Page 91 of Sin

Instead, he stays.

He stays through the night. He stays through the morning. He stays when pale winter light creeps through my curtains and turns my bedroom soft and honest and much too real.

I wake with him beside me, one heavy arm around my waist, his breath warm against the back of my neck.

For a moment, I don’t move and let myself have it. The weight of him. The quiet. The impossible comfort of waking up with someone who makes the loneliness in my apartment feel like a thing that happened to someone else.

Then guilt stirs and I start to pull away.

Sin tightens his arm around me. “Don’t.” His voice is rough with sleep.

“You’re awake.”

“Unfortunately.”

“You should go.”

“I know.” He kisses the back of my shoulder.

“Sin.”

“Tell me to leave, then.”

I don’t. Of course I don’t.

That becomes the shape of the weekend. A thousand chances to stop and neither of us taking them.

Saturday passes in pieces.

Coffee in my kitchen, where he leans against the counter wearing only his pants from the night before while I pretend seeing Mason Sinclair barefoot in my apartment doesn’t permanently alter my brain chemistry. A shower that starts as practical and ends with my hands braced against the tile while he kneels behind me, proving there are worse things than hell and all of them involve his mouth. Breakfast delivery we barely eat because he says something about syrup on my thumb, and then breakfast becomes irrelevant. A nap tangled together on my couch, which is absolutely not comfortable enough for two people but somehow holds us anyway.

At some point, I realize he hasn’t reached for his ring. It still sits on my dresser. A small circle of gold in a room full of sin. I hate it, but I also hate the part of me that feels relieved every time I see his hand bare against my skin.

By Saturday night, my apartment no longer feels like mine. His coat is over the chair. His shirt is on my bedroom floor. His phone charger is plugged in beside my bed. He knows where the coffee mugs are. He knows the left side of my mattress dips slightly. He knows exactly how to touch me when I’m trying to be quiet.

I know the sounds he makes when he forgets to be controlled. I know the scar near his ribs. I know he likes his coffee black unless he’s too tired, and then he’ll drink whatever I hand him. I know he avoids looking at his phone when it lights up.

That part is harder to ignore.

It buzzes through dinner. He looks at the screen on the third buzz. His face closes. It’s Jenna. I don’t need to see the name to know.

“I can go into the other room,” I say.

He sets the phone face down on the table. “No.”

“She’s your wife.”

His jaw tightens. “I’m aware.”

“Are you?”

His eyes come to mine. For one second, we aren’t lovers tangled in my kitchen with half-empty takeout containers between us.

We are what we actually are.

A married man and the woman he shouldn’t be with.

The truth sits there, ugly and heavy.