How Sinners Fight - Eva Ashwood Page 0,17

get attached, only to have life rip the rug out from under you.

My heart flutters in my chest as I press the pencil a little harder into the page, dark, painful lines staining the fibers of the paper.

Jared.

He was taken away from me, just like that. One day he was there, the next day I was at the morgue, looking at his cold, lifeless body. One day he was still in my life, and the next, he was gone. His future stolen away.

I don’t like to think about how much his death affected me. Maybe it’s the still-lingering shock from that day that’s kept me from fully giving in to the grief, or maybe it was the night that followed—the night at the bar with Gray. Maybe in his own way, Gray was my saving grace, my anchor to keep me from doing something stupid I couldn’t have taken back in the depth of my grief.

Gray.

I don’t remember the end of semester party, but I remember a feeling.

What, though? What was it?

It fucking hurts my head every time I try to dig around in my brain for the answers. Dropping my charcoal, I press my fingers to my temples and rub away the ache, not caring that I’m probably smearing charcoal dust over my skin.

“Hey, Sophie, you in there?”

A soft knock sounds on my half-open door. I look up from my sketch as Max pokes her head into the guest room I’ve been staying in.

“Hey.” I grin. “Sorry, I was in the zone.”

“I can see that. It’s cool.” She grins when she looks at the charcoal marks on my face, and I roll my eyes as I wipe them off. “How are you feeling?” she adds.

The throbbing in my temples eases a little as my mind veers away from poking at the blank spots in my memory. With Max here, all the questioning and confusion from earlier melts away, leaving me with just myself again.

“Pretty good, actually.” I wipe my hands off on a scrap of cloth and then snap my sketchbook shut.

It’s true. Since arriving at Gray’s house a few days ago and being able to rest without nurses constantly poking at me, my recovery has been swift. Aside from some lingering bruises that don’t hurt much, I’m practically back to normal. Leaning back in the large, plush chair I’ve claimed as my sketching spot, I give her a small smile. “What about you?”

She settles onto the foot of the bed. “I’m good. Just talked to Elias and Declan. They’ll be over in a little bit.” When she catches me giving her a look, she raises her eyebrows, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “What?”

“Nothing.” I set my sketchbook aside and join her on the bed. “You’ve just gotten close to them since all of this happened.”

“Close?” She raises an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t call us close. I’m tolerating their existence for your sake, Sophie.”

“Just tolerating?” I tease. I’ve seen how she’s interacted with them the past few times we’ve all been together, and I wouldn’t call it tolerating. “I’ve seen you give them shit, and they give it right back. But it doesn’t feel like it did last semester. From what Elias has said, it sounds like all of you guys bonded a little bit at the hospital when I was sleeping,” I say with a laugh.

She punches my leg playfully. “Eh. We bonded over our worry for you. Not over anything else.”

I give her another look. “You sure about that? You almost looked like you were having fun with them.”

“Fine,” she says, giving in to my teasing. “I’ll admit they aren’t that bad. But only because I’ve seen how much they’re taking care of you, and no matter how big of assholes they were in the past, I can’t shake the feeling that this… this is real.”

She’s not alone on that.

Because I can’t shake the feeling either. This is something more.

A few more days go by, and I start to feel like I’m completely recovered.

My memory of the night of my fall is still fuzzy, but last night as I was falling asleep, I almost thought I could remember some of the moments leading up to it… or at least going to the party.

I remember what I was wearing, remember getting dressed in my dorm room. I remember Gray picking me up, and his hands and mouth on me as he kissed me outside my dorm room door. Right about there, everything starts to become