Sins of Sevin(77)
Her question snapped me out of my thoughts. “Are you okay?”
I’d been daydreaming while taking her in. My unwavering physical attraction to her never ceased to amaze me. Just the smell of her was making my dick hard. My body never reacted to anyone the way it did to Evangeline. I shouldn’t have been thinking about how long it would take before I could bury myself inside of her again. It was all I could think about; that I needed her more than I needed or wanted anything—that I needed to get her away from that so-called man she referred to as a husband.
I needed to bring her home.
“Does he know you’re here?”
“No.”
“You ran away?” The irony of that question didn’t escape me.
“No. Dean was called away for a family emergency. His mother is not doing well. It’s rare that he goes anywhere, so I took advantage and borrowed my friend’s SUV again.”
“Will he give you trouble?”
“He won’t know. He’s coming back on Monday. I’ll just make sure I’m home by Sunday night. It’s a risk, but I needed to see you. It was time.”
“I’m glad you decided to come, but I worry about you. I can’t wrap my head around why the fuck you’re still with him. I lose sleep at night over it.”
“I already explained that leaving him needs to happen a certain way.”
“I’ll protect you. Don’t you know that?”
My gut told me there was something she wasn’t saying; it was eating away at me.
Why the fuck does this dude have so much power over you?
“Can we please not talk about him? I just need a break from it all.”
“Alright.”
For now.
She walked over to my couch and curled into it, letting out a huge breath. “It feels so good to be back here.”
Then you never should have left.
I had to bite my tongue so often around her. It was really easy to lose control of my emotions, but I didn’t want this short amount of time with her to be filled with drama. If the goal was to rebuild our relationship, I had to curb my own selfish need to push guilt.
Recently, I’d accepted the fact that Evangeline could pretty much rip out my heart, stomp on it, then feed it to me, and I’d still hand it back to her. She owned it.
“Are you hungry?” I asked. “I can make you something.”
“Starving. But let me cook for you. I make a mean breakfast. Do you have eggs and stuff like that?”
“Yeah. I just went shopping.”
Evangeline wasted no time getting to work in the kitchen, whisking eggs, popping bread in the toaster, frying bacon. A tightness in my chest developed as I watched her looking so domestic in my house. It was a side of her I never got to experience. It felt so good having her here.
At one point, she’d just placed the scrambled eggs onto our plates when she opened the cupboard.
I walked over to help her. “What do you need?”
“Do you have salt?”
“It should be in there.”
She was shuffling through things then suddenly stopped. She was holding the box of Pop Tarts. “These are dated from over five years ago. Are these the same ones you had the last time I was here?”
I looked into her eyes and whispered, “Yeah.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What’s there not to understand?”
“You never threw them away…”
I shrugged. “I couldn’t. Stupid, right? Like somehow having them was going to make you magically come back?”
The sadness in her eyes cut through me. I didn’t mean for her to find them.
She shocked the shit out of me when she suddenly opened one of the individual packages and began stuffing her mouth with the stale pastry.
“What are you doing? Are you fucking crazy? Those are just artifacts. They’re not meant to be eaten.”
“You’re right. I should have been here…to eat these with you,” she said with her mouth full. Her eyes were filling with tears as she chewed.
“I didn’t keep them so you could sicken yourself with them five years later!”
“If that happens, I deserve it. I’m a bad person. You have no idea. I—”
“Evangeline, stop.” I took the box, threw it in the trash and pulled her into me. “You don’t deserve botulism.” I laughed.
When she cracked a slight smile at my comment, I added, “Well, maybe you deserve to get the shits.”
She smacked me lightly in the chest, and we both had a good laugh. The toast had burned. The eggs were cold. None of it mattered, because she was safe in my arms.
“I ruin everything,” she said. “I can’t even make you breakfast without ruining it.”