What Sinners Love (Sinners of Hawthorne University 3)

And I don’t think I could survive that.

15

I skip classes for the next few days. It’s exactly what I was trying to avoid, and the stubborn part of me hates letting Alan and his disgusting progeny claim even this small victory.

But I'm not ditching out on my classes just so I can stay home and cower. I’m not doing it because I’m too scared to face Cliff again. I’m skipping class because I need to paint. I could feel it after the encounter with Cliff—there was something inside of me that needed to get out, that would tear me open and crawl out if I didn’t pick up my brush and paint it out first.

I’ve always loved art, but I never thought painting would become a conduit for memories the way it has.

I finally came to terms with the fact that I didn’t remember my past, convincing myself it didn’t really matter. But now it does matter. It matters more than anything in the world.

We can’t play the same trick on Cliff twice. We tried to draw an incriminating statement out of him by letting him get me alone. But after I flipped out on him when my memory was triggered last time, I think he realized what I was trying to do. He cut himself off before mentioning the bunker, and I’m sure it wasn’t an accident.

So in the absence of any other information or evidence, I’m focusing on getting my memories back. I know that just remembering what happened all those years ago isn’t going to give me solid evidence that I can take to the police, but it might lead us to the right place. If we can’t get Alan or Cliff on anything we have right now, we’re going to need new dirt.

Maybe there’s something I saw in my past, something I remember, that could help us nail Alan. Maybe I have a reason locked away somewhere in my head—a reason why he kidnapped me, why he locked me away for so many years.

Why did he want me? What would he have done with me if I hadn’t escaped? Reagan was there too, and now she’s going to Hawthorne just like I am. How the hell did she get out if she didn’t come with me when I escaped?

My head spins with questions, but for once, I don’t block them out. I let them rush in like a flood, consuming me until my head feels like it’s about to fucking explode. I don’t think about what I’m painting, what colors I’m picking up with my brush, I just paint and hope that something comes out.

Why was I kept in a bunker? What is Alan’s deal, what’s his game? How did he find me? Was I just a kid on the street he picked up? Why me?

My paintbrush curves and swirls. I remember a woman. Snippets of memories come back, like puzzle pieces that all belong to the same puzzle but don’t connect anywhere. I remember a woman, but I don’t remember who she was. She used to come down to the bunker, and then one day she just stopped.

Alan’s wife?

It must’ve been. He said she died several years ago, so maybe the time when she stopped coming down was after her death. I remember her being kind to me, but the thought of her makes my stomach sour anyway. If she came down to visit us, that means she knew what Alan was doing. She knew and went along with it.

And that makes her fucking evil, no matter how gentle her smiles were.

My chest caves in a little as I look at the painting I just finished. None of the shadows and shapes in this one mean anything, but there’s a feeling that goes beyond literal interpretation.

It’s pain. Death. Violence. Fear.

My body trembles as I drag my eyes from that painting to the dozens of other ones propped up on nearly every surface of the room, lying on the floor to dry, the worst ones shoved into corners.

This is what’s left now, isn’t it? Just me and my messed up head, me and my past.

I hate it. I fucking hate all of it. I hate that something I love—my passion, my escape, my art—is becoming something that represents the part of me I despise. My past.

My messy, fucked up past has already taken so much of my life away from me. And now this? Does it really have to take this too?

I’m filled with the sudden violent urge to destroy all of my paintings, to rip them to shreds the same way whoever broke into my dorm that day did. It must’ve been Reagan, I realize in a grim moment of clarity. She probably hoped that would win her points with Alan too. That she could keep me from becoming a problem if she could wreck my art.

It broke my heart to see my paintings scattered across the room in pieces. It sent me spiraling into a panic attack. But now I find myself searching the room for something I can use to destroy my own work—as if by obliterating them, I can nullify the painful memories, make them untrue somehow.

Change my past somehow.

I can’t find anything better than a pair of scissors, so I pick them up and grip the handle in one fist, raising the scissors like a dagger. I’m striding purposefully toward a ca

nvas that’s propped against one wall when a voice startles me.

“You don’t have to do that, Sparrow,” Gray says quietly.

I almost drop the scissors in surprise. I whip my head toward the sound of his voice in time to see him step inside the room and close the door behind him. When his eyes meet mine, they’re stormy but sincere.

“Do what?” I ask, my voice rough and dull. It’s pretty fucking obvious what I was about to do, but I can’t quite bring myself to say it.