The Good in Sin

A Step

Sin began to heat up, worried she'd get mad at him and demand to never talk to her or her son ever again. He had never seen her so serious.

Nodding he led her to the kitchen behind the living room and quickly cleaned up the hot chocolate mess he made earlier. "Would you like some coffee?" He said, pulling out a chair for her at his small round kitchen table. He only had two chairs, one of them occupied by a stack of books and scraps of paper.

"Actually, do you have anymore hot chocolate?" Autumn asked, her voice turning soft again, her face flushed from her frantic worry she previously endured.

Sin repressed a smile, suddenly seeing past her beauty and noticing a young woman, almost child-like in the way she asked him. Her maternal nature seemed to be at bay for the time being and she looked at the wood on the table, brushing a couple fingers against it.

"Yeah, I have some left." He started on boiling some water and prepared for her a mug, leaning against the counter to watch her. 

"Is this real wood?" She said, looking at the glossy tree bark enclosing the table.

Sin nodded, watching her hand pass over the whole table. He forced himself to tear his eyes away, as his blood began to get hot like the water beside him. "Marshmallows?"

"Yes please." 

He waited a few minutes, standing there and staring at the water that refused to boil under his glare. Where else was he supposed to look? When his eyes landed on her he didn't want to take them off, and god knows how uncomfortable he'd make her if she realized he ogled at her.

"How long have you been spending time with my son?" Her curious voice asked with caution.

Turning around trying to make casual eye contact, but soon overthinking it and getting warm all over when he tried to figure out which eye to look at, he looked down and fiddled with the bag of marshmallows. "Today?" 

"Sure."

"I was on a run and passed him walking along the river. It was about... four?" Sin thought to himself cautiously, not wanting to mess up under her slightly scrutinizing stare.

"Four? He gets out at three, what was he doing by the river?" She demanded, and Sin finally realized the water was boiling.

"I'm... not sure. He seemed upset." Sin said, not sure whether to bring up Nix's whole Keith situation and possibly get him in trouble. He felt not only was it not his place to say something, but a strong belief that Nix wanted to keep his behavior and rant between the two.

"Upset? What about?" She said while he stirred in the hot chocolate powder and threw in a few large marshmallows.

Sin shrugged, lying to her face while he handed her the mug, "I don't really know, he didn't say. He calmed down a little and I thought I'd cheer him up with some hot chocolate."

With eyes downcast, focusing on bringing the mug to her lips, her lashes nearly brushed her cheeks, and she looked so beautiful in that moment, he couldn't look away.

After setting the mug down and licking the chocolate on her top lip away, Autumn met his eyes. "When did you two get so close?"

He got up and grabbed a mug of coffee for himself and sat back across from her, wondering how to go about answering her. "I'm not sure. He would talk to me at the diner and one day he knocked on my door and we played in the junkyard." Sin felt silly. He felt she was interrogating him but he felt attracted to her all the while.

"What did you play?" She asked in curiosity, as if having a pretend junkyard war wasn't the first thing to come to mind for her.

"We fought bad guys." He said plainly.