SWNOVELS Sinful: Chapter 57
I woke up in a cold sweat, three days after eating Sirena out, my chest heaving. My throat was raw from screaming, and I’d clawed at myself during the nightmare.
Sitting up, I rubbed my eyes, my heart pounding hard.
I had nightmares almost every night. Usually, they’d fade away, but this one simply kept going.
My door cracked open, and Sin poked his head in, his torso bare.
“Malachi?”
“Yeah?” I grunted, reaching for my meds on my nightstand. Truly, fuck this shit.
“You OK? I heard you. . .” Sin’s voice trailed off.
“Yeah, man. I’m fine. Just a bad dream.” I popped a pill into my mouth and swallowed it dry.
Sin stepped into my room and closed the door. The moon was bright, so it lit the place up in an eerie sort of way. Seemed fitting, considering my nightmares.
He walked forward and sat on the edge of my bed.
“What can I do to help?” he asked.
I grunted and lay back against my pillows.
“Ain’t nothing you can do. It’s over. This is the aftermath.” I lightly touched the scar on my face from where I’d carved off a tat in my delirium.
“There has to be something,” Sin whispered. “It’s my fault—”
“Look. It’s my fault, not yours. I’m the one with control issues who lost his shit. That was me, Sinclair. Not you. I knew what I was doing. Don’t keep blaming yourself for my issues. They’re mine, OK? Stop trying to steal them.” I gave him a small smile, hoping to discourage him from chasing this shit. I hated that it happened and wanted to be free from it. That freedom came whenever I opened my eyes and left the nightmares behind.
“If I wouldn’t have—”
“Listen to me, Sinclair. We could argue about this all night, OK? I could blame my mother for spreading her legs and letting me be created. It’s her fault I’m here at all. So don’t do this shit. I’m dealing with it.”
“Are you?” He peered at me, a frown on his face.
“I am. I’m not strong like Sirena is,” I mused. “I tend to dwell. I admire her for her strength.”
“She is strong,” he agreed. “But she hurts too. She wakes from bad dreams.”
“I know,” I answered simply. “I’ve held her through them, and she’s held me through mine. I guess we’re bonded in the same darkness. She. . . gets me. Shared trauma.” I shrugged and looked away, my throat tight with the thought of her going through being hurt the way she was by the monster in the woods. I remembered my fear. Knowing hers made it that much worse.
Fuck, I wanted to hang whoever hurt her with my rope from the highest tree in the forest. I prayed I got the chance. Maybe we’d play piñata with him. Beat him as he hung, until his guts sprang free and slopped to the snow below.
“Yo prevaleceré,” I said. “I will prevail. It is the only option.”
“And you will. I know you.” Sin lay back beside me in bed.
I smiled at that.
“Did you get a tattoo?” I asked, noticing dark marks on his back.
“Yeah. I, uh, saw Cass Whitman a few days ago. Had him tat Sirena’s claw marks onto my back. They were still swollen, so he had no issue making them permanent.”
“Nice,” I said. “Wish I’d have done that. Guess there’s still time to get her to claw my back, huh?”
He let out a little laugh, settling in further beside me.
“How’s Sirena?” I finally asked.
“Church came into my room and took her to his,” he answered, staring up at my ceiling. “I expect he’s apologizing in his own way.”
“Most likely.”
“I have been hogging her lately, haven’t I?”
“Yep.” I popped the p on the word. “But I get it. When I finally gave in, I did the same. I probably drove Church and Ashes nuts with it. So it’s cool. You deserve to have time with her too.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“I’m scared,” he finally said.
I looked over at him to see the worry on his face.
“Of what?”
He shook his head. “She’s so fragile. So delicate.”
“Let me stop you right there. Sirena is fragile like a grenade, not a flower. You have to have noticed she’s changing.” I’d noticed the change in her after the forest incident. It was like a fire had been lit inside her, and she was trying to work out how best to let it out without it consuming everything. It reminded me of Ashes, the supreme control he managed over his life, and the struggles he endured to maintain his sanity.
“I have.”
“She’s becoming a lot more than she was when she got here. Hell, she even communicates these days. I think she’s only going to get better. I pray she does.”
“I pray for her too.” He held his hand up to show me a rosary. “She gave me these. I use them, well, all the time.”
I smiled at that. She’d softened the old asshole up a hell of a lot in the past few weeks.
“I also pray that we find the son of a bitch who did that to her,” he whispered fiercely. “Mirage has been looking. I was helping, but we kept coming up to dead ends. I don’t know how else to get her to tell us.”
“Maybe she wants to just forget about it.” I knew the feeling, but I also knew this shit couldn’t go unpunished.
“Maybe, but I-I can’t allow that. He needs to pay. I want to make him pay, Malachi. More than I wanted to make Bells pay for killing my kid.” His voice had lowered and taken on a dangerous tone I hadn’t heard since Bells’s demise. “And you know what I did about that.”
I did know. He’d choked her to death, and Ashes had burned her body before Sin took her remains and hid them. And me. I’d been there. To be fair, I hated that bitch too, so I was fine with her death. I may have even done it myself to put Sin out of his misery.
“Then what should we do? Ashes and I have tried to find the person too. Nothing. Whoever did it was a loner. He didn’t share it, or he has a very niche group, and they’re all tight-lipped.”
“I don’t know of anyone.” Sin sighed. “Fuck. It’s driving me crazy.”
I agreed, feeling the same. I wanted the prick dead too.
“For now, let’s only focus on her. We can work shit out and talk to Asylum and see what he has to say.”
“Mirage,” he corrected me. “At least I think he’s Mirage right now.”
“Fine. Mirage. Speaking of that basket case, what’s up with him?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. Is it multi-personalities or something? Schizophrenia? What’s his deal?”
Sin let out a soft laugh. “It’s. . . complicated. I’m not even sure I understand it. I’m assured there’s a purpose, so I’m trusting the process.”
“Be nice to know what the fuck the process is,” I grumbled. “I worry he’s going to lose it and hurt her. I’ve seen the way she looks at him, and I know how unpredictable he can be.” Whenever we were on campus, her eyes would seek him out. It used to bother me before we were all stuck in the facility together. Again, with the shared trauma.
Then there was that fucking Bryce Andrews. Mr. Cupcake Man. Fucking douche. She always looked for him too. It ate me up he had her before us. I was working on it, though. I’d been trying to put my jealousy aside because I knew he was important to her. It was a battle I’d been fighting a lot lately when I thought about that guy. Maybe it was because I felt like there was something more with him, and he was just here playing a part. Being on edge was becoming an everyday thing for me, it seemed. Maybe I was the one with the paranoia.
“She looks at him that way because she loves him too,” he said, his voice thick.
I let out a sigh. “I know she does. And she should. He did a lot for her in the facility. I simply wish he would be more open with us. He’s just so. . . weird.”
“He is weird. Imagine living with him,” Sin mused.
I snorted at that. “Was it weirder than only interacting randomly with him?”
Sin looked over at me as I rolled on my side to face him.
“He’s odd. He has a routine he sticks to. He reminds me of Church a lot. Stickler for shit. He has a better way of getting his way. Church commands it. Asylum wills it, if that makes sense.”
“Like he has some kind of mind control.”
“I wonder sometimes if he does.”
“But Asylum. Mirage. Can you tell when he switches?” I studied Sin to see his gray eyes rake over my face.
“Aside from the mask and carrot? There’s a lot more to him than his illness. In fact, his personalities aren’t really his issue.”
“It’s the voices, isn’t it?” I pressed.
He winced and looked back to the ceiling. “I think the voices are definitely a problem for him. Them. Whatever you want to call it. The struggle is there. But who would he be without them? I think it’ll lead us somewhere good. I always followed Church, but honestly, I think we should let Asylum help out more.”
I nodded, knowing Asylum knew his shit. I’d never known him to steer us wrong. In the beginning, I hated him. Deep down, I think I always knew he was cut out to be a watcher. The issue would have been he was working for Everett doing god knew what. Now, he’s come out with it and even saved Sirena in the facility. People who weren’t on your side didn’t do that shit. At least, I hoped they didn’t.
We were quiet for a moment before Sin spoke again.
“I miss him,” he murmured.
I frowned. “Who? Asylum?”
“Yeah. I like Mirage a hell of a lot, but he’s more unpredictable than Asylum is. He’s scarier, truth be told. You guys haven’t seen or heard him. He’s gentle, sure, but fuck, when he’s pissed. . .” his voice trailed off.
“Is she. . . would she be safe around him. . . when he’s like that?” I asked, the worry alive and well within me.
“There are two things I know for certain in life. One is that I would die for Sirena without hesitation. The second thing I know is Mirage would predict that moment and push me aside so he could hold the title. Does that answer your question?”
It did.
It helped relax me.
We were quiet again as we lay in my bed.
“Sin?”
“Yeah?”
I looked over at him. “I’m glad you’re home. Seriously. I’ve missed you.”
He stared back at me, a sad smile on his face. “I’ve missed you too.”
“Want to stay with me tonight? It’ll be like that time we had that sleepover at your place, and we drew all those dicks on Ashes’s face.”
Sin let out a snort of laughter. It was good to hear. It felt like forever since I’d heard it.
“He was so pissed he set my bed on fire. My mom was so mad,” Sin chortled.
I grinned at the memory. Ashes had calmly left the room as we sniggered. Returning moments later with a can of gasoline he’d gotten from the garage, he proceeded to pile Sin’s clothes on his bed before he dumped the gas onto it. Then, he dropped a match into the mess. It had gone up like the Fourth of July. Even the fire department had shown up. Sin was out of clothes and had to borrow some from me since Ashes had torched his.
Ashes wasn’t allowed to sleep over at Sin’s house again after that.
It had been a long time since then. It was a fun memory. Even Ashes had laughed it off after it happened. It took about a week since the dicks needed to fade off his face, but he was a good sport.
“So, will you stay? No dicks?” I asked.
Sin stopped laughing and nodded. “Yeah, man. I’ll stay. I’ll fight the demons with you.” He gave my hand a squeeze.
“No dicks,” I added.
His lips quirked up. “No dicks.”
I exhaled, a memory coming back to me of the aftermath of when Sin was shot by his father. How he’d wake in the night screaming. Thrashing. Crying for his dad to stop and his mom to save him. I’d stay at his house and curl up beside him, holding his hand and promising him everything would be OK.
“Do you remember—” I whispered as he held my hand tightly.
“I never forgot,” was all he said before we both went quiet.
I closed my eyes, knowing I wasn’t fighting a half-assed battle anymore.
It helped me to sleep peacefully, Sin’s hand in mine.