Guilty As Sin (Sin Trilogy#2)

“Bringing my problems back to Gable didn’t exactly work either,” I reply in an attempt to defend myself.

“Your problems started in Gable. It’s the running that didn’t work. You ever think about staying in one place and facing them, and see how that goes down?”

I clasp the mug in my hands and bring it closer to my body, trying to absorb some of the heat. “Won’t staying just make it worse? The press won’t leave.”

He shrugs. “You won’t know until you try. It seems like you’ve made the same mistake a few times. Why not make a different one and see how it feels?” Magnus leans forward, resting his elbow on the counter. “When you get to be my age, you realize life is a whole lot of bullshit peppered with a few important things. But until you’re my age, you’re gonna mistake a whole lot of that bullshit for the important things. You need to figure out what you want out of this life, kid. Find the people you want to share it with and hold them close. That’s one of the few things that actually matters.”

I soak in the wisdom I didn’t expect to hear this morning and turn it around in my head, looking for flaws. I can’t find any.

“How’d you get to be so smart?”

“I’m almost ninety years old, and I live out here alone because I learned all that the hard way. Don’t do what I did. Don’t hang on to something that doesn’t matter so hard that you can’t let it go to reach out and grab what does.”

Is that what I’m doing? Holding on to the past so hard that I can’t grasp what’s happening in the here and now?

What happened a decade ago between Lincoln and me colors every moment of our present. We talked about a fresh start, and then everything went to hell moments later when we actually needed to communicate with each other about something important.

With the benefit of some distance and a little fortifying coffee, I think about this morning’s situation.

Did we both just overreact?

Lincoln’s words were most definitely an accusation . . . but from the way that article was written, how could he come to any other conclusion? Any outsider looking in would assume I was the one in charge of Ricky’s estate.

And Lincoln has been taught not to trust anyone.

“And the last piece of advice I got for you—if you think life is going to hand you nothing but shit to eat, that’s all you’re ever going to see on your plate. You gotta look for the good to recognize it, kid, or you’ll miss it completely.” Magnus points out the window and up at the sky. “I could see that blue sky, or I could focus on the one cloud hanging there. When you get to be my age, you don’t have time to let a few drops of rain ruin your entire day. It might be your last.”

He has a point. In my parents’ house, everyone was always looking for the bad. Probably so much that we missed out on a lot of the good. It’s a habit I’ve never truly broken.

Magnus whacks his mug down on the counter. “We got company.” He grabs the shotgun and makes it to the front door quicker than someone his age should be able to move.



“What are you—”

When he swings the door open and fires a few rounds into the air, I scream, spilling my coffee all over the floor. With my ears ringing, I stare at him like he’s lost his damned mind.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Magnus?”

He holds out the shotgun to me, barrel pointed up. “You want to take some potshots at the feller coming up the driveway? Bet you haven’t tried that yet.”

I peek out the window. Sure enough, Lincoln’s walking up the gravel drive with both hands over his head.





10





WHITNEY





The past

THE WHOLE WORLD passed me by while I retreated into my fog where nothing felt real. Some days, I felt like I’d stepped outside my body and was watching life as a play while other people acted it out.

How can my parents be gone?

I was starting to wonder if it would ever feel real. Part of me hoped not. That might be more than I could handle.

I heard Asa on the phone with the bank. Dad hadn’t paid the mortgage since they bought the house, and they were going to foreclose. The only way we could stop it was if we paid off the entire loan. They wouldn’t even listen to reason about letting us catch up on the payments.

Asa’s temper snapped as soon as he hung up the phone. “It’s because Commodore motherfucking Riscoff is on the board. They won’t cut us any fucking slack.” He said it to Aunt Jackie, but I was pretty sure the whole neighborhood heard him.

So now I’m going to be homeless.

Our parents didn’t have life insurance or a single dime of savings. Mom and Dad were supposed to be buried in their plot at the cemetery, but Asa only had enough saved up from his army pay to cover a cremation. Aunt Jackie offered to take out a second mortgage to buy caskets, but Asa wouldn’t let her.

His reasoning? “What do they care now, anyway? They’re dead. We can bury their ashes instead. There’s no point in making you go into debt to buy a box where they can rot.”

Even though his crude words had made me cry, he’d had a point. It still hurt to know that the choice was taken from us because of money. But right now, everything came down to money. Mostly the fact that we had none.

I was a coward for letting Asa and Jackie deal with everything, but what help could I really offer in this situation? None.

So instead, I stared at the light green wall of Cricket’s bedroom from where I was curled up on her bed. I crushed her pillow to my chest and wished I could live anyone else’s life but my own.

I’d almost managed to doze off, but the front door of the house slammed and Asa yelled.

“Get the hell off our property, motherfucker! You aren’t welcome here.”

My chin jerked up as my entire body started to vibrate. There was only one person who would piss Asa off that badly solely by existing.

I rolled over on Cricket’s bed, and it was the fastest I’d moved in days. I ran to look out the window, and sure enough, Lincoln stood in the driveway.

Asa stalked toward him, using the rifle in his hand to point at Lincoln’s truck, and his voice was loud enough to filter through the single-paned glass.

“You get back in your truck and get the hell out of here, Riscoff.”

“I need to talk to her.”

“Well, I’m the one with a gun. So, fuck no, you aren’t seeing my sister.”

“I—”

“Rango already told me all the bullshit you spouted off at him. Whatever you think you had with Whitney? It’s just as dead as our folks and your dad.”

I winced, hating how cruel Asa was being. Lord, if he knew I’d run down the cabin’s gravel drive barefoot after Lincoln threw me out, he’d shoot Lincoln dead right where he stood.

The tragedy that followed might have relegated our fight that night to the level of doesn’t matter at all in the grand scheme of things, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever forget the sting of the sharp side of Lincoln’s tongue.

He made me feel like trash, and I never want to feel like that again.

If there was any thought in my head about leaving the house to battle with Asa in order to hear what Lincoln had to say, that thought stopped me.

“You can’t keep me from seeing her. Not forever,” Lincoln said, and Asa let out a harsh laugh.

“Maybe not forever, but for long enough that it won’t matter anymore.”



I didn’t know what my brother meant by that, because his leave wasn’t going to last much longer.

Lincoln stood his ground until Asa raised the gun and sighted in on his head.

Oh Jesus. No. My heart seized and I grabbed the latch of the window, prepared to throw it open and scream down the neighborhood.

I can’t bear to lose him too. I didn’t know where the thought came from, but Lincoln took a few steps back toward his truck.

“That’s right, Riscoff, you keep on fucking walking. And remember, I know a hundred ways to kill you that don’t need a gun. You ever try to talk to my sister again, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

“You can try,” Lincoln said. “My family would bury you.”