Read Online A Vault of Sins by Sarah Harian - Free Book Online Page B

desperate to find a connection with someone before our lives were over.
    Someone for the end of the world
.
    Casey was my someone for the end of the world.
    I watch us as we talk afterward, sweaty and still a little filthy even though we had tried to clean ourselves with soap and water from the outside well. My hair is a rat’s nest, but Casey strokes it like it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. I notice something about him now that I didn’t in that moment—that the tension in his face that he’d worn throughout almost all of our time in the Compass Room is completely erased. I can tell, even from my position as a fly on the wall, he’s mulling over every word pouring from my mouth about my past. I wonder what those thoughts consisted of—if he was trying to determine how a girl like me could end up in the Compass Room, if we could somehow have a future if we both made it out alive . . .
    Then he calls me a gorgeous catastrophe. The word catastrophe in itself is violent. It’s an interesting choice given his hatred of violence for the sake of violence, but I never asked him what it meant.
    I need to.
    Whatever passion we left unexplored isn’t something I can brush off. Casey and I watched people die together. We fought to survive together. He saw me kill someone and told me he loved me as I was covered in Gordon’s blood. I need Casey not just because of our connection. I need Casey because I have to understand why we connected in the first place, and it had to have been more than our need to protect.
    I’m his gorgeous catastrophe, after all.
    I watch one more clip before returning inside, of Casey and Valerie overlapping. I look at the time stamp and do the math. It must have taken place right after our reunion, on the day that the sky turned turquoise. I can’t remember Casey and Valerie ever leaving the group at the same time, but then again, I was distracted by a lot of things that day, particularly the CR malfunctioning and the bottle of booze that Valerie made us act like monkeys for.
    Casey’s explaining to Valerie what happened between us. He reaches the part with the cabin.
    “You screwed her, didn’t you?”
    Casey’s eyes widen, but he says nothing.
    Valerie laughs. “You’re kind of easy to read. Like, twenty minutes ago I asked how you ever got laid and you winked at her without thinking twice.”
    He smiles at the bundle of wood in his hands, picking away at some of the dry needles.
    “Did you tell her?”
    Casey stalls. “Tell her what?”
    “That she was your first.”
    My mouth falls open as a wave of heat washes over me.
What?
    Casey turns away from Valerie.
    “Holy shit, you didn’t.”
    To my surprise, Casey laughs. “Of course I didn’t. We were already having sex in a cabin in the center of a death prison. Why would I want to make it more awkward?”
    Valerie sighs and crosses her arms. “Well, I’m happy for you.”
    “That I finally got laid before I died?”
    “That you were able to let go.”
    I jump to my feet and hurry into the house. Valerie’s staring at the tablet in her lap with her hands covering her mouth. She hasn’t budged since I left her. Finally, she glances up at me and drops her hands.
    “Casey was a virgin?”
    Her shoulders sag. “Ev . . .”
    I turn from her and walk into the kitchen. She follows me.
    I make myself another drink. “Why didn’t he tell me?” I take a sip and turn back to her. “Why didn’t
you
tell me?”
    She scoffs. “What an awkward thing to bring up.
Oh, remember that guy in the Compass Room you screwed and abandoned? Well, you were his first. IN CASE YOU DIDN’T KNOW.
”
    I’m too distraught to find her humorous. I take a huge gulp. Casey . . . a virgin. “He said there had been other girls.”
    “
Other girls
. But what does that even mean? Other girls he liked? Other girls he kissed?”
    “He’s gorgeous, Val. He’s nineteen and gorgeous. A gorgeous guy doesn’t get to nineteen without