamp says he’ll take our dinner order when he brings us our drinks.

He leaves us, and I do my best to change the subject. “Not sure I’ve ever seen the name svamp before. Wonder how it’s pronounced.”

Damon laughs like he recognizes my strategy and is willing to let it slide. “I’m not even going to try. Sometimes for fun I take a stroll through the NICU just to check out the baby names. These days there are very few limits on what people will come up with.”

“Do tell.”

He rolls his eyes. “We had a girl named Anemone recently, in a room right next door to a boy named Bison.”

“That’s fucking nuts.”

“You’re not wrong. If you had to guess, is Minnow a girl’s name or a boy’s name?”

“Um . . .”

“Yeah, that was my response too. In this case it was a girl’s name, and a couple months ago, we had a baby boy named Danger.”

“That’s not going to end well.”

“I did wonder if his parents were in some kind of cult.”

His emphasis on cult makes it clear I’m not going to get away without the religion talk. “You’re really not going to let it go.”

“Nope. I’m curious.”

I heave a sigh. Jesus Christ, I hate talking about my past. “Well, my grandma loved me.”

“Your grandma teach you to pray?”

“She gave me her car. Be nice to me and I’ll take you for a ride.” My grin makes it plain that I’m not just talking wheels.

His sexy chuckle makes my mouth water, at least until he asks, “Where did the praying thing come from, then?”

“You’re a persistent motherfucker.”

He nods. Leans back. Gives me a slow smile. “I can be.”

He ain’t going away . Not that I really want him to.

He’s got this safe-harbor vibe that I like, even if I don’t know what the fuck to do with it.

I need to give him enough to stop the questions without getting to the words I can’t say.

“Okay, so here we go. I was born in Bumfuck, Arkansas. Mom sold real estate and Dad did people’s taxes.

I’ve got a sister named Chastity and a brother named Benjamin, and yes, they’re all Bible names because Mom’s a big believer. ”

“Just your mom?”

“Dad has his own ideas.” Which we can talk about never . “Anyway, we were raised with certain family traditions ”—I put extra weight on those last two words—”that I sometimes try to uphold. We prayed at home, like the whole family on their knees every night.”

“What happened if you didn’t want to get down on your knees or whatever?”

I let my grin go sly. “Oh, baby, I’ve always liked going down on my knees.”

His cheeks turn pink so fast I damn near choke on a laugh.

“That’s not what I meant,” he says.

I give a one-shoulder shrug and keep grinning. “You walked into that one.”

He rubs his face with an open palm, and I take a moment to admire his thick, strong fingers and imagine some of the places those fingers could go. My dick starts to swell and I give myself a mental slap. Down, boy. No sex for you .

I used to wear a cock cage whenever I did penance, until I learned the hard way— yeah, that’s a pun —that I could still orgasm despite the cage.

After a while, just wearing the thing turned me on.

“To answer your question, though”—because nothing will make my dick soften faster than talking about my past—“I don’t make a habit of getting on my knees to pray every night, but every so often, after everyone’s gone home, I’ll roll out a body and say the prayers for the dead.

It’s like, the last kindness I can do for them. ”

He nods, and if he’s not completely buying what I’m selling, he’s a lot closer than he was. “That’s actually kind of cool,” he says, which sets my cheeks on fire.

Thank fuck, svamp shows up, this time with our cocktails. I take a long swallow of my drink, the cola’s sweetness cut by the bite of whiskey. Before svamp can get too far away,I wave at him, asking for another round.

Later I’ll congratulate myself for having told the absolute truth while lying my ass off.

After one more long swallow that just about drains my glass, I can finally meet Damon’s gaze.

“Don’t give me too much credit. I can say the prayers”—and eat the bread and do the penance—”without actually believing the crazy. ”

“How?”

“Do you believe in a god?”

Damon runs a thumb down the side of his pint glass. “Not really. My grandmother sent us to vacation bible school once, for all the good that did.”

“Aw man, bad memories.” I laugh like I’ve told a joke. I haven’t. Our vacation bible school teacher liked to use his belt. “I think I do things because deep down, I’m afraid of being punished if I don’t. That’s not the same thing as believing in the words.”

I’m staring at the table so hard I might drill a hole through it. Somehow, I opened my mouth and let more of the truth out than I’d ever intended. It’s one thing to chase those thoughts around in my own head. Saying them out loud is a whole ’nother level.

We desperately need a subject change.

“Anyway... “ I wonder if I should ask him about baseball, maybe that game against Oregon State in his sophomore year when he hit a walk-off grand slam. Oh yes, Damon Clemens has quite a web presence, including an out-of-date Wikipedia page. I quickly discard the idea since it won’t take more than a minute to reveal that I don’t know jack shit about baseball.

Fortunately, svamp arrives to rescue me.

He plunks the nachos and my drink on the table and gives us an expectant look.

Damon lets me order first—Cobb salad, dressing on the side—then he asks for their double smash burger and fries.

With a satisfied nod, svamp leaves us to our increasingly awkward conversation.

“I wouldn’t have picked you as a salad man,” Damon says.

“I’ve been living off Dick’s burgers. This was too good an opportunity to pass up.”

“I can see why. A little Dick’s goes a long way.”

My answering laugh is three-quarters relief. “So other than stalking me after hours, how was your day today?”

“Pretty chill, actually, except I had to discourage a guy from giving a shot of tequila to his elderly father in the ICU.”

“Fun times.”

“You know it.”

Even when he’s not smiling, the warmth of his attention does twisty things to my belly, so I grasp for the first subject that comes to mind. “Did you see we had a couple of police detectives hanging around earlier this week?”

“I must have been off that day.”

I hurry on, pretty damned thrilled to be talking about something besides myself. “They said they got an anonymous tip that a guy who died in the ICU had committed a murder.”

“Whaaaat?” He drags the word out, his eyes growing wide. Got him .

“I don’t know a lot more than that”—except for the rest of the story—”but his name was James Smith, and he was the victim of a hit-and-run on Broadway.

I got the feeling the detectives don’t have much to go on, so I doubt they’ll get very far with the investigation, if they bother to do much at all. ”

Damon rubs his thumb along the side of his pint glass. “Anonymous tip. Huh. That can’t happen very often.”

“Weird, right? He must not have done any time for the crime. I mean, assuming there really was a murder.” I tag that last part on like I didn’t relive the whole scene. God damn. Now my secrets are keeping secrets. “Maybe he was using an alias.”

As our dinners show up, he says, “James Smith sounds like the kind of name you’d pick if you wanted to fall under the radar. I’ll have to ask my sister. She might know someone who knows someone.”

My response is noncommittal enough not to be an actual refusal. I don’t know shit about his sister and who she might know, and I’m sorta sorry I brought the whole thing up. I should have asked him about baseball.

On the other hand, I’m curious as hell. Who was James Smith, and more importantly, who was the woman he murdered?

We manage to get through dinner without any more awkward revelations, which is good. Enough guts have been spilled on this table for one night. We finish our meal and he pays, just like he promised he would.

“You’re a true gentleman.” I’m only half joking. I lead the way to the door with his hand on the small of my back. Feels like it belongs there, to be honest. Something I don’t want to think too hard about.

“Where are you headed from here?” he asks.

It’s not actively raining—though that could change at any moment—so I figure I don’t need an Uber. “My apartment’s by the hospital.”

“Walk with me? I’m going as far as the light rail station.” His smile holds enough hope that I can’t turn him down.

“Sure.”

We head south on Broadway, dodging hipsters and queers and queer hipsters. I pull a couple more lollipops out of my backpack and hand him one. “I’m not usually so... agreeable.” The words are out before I can censure them. I hate giving too much away. “You’re a bad influence.”

He laughs like I’m joking but I’m really not. This level of familiarity is almost more dangerous than getting busted eating sin. I stick the sucker in my mouth before I can say anything else.

“I admit, I figured you’d tell me where I could shove my dinner invitation, so the rest of this has been a bonus.”

I shake my head, stepping around a sandwich board sign advertising psychic readings. “No one’s ever called me a bonus before.” I stop short of calling him a weirdo, though I’m thinking it.

A hot weirdo. A hot, athletic weirdo. Who likes me, apparently. A weirdo I’d love to get naked with, if I wasn’t doing fucking penance. That thought sobers me up, and I pick up my pace. We concentrate on our candy and reach the light rail station too soon, or sooner than I want to, anyway.

“This is goodnight?” he asks, tossing the white stick into a nearby trash can.

It’s pretty damned obvious that if I invited him home, he’d be ready and willing. “Yeah,” I say, sincerely disappointed. “For tonight, it is.”

He reaches out and rubs his knuckles down my cheek, his smile a lot warmer than his touch.

“Your hands are cold.” There’s a crack in my voice that I don’t love.

Shoving both hands in his pockets, his gaze turns wistful. “November, man. It’s that time of year.”

“True.” I shuffle my feet, not sure how to proceed. I’m much better at quick fucks than prolonged goodbyes. “Look, uh, thank you for dinner. I should go. Maybe next weekend we could, uh... “

He reaches for my hand, and this time I don’t care how cold his fingers are. “Next weekend. Sure.” He gives me a quick squeeze and steps away. “What’s your phone number? I can text you if I find anything out about James Smith.”

A weird weight lifts off my chest. “That’d be great.

” We exchange contact information, sending silly emoji texts, and he jogs down the steps into the light rail station.

I stand there for longer than I should, long enough for it to start raining again.

I want to hold on to this moment because for once, I’m not bitter and cynical.

For once, I’m something close to happy.