The Sinners We Love |18+

[26] amber

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*nervous twerking*

[timeline: after chapter 13 and before chapter 14]

The place had always been cramped, too many people occupied each corner. Perhaps, the fact that Sarahs' was the only grocery across the fifth lane made it busier all along the day. Managing to fill her basket with a pack of detergent powder, Charlotte whizzed through the crowd. Her gaze following the people, falling on the commodities, mentally flipping through the grocery list, and a paranoia crinkling her forehead to the slightest bit.

To say the peculiar man named Azrael had scared the wits out of her would be an understatement. There was something wicked about him, but that was pretty common in humans nowadays. There was a eerie feeling about him, something so holistically unsettling, that it transcended into her mind, weakly layered her already thin sleep, until every light noise on the surface of the earth sent a tremor of fear down her legs, to the point where it had led her legs to walk down several streets, and enroll herself in a self defense class.

His words, and his actions, his gaze, and the predominant disdain in them, Charlotte hadn't felt something like that.

Fanning her sweat beaded features, she added herself to the long queue. Sweat and the scent of mint candies that remained on the long racks, separating the counters, filled her senses and her conscious drove itself to the bold words imprinted on the newspapers stacked up beside the mint and pink candies.

Man found dead in a building. Killer on spree?

So many people died every day. It was hard to keep an account for each and everyone. Charlotte had hardly bothered to care for any either. But this one, this one had a special place not her heart but in her mind.

The house that had crippled her last sanity now laid on the front, pixels forming a picture. Her fingers were faster than her judgement to snatch one issue out of the rack. Charlotte straightened the paper, balancing it on her trolley. The articles was displeasingly brief, leaving out half of the blood curdling details of the eventfully uneventful night.

But it was enough to curl one of her brows. The date of the reported crime was three days later. Only one dead man was found. Some nosy teenagers had found it.

But Luca had told her a different story. A story. Because that's what it was. Just a mere work of fiction, weaved by his blinding words.

But was she blinded?

The old question surfaced one more time: who was winning?

The one who thought they were or the one who was letting the other one believe so?

Charlotte knew it. But she wouldn't tell it.

After all, she was an artist— with colors, and sometimes with her words. Something even she could not tell, if one asked, if it had been there for years, or had she learned to pick some of the techniques recently.

"Too packed, eh?" The paper as if like fire on her bare fingers, burned but never enough to let it go. Sarah stood behind the counter, her brows raised with a familiar smile tugging the corner of her lips.

"It's alright."  Charlotte mumbled, giving a glance behind to register she had walked up the distance, unconsciously. Beeping sounds of items being scanned and registered in the computer enveloped the silence, when the Charlotte carefully added the newspaper.