The Secret (The Evolution of Sin 2)

“Then you told me that you loved me,” he laughed harshly, “or rather, I ordered you to tell me and as always you obeyed beautifully. I have never witnessed anything so stunning as the sight of you giving yourself to me, heart and body, with your skin covered in starlight.”

God, he was poetic.

My starving soul absorbed those devastating words before I could remind it that we were on a hunger strike.

“After you fell asleep, I called Cage and made a plan.”

He waited for me to swallow back the mass of hope that rose like bile in my throat.

“After I broke things off with Elena, I would stay with him while I looked for another apartment. It would take a few months to get all my affairs in order but then I was coming for you. Robert Corbett had already recommended an excellent private investigator and I was fairly sure you had told Stefan Kilos who you really were. I was so determined, I even wrote out a to-do list,” he admitted with a mocking twist of his lips.

“You didn’t,” I breathed, because this was too good to be true.

“I did. It took a bit longer than I may have liked, and obviously there is even more in the way than I had originally planned on but now I’m doing it. I’ve contacted an attorney to help us negotiate the separation of our assets and told Elena unequivocally that our relationship is over.”

“She doesn’t think it is.” I remembered the determination in her eyes that morning and shivered because there was a storm coming and the clouds rolling across the horizon were the exact c

olor of Elena’s eyes.

“To me, it is. It has been for a while now.”

“I don’t think that changes anything. Elena is still my sister, you are still her boyfriend –”

“Ex-boyfriend.”

“Fine, ex-boyfriend. But Sin, you still stayed with her for weeks even after you knew who I was,” I pointed out.

Until I said it out loud, I hadn’t really known that fact had bothered me. I could focus all I wanted on my reasons for staying away from him, but at the end of the day, it was his reticence that my heart focused on.

Sinclair adjusted his cufflinks, twin circles of silver engraved with the Percy family crest. “I did and whatever excuses I give you will be exactly that, excuses. But I want to give them to you nonetheless. The first was simply selfish. I told you when I met you on the plane that I didn’t like the idea that you could change my life and I meant it. My life pre-Giselle was a well-oiled machine. I had a lovely, intelligent girlfriend who loved me and whose aspirations perfectly suited my own. After years of work, my business was firmly established in the city and I was finally expanding internationally. My parents were proud of me,” he shrugged as he said it but I knew that his last point was the most important.

“When I saw you in Caprice’s kitchen the night we returned, I wasn’t prepared. Mostly because you fucking left that morning before I could tell you how I felt and I spent the rest of the day searching for you, trying to track down that damn Kilos to beat your information out of him if I had to. When that didn’t work, it dawned on me that maybe you didn’t want to be with me. It might have had something to do with Margot’s incessant scolding on the plane home, but by the time we landed I had already convinced myself that you were just a holiday affair.”

“I didn’t want to leave you but…” I trailed off because I didn’t know how to explain, in any language available to me, how I had felt that final night, tucked into his arms with so much love to give but no future to give it to.

He sighed raggedly. “There is one more excuse and it is a big one. In fact, it’s the mainstay of why I have been with Elena all this time, maybe even why she feels so dependant on me when she is a capable, independent woman all on her own.”

His pause felt cruel, like a commercial break at the climax of a television show.

“About eight months into our relationship, Elena got pregnant.”

I choked on my spit and started to cough.

Sinclair waited for me to stop before continuing, “I wasn’t thrilled about it because she had assured me she was on birth control and I wasn’t ready for children, or even sure that I wanted them. But you know Elena, she was thrilled.”

I could imagine her excitement, her face made uncharacteristically soft with joy, her voice high and bright and accented because she would forget to modulate her speech. My sister had always wanted children more than anything else. My hand curled into a fist over my heart because I knew the story wasn’t going to end well.

The waiter came, having lingered long enough on the sidelines waiting for a break in our conversation, and I happily let Sinclair order for me.

“I adjusted. There wasn’t really anything else to do but accept it. Elena wouldn’t get an abortion and even though I wasn’t sure if I wanted it, I didn’t want her to get one either. The only thing I remained firm on was the fact that I didn’t want to get married. She seemed okay with it then, I think because she was already too preoccupied with being a mom.

She had a plan. Finish her first year of law school and then take a year off to care for the baby. We moved in together and she began to buy little things for the baby, onesies with baby animals on them and this little pair of sneakers, each shoe smaller than my fist.”

“She lost it,” I blurted out, because I couldn’t handle it anymore.

“She lost it,” he confirmed in a hollow voice that matched the emptiness in his eyes.

“C’est tellement triste,” I murmured as unbearable sadness flooded through the suddenly open door of empathy I felt for Elena.