The Consequence (The Evolution of Sin 3)

“Damn it,” I heard Candy curse as she dashed over to me, holding my hair back as it came flooding out of me.

Sinclair appeared a moment later with a small copper trashcan for me to heave into.

“I think it’s time everyone went home,” Eddie said softly over the loud sounds of my sickness.

By the time I finished dry heaving minutes later, everyone but Cosima, Candy and Alexander were gone. Sinclair scooped me up, vomit stained clothes and all, and strode with me up the glass staircase two steps at a time until we reached the master bathroom. Candy had followed us up and immediately turned the bath on while, surprisingly, Alexander, turned the shower on.

Sinclair was busy undressing me, his jaw ticking like a countdown to another explosion.

“Sin,” I croaked through my sore and dry throat. “It’s okay. She needed to do that.”

He paused after stripping me naked to look me in the eyes, his utterly haunted. “I am so sorry.”

“Mon amour,” I breathed, placing my hand over the thudding heart in his chest. “Please, don’t be.”

“Get in the shower, honey, then the bath will be ready once you’ve rinsed off,” Alexander said softly.

He looked me in the eyes, not once at my bare flesh. I was too hollow to thank him for that but I noticed it all the same. I nodded and stepped through the open door to the walk through shower. Surprisingly, Sin came with me, clothes and all. I hiccoughed as he tugged me into his arms and pressed my cheek to his chest. I burst into tears when he stepped us both under the hot spray.

“Let it out, my siren,” he cooed over and over again as he gently gathered my vomit splattered hair and lathered it with my honey-scented shampoo.

He moved me like a precious doll as he tended to me, washing and conditioning me before picking me up in his arms to transfer us both into the waiting bubble bath. He arranged himself behind me in the huge white tub and tucked both his arms and legs around me.

“I’ve got you,” he whispered into my hair once we were settled.

“We hurt her so badly,” I breathed, completely wrecked by my puking and the crying jag.

“We did,” he acknowledged. “It was awful but it is over now. You let her have her freak out and she doesn’t get anymore. This life that we’ve fought for does not include her bullying or her bitterness.”

“Sin,” I protested but he stopped me with a finger to my lips.

“No, Elle. We didn’t fight for this relationship only to have it poisoned by her every single day. We did a bad thing, a really fucking horrible thing to someone that we both cared for but it is done. We cannot keep retreading that path or we will never be happy.”

God, he was so right. I knew it, but it didn’t seem right to be so incandescently happy when she was so miserable.

“We aren’t good people,” I said, because I needed to acknowledge it.

“We did a bad thing,” he repeated. “So, maybe we aren’t the best people but I do not really fucking care. I would rather be a villain with you than a good person with anyone else.”

We sat in silence for a long time after that. Distantly, I could hear Alexander, Candy and Cosima cleaning up in the kitchen.

“Where did Seb go?” I finally asked.

“After Elena,” he explained.

“Good.”

“We’re going to be fine, my siren. Even if it was just you, me and this baby, I would make sure that we were the happiest family in the world. But we are not alone. We just had a whole group of people happy to congratulate us on our new house, on our baby and our new life together. We’re going to make it through this and I am going to give you a happily ever after. D’accord?”

“Je te crois,” I murmured back, because I believed him, even if it was hard to imagine it in the moment.

Chapter Seventeen.

I was beginning to wish that Sinclair wouldn’t read The New York Times anymore.

“Fuck,” Sinclair cursed as he slammed the paper down and reached for his phone. “Fuck!”

“Sin?” I asked, uncurling from the deep chaise lounge we had on our upper level deck.

We were drinking our morning tea - Sinclair had decided to forgo coffee as well in a show of moral support - and enjoying the beautiful late winter morning sunrise over Brooklyn. We both loved the dual view of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges and it was the perfect way to begin every morning. Sinclair had made the pot of herbal tea, wrapped me in a blanket and brought me up the stairs to present me with the only breakfast I could stomach, a thin slice of extremely toasted bread.

I had just finished and we were idly discussing the party he was planning in celebration of my gallery showing in two weeks when something in the paper turned him instantly on to beast mode.