Lessons in Sin

“I’m going to report you this time.” She crossed her arms, blocking my path.

“Good for you.” I shouldered past her.

“This is your last strike. He’ll suspend you this time.”

“Don’t care.”

A suspension would send me home for a few days. I would have to deal with the wrath of my mother, but it would be worth it just to see my siblings, sleep in my own bed, and spend the morning somewhere that wasn’t church.

But I wouldn’t get a suspension. Magnus was onto me and would never give me what I wanted.

I slipped into my dorm, and my attention instantly went to the shoebox on my bed. “Who’s been in my room?”

“No one,” Daisy shouted from her room.

This box didn’t magically appear on its own. I approached it cautiously, marking the worn edges and faded labels. It was an old box. Probably not a gift.

I set my phone on the desk and bent down, flipping off the lid.

For a moment, I didn’t understand. My brain took snapshots, trying to piece the images together. Gray, crust, wet, toes, blood, pink tails, Mickey Mouse ears.

My chest burned.

Opossums.

Mangled.

My heart raced.

Jaden and Willow.

Dead.

My throat caught fire.

“No.” I stumbled. Couldn’t feel my feet. “No, no, no, no!”

That couldn’t be them. It couldn’t. Why would anyone do that? Why were they in a box? Why were they here?

A scream rose from my chest and hit the air with all the mortal terror in my body.

“Who did this?” I screamed until my voice bled, and I started hyperventilating. “Who…fucking…did this?”

I grabbed the box and stormed into the hallway. Heads poked out of doorways, their faces smeary and distorted through my tears.

“You’re waking the entire floor,” Daisy whisper-shouted behind me. “Go back to your room.”

“Fuck you.” I shrieked and swung a finger toward all the girls in the hall. “Whoever did this…swear to God, I will find you. You’re so fucking dead.”

I hated their eyes on me. I hated their lack of sorrow and compassion. They didn’t understand. None of these people understood how fucking much this hurt.

Snapping the lid onto the box, I hugged it to my chest and charged toward the stairs.

“Tinsley.” Daisy held a phone to her ear and a hand outstretched, palm out, as if to stop me from leaving.

A torrent of sobs piled up in my throat as I ducked beneath her arm and ran down the stairs.

Miriam waited on the ground floor. Whether she was trying to stop me or talk to me, I didn’t wait to find out. I kept running, needing to be outside, away from this godforsaken place.

The agony was all-consuming, pouring from my eyes, my nose, my goddamn heart. I clutched the box tighter to my chest.

My fuzzy little babies.

Oh God, why? Why them?

When I burst through the doors, it was raining, falling in heavy, angry sheets. I wrapped my cardigan around the box, trying to protect it as I bolted into the storm.

I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t look around, didn’t slow, didn’t think. My feet splashed through the puddles. My hair stuck to my face, and I just ran.

Straight to the gate.

To him.

I needed Magnus.

He would fix this. Somehow, he would make it better.

Lightning lit up the sky. Thunder crashed. The ice-cold downpour seeped through my clothes and drenched my skin. My teeth chattered violently, and my loafers filled with water, slipping off my heels as I tore through the night.

A streetlamp rose above the arched gate, illuminating the only way out of this nightmare. When I reached the hinged barrier, I realized I’d left my phone behind.

My heart sank, but I couldn’t feel it. I didn’t have the emotional capacity for more pain. I was cold, soaked to the bone, and overwrought with grief.

It was the grief that pulled me to the ground.

Hugging the box to my chest, I collapsed to my knees, dropped my head to the gate, and cried.

When the pound of footsteps erupted, I had no intention of moving from this spot. The sound arrived fast, sprinting, but it wasn’t behind me. It came from the other side of the gate.

A single long-legged stride.

I felt the charge in the air, the intensity of his presence, before I lifted my head.

Dark jeans, light blue shirt, dark scruff on a squared jaw.

No collar.

I almost didn’t recognize him. Until I reached the final destination and fell into the mercurial eyes of the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.

Drenched from head to toe, he stood like an undefeatable force in the raging, whipping rain.

He’d come for me.

“Magnus.” I held up the box, my voice like sandpaper. “I need you.”

He opened the gate.

CHAPTER 17

MAGNUS

Everything inside me heated at the familiarity of my name on Tinsley’s lips.

She looked like a broken angel, kneeling in the brutal storm, hair like gold gossamer around her ethereal face, and shattered blue eyes staring up at me, so trusting, so needful, so goddamn beautiful.