Sins Chaos

Chapter Twenty

Roz

She freaking lied to me.

Again.

That was all I could think. I was absolutely mystified that it had once again gotten to this point. I honestly thought things had been going well.

My bad.

I should have known better. Deep down, if I were honest, I had known that her being past this whole keeping things from me to "protect me" phase was a pipe dream.

"Don't," I said through gritted teeth, "move."

I pinned Aerin's arms over her head with one hand, ripping the towel away from her body with the other. I ran my eyes over her slender body, settling my gaze on the smooth scar underneath her ribcage, the one from June when Kai had stabbed her.

Above the scar, to the left, closer to her stomach, was a jagged scar, about three inches across.

What...

There was a similar, though skinnier, scar on her left thigh, a few inches below the shorts of her bikini.

That hadn't been there a few months ago, just like the second scar on her ribcage hadn't been there. I knew because, while we hadn't had sex since that night in June, we'd had some PG-13 rated fun the night before her so called "accident". And, well, I had sort of memorized every inch of her body.

The...

My eyes rested on the third new scar, the tip of it protruding from the top of the bikini shorts. I pulled her bikini bottoms down another inch, my breath catching in my throat. There was a scar that ran from one side of her lower abdomen to the other.

Fuck.

I brought my gaze back up to her face. My eyes bored into hers. She glanced away, studying my bare chest, swallowing hard.

"How did you—" I cut myself off, taking a deep breath to control the anger in my voice. "How did I not know about—" I hissed out a breath, tightening my hold on her wrists as I realized she hadn't let me near her, at least in that way, since that night.

My eyes narrowed. "You know what, never mind. A better question is, when did you get these?"

Aerin's eyes widened. She opened her mouth, closing it again as she continued to stare at my chest.

"How about you look me in the eye as you lie to me, Aerin? That would be an awesome change of pace from you stabbing me in the back."

She raised her eyes to mine and mumbled incoherently, "When I opted out of the Jankin's party."

Oh. My. God.

Had she just told me the truth? I waited for the angels to sing, a heavenly light to appear, the planet to move; anything really that would give me a sign that I wasn't imagining this moment.

"What was that? Would you like to try that again? This time without the whole mumbling routine?"

Aerin heaved out a pained sigh. I watched her pulse beat rapidly in her throat. "Fine. Since you are hell bent on knowing something I know you really don't want to know, I will tell you. I promise I won't tell you 'I told you so' later on when you realize I'm right. I got them the night you guys went to the Jankin's party without me."

Hot damn. So she was capable of the truth. Granted, she was only capable of spitting it out when backed into a corner and busted beyond a shadow of a doubt, but still. Who knew?

I raised an eyebrow. "If memory serves, you said you weren't feeling good that night and that you were going to lie in bed and watch a movie. Next thing I know, Decker is telling us that you had been hit by a car. Granted, you were sore for weeks afterward, but"—I shot her a dubious look—"unless the car that hit you had spikes equivalent to a porcupine, or horns rivaling a bull, he pulled that story straight out of his ass."

"Well, you, uh, see... I sort of, um, exaggerated the whole not, er, you know, uh, feeling well scenario," she stuttered.

No shit. I had figured that one out all on my lonesome.

I feigned a shocked look. "No? Really? You don't say?"

Aerin flinched at the sarcasm dripping from each word. "After you all left, I went for a, um, run through the park."

And the million dollar question of the day was... "Alone?"

Her eyes shifted slightly, returning to mine. "No," she whispered.

I sighed, releasing her arms. I stepped back and dropped onto the worn out couch with a groan. "Yeah, I kinda arrived at that conclusion on my own. The way you looked guiltily away and whispered the answer sort of gave it away." I raked a hand through my hair. "I take it—now, mind you, this is me going out on a limb here—that, since I haven't heard about this mysterious running partner before now, they are male."

She pulled the towel around her midsection again, shivering despite the humid temperature in the basement. She didn't answer. Instead, she slipped into her room like the slimy, elusive snake she was.

I took that as confirmation of my suspicions.

She emerged from her room a few minutes later, dressed in a white halter top and cut off jean shorts. Her hair was pulled up into a haphazard bun on top of her head.

"I'll take that as a yes."

She shrugged, plopping down on the armrest of the recliner across from me.

"And the scars come into play...?"

I let the sentence trail off into a half-ass question. She would answer or she wouldn't. I was done playing her games. We were playing by my rules now and I was done pressing her for answers I should have already had.

"Last chance to let this drop," she warned. At the look I shot her, she sighed. "Fine. I was jumped on my way home that night and, please, can we just leave it at that?"

"By...?"

Before Aerin could come up with a suitable lie, the basement door opened.

"Aerilyn, a RAPA Agent Lintang is here to see you!" Donny called down. "Oh, and Clare is with her and says she needs to talk to you about that appointment you asked her about."

The door promptly shut again, leaving us alone once again.

Aerin groaned and hung her head.

"No one knew about this and my own agency is involved?" I ground out, glaring accusingly at her. "And I'm just supposed to drop the whole subject like it doesn't matter?"

She stood up. "Decker knows. Keeping it from you was his brilliant idea. Why don't you take it up with him?"

With that little informational bomb, she headed up the stairs.

Well, wasn't that just the icing on the informational cake they had made for me as a surprise?