Sinner (Shelter Harbor #1)(223)

Like, me, for instance.

Quinn grins at me, and I steel myself, afraid she’ll sniff out what I’m really thinking about him like some sort of sex-bloodhound. “So how is spending all that time with Hotsun going, anyways?”

I groan. “Qui-”

“What?! Have you fucking seen him!” She says with mock indignation. “He’s like-”

“Packaged sex.” Chelsea butts in, making the two of them devolve into giggles and my face into total guilty embarrassment.

“Guys, he’s not-”

“Oh my God, Ray, why are you fighting her on that? She’s totally right and you know it. Hudson is like, James Bond, but with super hot tattoos and a body off the cover of a romance novel.” She arches her eyebrows at me. “Hey, I mean if you don’t want that, I mean I’m single-”

“Quinn I think you stole quite enough boyfriends from me in high school.”

They both immediately beam at me as I realize my slip-up and die a little inside.

“Oh. My. God.” Quinn’s jaw drops.

“Guys, no, that is not what I-”

“No fucking way!” Chelsea stares at me with a grin on her face. She and Liz turn towards each other and start giggling again.

“Wait, no, it is not like- stop that!” People are starting to turn and look our way, and even in this greasy little diner in midtown, I know it’s a matter of time before someone realizes who I am and starts to get really interested in what we’re talking about so animatedly.

“Guys, seriously!” I hiss. “Keep it down!”

Chelsea is beaming at me. “Hudson fucking Banks?”

“I think it’s more ‘Hudson fucking our sister’, actually.” Quinn quips, with the predicted giggle from Chelsea and the deeper shade of red on my face.

I shake my head much to animatedly. “No way, of course not, he’s horrible.”

Quinn shrugs. “Well, I mean he’s crude I guess, but horrible?”

“Ugh! He’s one of Dad’s thugs!” I’m not sure who I’m trying to convince more, me or them.

“So?” Chelsea shrugs. “Ok, he worked for Dad, big deal. It’s not like he’s our brother or something.”

I make a face into my coffee. “Eww?”

Chelsea sighs. “No, I just mean what would be so weird about hooking up with Hudson?”

“Um, because besides that, how about the fact that Dad ditched us for him and his other adopt-a-veteran pals all the fucking time?”

Chelsea looks quickly down and Quinn shakes her head at me. “You need to let that one go sometime, Ray. You know Dad had his reasons for-”

“Ok, fine, whatever.” Not the conversation I want have in the middle of a political campaign sitting in a diner.

We sit in silence for another moment before I open my mouth again. “Ok, how about that he’s technically my campaign financier? Hello? Conflict of interest much?”

Quinn shrugs. “Archer Holdings is your campaign financier, not Hudson. So what’s the harm?”

I slam the coffee cup down harder than I intend, spilling the lukewarm liquid onto the countertop. “Because I feel like an idiot for sleeping with him after what happened at Dad’s wak-”

I freeze and clasp my hands to my mouth as the whole table goes silent, my sisters staring at me with open mouths.

Oh, fuck.

“Wait, what? You did sleep with him?!” Chelsea is wide-eyed and grinning at me.

“You hussy!” Quinn clucks her teeth like a mother hen. “And oh my God, what did you two get up to at a wake?!”

And it’s right there, with room-temperature coffee all over my hands, sitting in a crappy little midtown diner in the middle of the afternoon that I start to cry.

Quinn immediately changes her whole tune as she jumps out of the booth and crams in on my side, her arms going around me as the tears and the sniffles come pouring out of me.

“Hey, hey now Ray.”

“I’m horrible!” I moan into my hands, feeling Quinn’s arms tighten around me.

“No, hon, you’re not.”

“But at Dad’s fucking funer-”

“You were emotional and lost, and you needed something to grab onto and he was there.” She nuzzles my hair like she used to do when we were kids. “That’s not being horrible, Ray, that’s just being human.” She says softly.

Chelsea reaches across the table and takes one of my hands, patting it dry of coffee as I look up at her miserably. “And Hudson isn’t so terrible you know.”

“I know,” I sniff.

Quinn leans down to peer into my face with that wicked grin back on her face. “So, you slept with him, huh?”