Sweet the Sin by Claire Kent
“This man,” Reese said, after a minute of visibly suppressing her questions. “Do you love him or hate him?”
“Both, I think.”
“And how does he feel about you? Does he love you or hate you?”
“Maybe both.”
“You’ve left him now?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you resolve the thing from your past?”
Kelly shook her head. “Nothing is resolved. But the only way to resolve it is to go back to him, and that just feels—wrong in every way.”
Reese was silent for a long time. A really long time. Until finally she said, “Well, I don’t know. I guess you need to figure out what’s worse for you. Leaving all of it unresolved and living with the mess as it is. Or going through with it—even if it means the whole mess explodes all over you—because there might be a chance for some of the mess to finally clear.”
As was often the case, Reese had gotten it exactly right.
—
The next morning, Kelly had breakfast with Jack Martin at a dingy diner near his office that he evidently loved.
She did her best to explain to him what had happened.
He listened without talking much, perhaps because he was busy packing away a plate of eggs, bacon, and toast. But when she finished her slightly censored rehearsal of events, he leaned back in his booth and thought in silence for a minute.
Finally, he said, “Well, I guess you shouldn’t have fallen for him.”
She stiffened dramatically in indignation. She hadn’t said anything about falling for Caleb, but Jack wasn’t an idiot. He’d obviously read between the lines. “Would you like me reach over the table and smack you?”
Jack chuckled and took a gulp of coffee. “Not really. I’m an old-fashioned guy, and that kind of thing doesn’t turn me on.”
She rolled her eyes, trying to maintain her annoyance with him. It was harder than it should have been. “I didn’t meet with you to hear you state the obvious—especially when you’re being obnoxious about it.”
“Yeah. I know. But I don’t really know what else to tell you. I’m still working on digging things up on him, but I can’t guarantee to get an answer to you about whether he’s guilty or not.”
“It’s hard for me to know what to do, since I don’t have the answer to that question.”
“I guess. But it seems to me that your choices are the same either way. Marshall is a bad guy, whether he’s done this particular thing wrong or not. Are you really picturing a happy future with him if he happens to be cleared on this?”
She shook her head. “I’m not picturing any sort of happy future. I just want some sort of—resolution. I don’t know how I can go on without it. What am I supposed to do if I just drop it now?”
Jack put his coffee cup down and leaned forward. His voice was uncharacteristically earnest as he said, “You live your life. You do your job. You paint all the cutesy pet portraits you can. You hang out with your friends. You try to do good wherever you’re able to. You find some nice guy—maybe a stunningly handsome guy in the security business—to go out with. He wouldn’t be a slouch in the sack, you know.” His eyes gleamed briefly with dry humor before he concluded, “You settle back into real life. Why would that be so impossible? I know you’ve been wounded in all this, but don’t you think it would be better for you to just let the wound heal?”
She let out a shaky breath, suddenly wanting the future he’d painted so much she could taste it. A peaceful existence. A job she enjoyed. A nice, normal guy like Jack. But it was as out of her grasp as it had always been—even when the name Caleb Marshall wasn’t yet a blip on her radar.
She’d never believed that kind of life was possible. She was still trapped in the woods, next to the bleeding body of her father.
And she understood something then, sitting across from Jack in an old diner on a sunny morning in May. And she knew it even more deeply as she said the words out loud. “But that only works if the wound is a clean one. And mine isn’t. It’s mangled and infected and covered by nothing by scar tissue. Time doesn’t fix that.”
She saw this truth register on his rugged face as he let out a long exhale. “Yeah. I guess that might be right.”
“Maybe the wound has to be ripped back open, if I ever want it to heal clean.”
—
After breakfast, she went back to her apartment to pick up her stuff. She still wasn’t ready to move back in there. For one, Caleb would be able to find her, and she wasn’t ready to face him yet. She didn’t know if he would come looking for her eventually, but he might.
For another, the familiar rooms and all of her possessions seemed to taunt her with their superficiality—as if all of the years between her father’s death and Caleb were just a pretense of existence.
Maybe they were.
Either way, she needed to get some more clothes if she was going to keep staying with Reese, so she stopped by quickly on her way back from breakfast.
When she walked into her living area, she saw her mother sitting on her sofa.
Kelly pulled to a stop, her purse slipping slowly off her arm. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you.” Her mother was as pale and cold and deadened as the last time she’d seen her, almost a month ago now.
“Have you been living here?”
“No. But I’ve been keeping tabs on you, and I thought you might drop by yesterday or today, since you’ve walked out on him, so I came here to wait.”
Kelly took a couple of deep breaths and walked over to sit on the chair across from her mother. “What do you want?”
“I want to hear an update. Why haven’t you replied to any of my messages? Why did you leave him?”
She’d known her mother would be angry and disappointed, which is why she’d been trying to avoid her. Her mother’s entire life had been shaped around this one grief, this one loss, and even her daughter had been made a victim of it. This was the last thing Kelly was equipped to deal with now. “I needed some space. I don’t think you understand how hard this thing is for me to do.”
“Why is it hard? So, you had to fuck him. You’ve used your body before.”
“Not like this.”
Her mother was peering at her with a scary sort of scrutiny. “You’ve fallen in love with the monster.”
The tone was horrified, outraged, utterly betrayed, and it felt like a physical blow. Kelly winced and looked away.
“Ungrateful, disloyal little bitch,” her mother muttered.
And that just made Kelly angry. She stiffened in her chair and glared back at her mother. “You can call me anything you want. It won’t come close to what I think of you. Did Jack Martin tell you that Caleb might not even be guilty of Dad’s murder? I bet he did, and you just ignored it. Well, you can continue your narrow, foolish vendetta if you want, ignoring the fact that you might have been going after the wrong person from the very beginning. You can ignore any flicker of humanity you have left in your cold, dead heart. But I’m not willing to do so. And I don’t think Dad would have wanted me to. I’m not going to bring a man down if he isn’t guilty of the crime.”
“He is guilty. You’re just deceiving yourself because you don’t want him to be. But what do you think will happen when he finds out what you’ve been doing? There’s no sappy romantic honeymoon waiting for you. You know what he’s like now. You know it more deeply than anyone. And do you think he’ll have mercy on you, after you’ve betrayed him so deeply, when he’s never had mercy on anyone who has ever stood in his way?”
It was true. Kelly knew it was true. If Caleb ever found out what she’d done and why she’d done it, his hatred would burn hotter toward her than it had ever burned for anyone before. No one had ever betrayed Caleb the way she had.
But it didn’t matter. She wasn’t after a happy ending here. She’d never been after a happy ending. She knew what she wanted now, what she needed, the only thing that could possibly allow her to take a ste
“I’m not looking for mercy,” she said, standing up because she’d finally decided. “I’m not looking for grace or forgiveness or love or rosy sunsets. Those things belong in a different world than this one. But I want the truth, and I think I might be able to find it. And I want to heal, and I’ll never even start unless I can dig down deep, to the very first wound. For that, I need real answers.”
Her mother looked surprised and a little confused, and she stood up so she was on a level with her daughter. “If you tell Caleb the truth, you’ll never get any answers. You’ll never get anywhere at all.”
“I know that. I’m not going to tell him the truth.” She felt full of confidence now, direction, a bleak sort of peace. Full of anger and heartbreak and grief. “Not that truth, anyway. I’m going to go back to him. I’d rather be all the way broken—if it means that one day I might be whole—than keep living this half-broken life forever.”
“So you are going to go back? You are going to do what we planned?”
“I’m going to find out the truth.”
“Even if it means breaking him?”
“Even if it means breaking myself.”
—
That evening Kelly and Reese were watching TV again, and Kelly was trying to come up with a way to go back to Caleb.
She’d crushed him a couple of days ago, and he might not want to forgive her. He might not want to take her back.
But, if she was ever going to get to the truth, she needed to figure out some way to reconcile with him.
She’d come up with nothing but a lot of silly ideas that would never work when there was a knock on the door.
Reese got up to look through the peephole. She came back to the couch with the strangest expression. “I think it’s for you.”
Frowning, Kelly got up and went to look, then understood the reason for Reese’s strange expression.
It was Caleb. Standing right outside the door.
Kelly froze in a moment of pure terror, but took a few breaths, and centered herself. She hadn’t conjured him with her thoughts. He just happened to have chosen this moment to turn up.
Kelly opened the door, feeling sloppy and unattractive in her faded jeans and white T-shirt, with bare feet, no makeup, and her hair pulled up messily with a clip at the back of her head.
Caleb was standing in the hallway, calm and composed. He looked characteristically handsome and sophisticated in another one of his business suits. He’d probably come over after work.
“Hi,” he said softly.
Kelly glanced at the floor, then back up at him quickly, trying to think but only aware of a wash of pleasure, comfort, and excitement at his presence. “Hi.”
“I know you said you needed some space,” he murmured, his expression revealing nothing but a questioning mildness, as if he was reining in all of his powerful feelings. “But you said maybe we could work it out later, and I was hoping that later could be now.”
Her heart started to hammer as she realized that he wanted her back. He’d made a step here that she’d never expected him to make—putting aside his pride and resentment to come to her.
It made things easier for her, in one way. And so much harder, in another. This was what she’d needed to happen, but it was also concrete evidence that Caleb felt for her so much more than she’d ever believed was possible.
He had fallen for her. All the way. So much so that he had changed.
She nodded. “Now is okay. I was thinking about—I was trying to figure out a way to see you again myself.”
Caleb’s eyes softened in what might have been relief, but the expression was so fleeting it was hard to pin down. Kelly glanced back at Reese, who was sitting on the couch, watching them with open curiosity.
Kelly cleared her throat. “Maybe we can take a walk.”
“Sounds good to me.”
She put her shoes on, waved at Reese, and then closed the apartment door behind her. They stood in the middle of the hall, staring self-consciously at each other. Until finally Kelly said, “How did you know I was here?”
Caleb raised an eyebrow, answering her without words.
“Right,” she said, realizing the answer to her own question. “You have a team who is very good at locating people. Have you been having me followed this whole time?” As she asked the question, she felt a little tremble of fear.
“No. I was angry at first, and I thought I would just let you go,” Caleb explained, nothing emotional or dramatic in his voice or on his face. He started to walk down the hall, so she fell in step with him. “But then I discovered that I couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t what?” Her mind was aching, trying to find the right words to say to him.
“Couldn’t let you go.” He stepped into the elevator and watched her as she followed. He didn’t look at all upset, and his hands, his fingers, were relaxed at his sides.
“Oh,” was all she could think of to say.
“I’m not trying to rush you. I would just like to know if there’s even any hope.”
Despite his cool composure, Kelly knew exactly how hard that had been for him to say. It went against his nature—against the way he’d learned to deal with the world—to make himself vulnerable enough to even ask for hope.
She wished she could reward him, give him some sort of consolation. But there was far too much going on here. “Hope?” she asked faintly, still stalling for the right words.
For the first time, Caleb’s face twisted just slightly. “So you don’t think there is any? I thought you said you were thinking about talking to me.”
“I was. But, to tell you the truth, I don’t really know what to hope for. Everything seems to be so—so twisted up between us. I know it’s my fault,” she added hurriedly, since he wouldn’t know most of what had twisted things. “And all my mess from—from my past. But still, I don’t know.”
The elevator had reached the ground floor, and they both got off. They stood facing each other in the lobby.
“I know it was all too messy,” Caleb replied, his voice a little bit thicker. “But I don’t think it has to be. You feel the same way I do. I know you do. The last time we were together…meant something. You can’t pretend that it didn’t.”
He looked so different than she was used to seeing him, and it wasn’t just the setting. In some inexplicable way, he’d lost some of his impenetrability. Some of his untouchable distance.
It wasn’t that he looked tender or sappy or loving or weak.
But, at the moment, he looked almost young.
Closing her eyes, she said, the words nearly a plea, “Caleb, it did. I do. But it’s so much more complicated than that, for me.”
If she were smart, she wouldn’t be putting up any resistance. She knew she needed to get back together with Caleb, if she ever hoped to uncover the truth, so none of this was helping her agenda.
But she had to be honest with him. As honest as she possibly could.
He took a step closer to her but didn’t move to touch her. “It’s complicated for me too. I know I’m not the man you might want me to be, for a serious relationship. But I want you so much, I don’t care. I want you, Kelly, and I can try to change, if you need me to. All of me is yours.”
She was almost choking as she heard the words, which touched the deepest desires of her heart. She swayed on her feet.
Caleb raised a hand and cupped her cheek. “Are you going to faint?”
She shook with amusement, just on the edge of grief. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, you might consider it.” The corner of his mouth twitched and his eyebrows slanted up in irrepressible irony. “This is my grand, dramatic gesture, and it would be nice to have such a profound response from you for my efforts.”
Kelly laughed for real, and then she couldn’t seem to stop. After a minute, it mingled with tears, and he pulled her into his arms so she half laughed, half sobbed against his chest.
Eventually, she got her
“So was that a yes?” he asked, searching her face with brown eyes. “Do you think we could try?”
She nodded, ecstatic and despairing at the same time. “Let’s try.”
With a muffled groan, Caleb pulled her into an urgent embrace. He clutched at her desperately, finally unleashing a little of his pent-up feelings. She was shaking against him and fisting her hands in his shirt. He was murmuring against her neck. His words were incoherent, but she thought that maybe she could understand them.
The moment couldn’t last forever, so eventually they pulled apart. They were still standing in the lobby of Reese’s building, and her doorman was giving them the eye.
“So what now?” Kelly asked, having absolutely no idea how she was supposed to feel at this moment.
Caleb smiled, looking like himself again—cool, confident, intelligent, so sexy he took her breath away. “Well, I was wondering if you might want to go out on a date.”
Chapter 12
Caleb couldn’t remember ever really being with someone. Genuinely with them—in heart as well as body.
Well, he did remember. And then he’d lost her—when he was still just a boy. And he’d certainly never felt that way with anyone since.
Until now. Until Kelly.
He wasn’t fool enough to think that one experience—that one person—would change the whole course of his life. It might feel that way occasionally, but he wasn’t really any different than he’d been just yesterday, than he’d been a month ago. Nothing had softened or weakened about him in the last two weeks, since he’d shown up on Kelly’s doorstep in an act that had surprised even him.
He’d been miserable in the two days she’d walked away from him, but he’d never dreamed he’d want someone enough to work to get her back.
He wasn’t really different now. He just felt something new when he woke up in the morning, when he went to check his phone, when he got his stuff together after work.