Sinclair

Chapter Eight: At His Side

I WATCH WITH RESERVED caution as Sinclair steps past the threshold of my house and brings my groceries inside. The entire time, I'm having a serious talk with myself. This talk basically consists of me ordering my hormones to stay under control. There's no way I'm letting anything remotely s****l or romantic happen between Sinclair and I. That would be the most selfish thing I could do when I know how he feels about me.

Keeping the door open, I close the screen door and it closes with a slight creak as Sinclair places the bags on the island in my kitchen. The house is small enough that I can see him even from the front door as he turns to look over in my direction, his eyes silently asking me if he can help me unload my groceries.

"I've got it," I say, shuffling so that I'm no longer in the path of the screen door. "You can go."

Sinclair rolls his eyes but makes no move to leave, he instead leans against the counter, watching me with a silent challenge in his eyes.

Blowing out a harsh sigh that I know without a shadow of a doubt he can hear, I move over toward the island and begin taking things out of bags. I search for my ice cream first, since I really don't want it to melt, and then I begin taking out all the other things, putting them in their respective places.

Sinclair watches me seriously as I move around the kitchen, his eyes only leaving mine when they sweep around the house, curiously taking it all in. His eyes on me, of course, do nothing to help my resolve. Like always, when Sinclair is in proximity it's hard to think straight. It's hard to be a good girl who makes good decisions. Sinclair is one of those guys that you only hear about in rumors, read about in books and see actors portray in films. There is something about his presence that makes you want to just let go and go wild. That was a reason I had grown to care for him. Because with him, I could be the truest part of myself.

And if I'm being completely honest, I miss being myself with him. I miss the late night talks and the early morning s*x. I miss him burning cookies that he tries to bake me just because I tell him I want something sweet. I miss riding on the back of his motorcycle with the wind in my hair as the rest of the group rides alongside us. I miss the feeling of my arms wrapped around him as fifty motorcycles rev through the quiet town life and the guys hoot and holler. But what I miss even more is how content I felt at that time. I find that whenever I look back on those memories and feel the fond smile creep onto my face, my heart would grow warm as I remembered what it was like to have a place where I was welcome. A place where I belonged.

A place where I was at his side.

It's true. I miss Sinclair. A lot. More than I have any right to, that's for sure. But the thing with true fear—fear that grips at your heart and claws at your stomach—is that, no matter how happy or how content you feel, it always wins. And the moment I had seen that spark in his eye—that spark of true love—it had stirred the fear in me with such a force that these shaky legs of mine reacted in the only way they knew how.

They ran.

They ran far away from Sinclair and far away from any chance of letting myself fall for him right back. Because—and this is something I've thought many times—what kind of life could Sinclair really have? How could I ever know that he would be safe? Even without my fear of love, I would fear loving him.

"Go out with me," he says suddenly, cutting into my thoughts.

I'm putting the last items—a loaf of bread and a couple of fruit snacks—away in the cupboard when he speaks. I pause what I'm doing and glance over at him, looking at him like he's lost his mind.

At this point, we're kind of close. We're about three feet apart and he's still leaning on the counter beside me, staring into my eyes intently when they meet his. Even though he's not touching me, his eyes seem to give my body the feeling of being touched. It's the weirdest thing like his eyes have invisible hands or something.

Fear wraps its cold, icy fingers around my heart and squeezes so damn tightly, I forget to breathe. I have to force myself to take a deep breath and to not hyperventilate. The only way I know how to respond to Sinclair's obviously sincere answer is with snark.

"What are we, twelve?" I ask a bit breathlessly, looking away from him and shoving the bread into the cupboard with a little bit too much force.

"The carnival is in town," he explains, sounding a little amused. Sinclair always seemed to like my snark much more than he should have.

Immediately, though, I know what carnival he's referring to. This huge carnival comes to Willow's Creek every October. It would come at around the seventeenth of each October and would stay until the Halloween. After October thirty-first, it would pack up and go away until next October would roll around. In Willow's Creek, things followed a tradition so everything big event that happened had been happening for years. This carnival was no exception to that rule. The carnival—which was cleverly named Carn-Evil to really get you in the Halloween spirit—had been coming to Willow's Creek for over a hundred years. On top of that, Willow's Creek also had a Christmas festival, a Valentine's Day parade and a huge cookout that everyone in town went to every year. They did County Fairs and the whole nine yards.

I used to go to the Carn-Evil with my mother and my brother when we were younger. My mom was a single mother who had given birth to me at a pretty young age. Despite all of that, however, she had managed to get her degree and now she taught mythology in a college the next town over. For a long time, it had always been my mother, my brother, and I. And even now, all these years later, it was still the three of us against the world. However, I hadn't gone to the Carn-Evil since I was seventeen years old. It had been a good couple of years since I had gone. Again, I was anti-social with zero friends and going to places like carnivals alone just did not sound like fun at all.

So, I kind of wanted to go. Okay, I really wanted to go. But I knew that I should say no to going with Sinclair. This was literally his way of asking me out and I knew that if I agreed it would just make an already complicated situation that much worse.

"I don't want to go to the carnival, Sinclair," I lied, closing the cupboards and pretending to be busying myself with folding up the grocery bags.

I had hoped he would let it go, but this was Sinclair we were talking about. When did he ever let anything go?

Coming to stand so that his front is flush against my back, he presses his lips to my ear gently, letting his lips trail from my ear and slip down to kiss the side of my neck. The pressure is feather light and barely there, but I can feel it with the same force one feels a piano falling on them from the top floor of a fifty-foot tall building.

I let out a surprised gasp as heat courses through my veins, the feeling very akin to molten hot lava. The fire coursing through me right now really reminds me of this video I once saw of lava as it spread across a field, holding all the wildlife within miles in its heat. My mind is the wildlife and my body is the fire. I am nothing but a mass of incoherent thoughts as Sinclair puts a hand on my hip softly, lifting my shirt a little to caress the skin there.

Despite the fact that I'm already breathing like a maniac, I wrench my body—which had begun to lean into Sinclair's advances automatically—away from him with a yelp.

"What are you doing?" I struggle to say, slapping my hand to the spot where his lips had just touched my skin.

"The way I see it you've got two choices, little goddess," he says calmly, his gaze steady as his eyes hold mine. "You can come to the carnival with me tomorrow and give me some of your time or you can give all of yourself to me right here, right now."

I want so badly to be outraged at his proposal but in that moment, I can't find it in me to be angry. I just feel tired. I feel tired of running and tired of trying to protect his feelings when it seems very apparent that he's not listening to the warning I've been tossing at him. I won't play with his feelings, I decide, but since he's given me the option to choose one or the other, I'll just have to choose the one I can live with.

"If I agree will you get out of my house?"

He gives a nod, his eyes promising he will keep his word if I keep mine.

"Fine. I'll go to the stupid carnival with you. Happy?" I glare at him.

"Extremely." He flashes his pearly whites and moves toward the door. He opens the screen door and, with one foot out the door, he turns and says, "By the way, I liked that little moan you let slip, little goddess."

Horrified and trying to remember when I let a moan slip out, I sputter incoherently as he steps out of the threshold and leaves. And even long after the sound of his motorcycle has faded, the place where his lips and his hand had been still burned like his warmth was still there.