Page 92 of Craving Sin

A moment of panic hits me, this fear that something is wrong because if not, then he wouldn’t be emailing me.

I click on the first one, some words feeling louder, looking bigger than others.

Rian O’Shea?

What the fuck are you thinking?

You’re going to ruin me!

Such a disgrace.

You’ve always been a disappointment.

Call me.

Why aren’t you answering your phone?

You don’t understand what you’re doing.

I’m sure that to him, I don’t understand what I’m doing. What other reason would I have for being with someone like Rian? I’m sure that’s what he means, but what he doesn’t see, what he would never see, is that Rian is a better man than he could ever be.

Rian, who loves me, just the way I am.

Fuck him. How dare he not give a shit about me, not want anything to do with me, and then he thinks he has the right to have a say in who I love? All because of what it will do to him and his career? The career he’s always loved a hundred times more than he’s ever loved me.

I know I’m not supposed to call him, but I can’t stop myself from picking up the phone and doing just that. It’s his personal cell that no one has the number to except people he chooses to give it to, so I know it will be my father who answers.

“Who is this?” he says instead of hello.

“It’s Abbott,” I say through clenched teeth.

“Jesus! Thank God. Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick about you.”

The audacity of his words feels like he threw acid on my heart. “Worried about me? You’ve been worried about me? You’ve never given a shit about me! Not once in my whole fucking life.”

“We don’t have time for this right now. You don’t know who that man is.”

“No. You don’t know who he is. Rian loves me. He’s a better man than—”

“He is using you, Preston.” I wince at his use of my first name, but still, his words stop me in my tracks.

Rian isn’t using me. I know that, deep down, I know that, but hearing him say it plays on all my insecurities.

“Rian loves me,” I say again.

His voice lowers, a tightness I don’t recognize in it when he says, “There’s more going on here than you know, son.”

I roll my eyes, not believing him. “Then tell me.”

“I can’t. Not over the phone. You’re going to get yourself killed. You’re going to get all of us killed.”

Something about his words stops my heart. Maybe it’s the true fear in them. I’ve never heard my father sound afraid—not once in my life. But the shake in his voice, the warning there, tells me that he’s very scared right now.

Is there more going on than I know? Probably, and I don’t think it’s coming from Rian.

Rian trusts me.

I trust him.