Page 36 of Craving Sin

“I don’t know,” he answers. “But I’m right. I don’t understand you.”

“Why should you be able to? We’re nothing alike.”

“No.” Abbott shakes his head. “We’re not. But there’s something about you that makes me feel like I should get you. I don’t understand it.”

I don’t understand it either, and I don’t want him feeling that way. Not about me.

As a whole, I don’t sit around disliking myself for the way I’ve lived my life, for the things I’ve done. Thinking about it that way won’t change anything. I regret that Moira loved a man who didn’t deserve her. I regret that Cillian deserved a better father and a chance at a different life, but the rest of it…just is. I can’t imagine what I would even do with my life if I didn’t live the life I was destined to have. But that doesn’t mean I want it for others, that I don’t know the things I do are wrong, and that I don’t deserve any of the good things that have happened to me. Abbott believing he should understand me feels like him thinking there is some good to me that he doesn’t see, that there’s a reason I do the things I do, when in reality, there isn’t.

“Don’t romanticize me.”

“I’m not.” He shakes his head.

My eyes find his mouth, study the bow shape of it, notice again the scruff, the freckles that decorate his face, one larger and a little darker, close to his ear. I hear his breath catch, see his pulse beat in the base of his throat, and…fuck, what would that taste like? How would it feel for it to beat and throb against my tongue? What is this pull I feel to this man?

I step back, needing some space, needing to break whatever this moment is, before I do something I can’t take back.

“Come on.”

“Where are we going?” Abbott asks.

“For a walk. You should get some fresh air.” We both should. He’s already going to spend most of his final days locked in this cabin.

The least I can give him is that.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Abbott

Things with Rian are different today, and I’m trying to figure out why. First, the breakfast surprised me, then whatever that conversation afterward was. I don’t know what to think about it, and honestly, I don’t know what to think about myself either, because my head is a jumbled mess where he’s concerned.

I hate him.

I hate what he stands for, who he is, and what he does. He’s going to be the man who kills me—if I can’t figure a way out of this situation, that is. Then why do I feel an unexplainable connection to him at the same time? Why do I feel sorry for him? Why do I care about his relationship with his son and wonder why my own father can’t care enough to want to make things right with me the way Rian does with Cillian?

It’s a mind fuck and not a good one. I’ve always prided myself on being grounded in logic, knowing right from wrong, and living by what I feel is right. But here is this man, this murderous, dangerous man who lives in the gray, and there’s a part of me that wants to understand why.

“Okay,” I say when the silence has stretched too long between us.

We go back to the bedroom, the one I’ve been sharing with him the past couple of days while he slept.

“I can help you wash up.” He can’t have a shower yet, but I can give him a sponge bath.

“No, thank you. I can do it.”

“Well, I’d like a shower,” I reply. I haven’t had one since arriving here.

“Okay. I won’t look.”

So clearly, I can’t even shower on my own, though I don’t know what I expect.

Rian waits outside of the bathroom while I undress and get in, then I hear him join me in the bathroom, the sink running while he washes up.

I wrap a towel around my waist when I get out and see him eye me, his gaze locked on my shoulders. “What?”

“Freckles,” he says.

“Yep. I got a lot of them. If I promise not to pocket a razor, can I shave?”