Page 50 of The Sin Eater

The train makes me wait ten minutes surrounded by a scattering of partiers and late-night restaurant workers, and that gives me time to think. I’m not much for analyzing my feelings. I’ve always been better at taking them out on a baseball, sweating them out in the weight room, or running them into the ground. I guess I’m older now, so instead of closing my eyes to shut out the harsh fluorescent lighting, I try to parse what just happened.

Tonight was a lot, I’m not going to lie. I’m not sure I have anything in life to compare Ezra to.

Patty doesn’t count, though she sure as hell brought the drama. Dorinda and I started calling our mother Patty when we were old enough to recognize how shitty she was. She didn’t have secrets; she just made promises she had no intention of keeping. Drugs’ll do that to you.

My exes kept secrets, though—sure, cool, embezzle money from the law firm where you work, and no, I won’t wait till you get out of prison—but their big reveals were always too late and fairly stupid.

Ezra’s different. There’s a sincerity to the way he says he can’t tell me what’s really going on, a desperation in how he asks me to trust him.

That’s the hard part.

Experience has taught me that only Dorinda and Roger are worth trusting. Do I want to believe Ezra’s got some big,climactic, capital-T Thing that’s keeping him from being honest with me? Sure, although I’m having trouble imagining what’s more dramatic thanI see dead people.

Is it more likely some petty bullshit we could solve with a conversation?

Pretty much.

So, do I trust him?

I don’t know. I haven’t decidednotto trust him yet, so maybe...

Chapter Seventeen

Ezra

Holy fuck.I don’t truly come to my senses until I’m standing in front of my apartment door with the echo of Damon’s kiss on my lips. It’s after two a.m. and I need some Tylenol before the Jack has its revenge. And oh, yeah, I have to work at seven a.m.

Excellent time management, asshole. At least I grabbed a shower between my visit to Damon’s apartment and the club.

On my way up the stairs, the evening rewinds through my mind. Snuggling with a bottle of Jack. Catching an Uber to Damon’s apartment for a come-to-Jesus with a cop. Dancing, which should have straightened out my head. It didn’t. Instead of calm, I’m stressed and horny.

A shiver runs from my chest to deep in my belly.

This here? This here is some serious penance.

I let myself into my apartment. Everything looks just the way I left it, bottle of Jack on the floor and everything. I shower away the residue of the night and crawl into bed. As long as I don’t think about the look in Damon’s eyes when I wouldn’t tell him the truth, I’m fine. I don’t like how it makes me feel, but I can live with it.

I have to.

I’ve never come so close to telling someone the truth before. God help me, but that weird dude from the Carnival crosses my mind.Was he right?I mean, Damon cares; that much is obvious. He makes me feel safe. And isn’t that just a fucked-up situation, because he’s going to get over his little infatuation as soon as he realizes what I’m really like.

Especiallyif he learns my truth.

It’s the devil talking through you.

Oh god, I did say that, didn’t I. Fuck.

I crash-land on my bed, still in my jeans, flooded with shame. I’ve been a princess since the day I was born. Used to raid my older sister Chastity’s Disney dress-up clothes, twirling and prancing around in her Cinderella plastic slippers. Mom didn’t like it—she’s an excellent nonverbal communicator—but she didn’t usually say anything.

It was the stuff I said that got me in trouble.

From as far back as I can remember, I’ve known things, and it didn’t take me long to learn to keep my damn mouth shut. When I was about three, I told her Papa had died. Two hours later, she got a call saying her father had died.

I still remember that beating.It’s the devil talking through you.

Once I learned to eat sin, though, the devil shut up. At the time, I figured it was a fair trade. Now I don’t know what the fuck is going on. On that happy thought, I bury my head in pillows and force myself to sleep.

My alarm goes off way—way—too early. The whole party-till-three-get-up-at-six thing was a fuckton easier at twenty-one than it is at twenty-six. I drag myself out of my closet-bedroom and into the shower, appalled by how close I came to telling Damon everything.