Sexy as Sin

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Another glance at him. The coffee is almost done brewing. “Do I want to talk about what?”

“What happened in there … and while you were away.” It’s better to ask him the question even if he refuses to answer me. I want him to know I can handle the topic.

His sharp blue eyes don’t leave mine when he says, “I want to talk about why you stopped coming.”

It’s so blunt that it feels like a punch. A chill sweeps down my body as the events tip over like dominoes in my mind. Once the first one fell, they couldn’t be stopped. I swallow thickly and try to focus on the pan in front of me. My motions mechanical, I pull the plate closer and tip the eggs onto it. Then the other for Cill.

I don’t want to tell him. I don’t want him to know anything about what happened.

“So we both have some things we want to keep to ourselves?” he questions.

“You scare me, Cillian.”

I look back at him and find him staring, his eyes wide. “Why’s that?”

The English muffins pop up and I toss them onto the plates, burning the tips of my fingers in the process. Hissing fuck under my breath, I’m quick to stick the tips of my fingers into my mouth.

“You all right?” he asks, the concern real in his voice.

“Yeah,” I answer him and gather the courage to answer his question.

All the while, I butter the bread automatically so it melts into the little crevices. As if this isn’t a conversation I’ve been dreading. “You’re—you’re intense. On edge. Your shoulders are rounded in like you think someone’s about to hit you. You look like you might get into a fight.”

I part my lips to tell him I saw it happen. I watched him change into this man every time I visited him. Then his father … then everything that happened after.

He’s the one who changed first, though. “I just … I’m not used to it being like this.” I answer him honestly and my voice cracks at the end. I hate it.

I’m reckless as I toss the butter knife into the sink, and I immediately wish I hadn’t. I’m calmer as I put the butter back into the fridge.

His gaze burns into the back of me and I pretend the tension isn’t heightened.

“You know I’ll never—”

“You’d never put a hand on me,” I say, cutting him off, turning to gaze at him so he knows I mean it. “But that doesn’t mean … it doesn’t mean things aren’t different and that we aren’t different people now.”

“And that we both have secrets,” he notes as I reach for the plates.

Swallowing thickly, I answer him, “Yeah, we both have secrets,” and place both plates on the table, taking my seat. He stands for a moment, watching and with a fork in hand I look up at him, then motion to the plate.

“I’ll tell you something if you tell me something,” Cill says, taking the seat across from me and picking up the fork but not eating just yet.

Cill clears his throat and he doesn’t look at me while he speaks. Instead he stares at his plate. “The first time they tried to kill me was in the cafeteria.”

“What?” The stunned word leaves me as my fork falls and my body goes numb.

“Competitors … That fuck Tray, I’m pretty sure.” He swallows thickly, then finally looks back at me and says, “Reed made a few calls and found some people, so it didn’t happen a lot, but in the beginning … I thought they were going to kill me, Kat.” His voice is hoarse with raw emotion although his eyes don’t reflect it. His body is tight until he turns his attention back to the plate.

Tears prick the back of my eyes. There’s something about how he sits there, so matter of fact that they tried to kill him and that’s why he changed. He had to fight for his life. The boy I loved had a tenderness about him that’s all but hardened into unforgivable stone. I watched it happen and I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t help him … I didn’t even know what he was dealing with. Before I have a chance to calm down and blink the tears back, they leak from the corner of my eyes.

Fuck. It comes out of nowhere.

It’s all the pent-up feelings of the last four years coming out of me in a rush. I’m out of my seat, hiding my face from Cill before he can see. I reach for a mug and pretend like I’m not losing it from his confession, but a sob is torn from me. He thought he was going to die. That they were going to kill him and he never told me or anyone. He lived with that fear.