The Young & the Sinner: An Age-Gap Romance (The Entangled Past Series) Read online

  The Young & the Sinner

  The Entangled Past Series Book 1

  V.T. Do

  Copyright © 2021 by V.T. Do

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  Editor: Cassandre Cadieux

  Cover Design: Angela Haddon @ http://angelahaddon.com/

  young /yəNG/: having lived or existed for only a short time; inexperienced; innocent

  sin·ner /ˈsinər/: a person who transgresses against divine law by committing an immoral act or acts; wrongdoer; monster

  Contents

  1. Mason

  2. Olivia

  3. Olivia

  4. Olivia

  5. Olivia

  6. Olivia

  7. Mason

  8. Olivia

  9. Olivia

  10. Olivia

  11. Mason

  12. Olivia

  13. Olivia

  14. Mason

  15. Olivia

  16. Olivia

  17. Mason

  18. Olivia

  19. Olivia

  20. Olivia

  21. Mason

  22. Olivia

  23. Olivia

  24. Olivia

  25. Olivia

  26. Olivia

  27. Olivia

  28. Olivia

  29. Mason

  30. Olivia

  31. Olivia

  32. Mason

  33. Olivia

  34. Olivia

  35. Mason

  36. Olivia

  37. Olivia

  38. Olivia

  39. Olivia

  40. Mason

  41. Olivia

  42. Mason

  43. Mason

  44. Olivia

  45. Mason

  46. Olivia

  47. Mason

  48. Olivia

  49. Olivia

  50. Olivia

  51. Olivia

  52. Olivia

  53. Olivia

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Also by V.T. Do

  About the Author

  1

  Mason

  Two months before

  I looked out onto the New York skyline as the winter storm continued to rage on outside.

  In a lot of ways, New York’s winters reminded me of Chicago’s. Yet, it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t home. I missed home.

  I missed my friends and my family.

  I missed my brother.

  But how could I go home?

  New York was where I was exiled: My escape away from my all my wrongdoings, away from the hurt I had caused a little girl with big brown eyes, whose only sin was having been born to a careless mother and an absent father.

  But that little girl held my brother’s heart, and I didn’t know how to be in the same city as her, let alone the same room.

  I didn’t know how to face my brother, even if he had forgiven me. Yet, New York had never given me the peace I thought it would. It only made me yearn for something more.

  “You need to come home, little brother,” Max had said on the phone last night.

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I need you. I don’t know what to do anymore. Grace is lost to me. That shouldn’t really matter, but I’m afraid she might be lost to Olivia, too. And when that happens… I’ll need you by my side.”

  There was this desperate pleading in his voice that I couldn’t ignore. Selfishly, I had hoped that by telling myself my brother needed me, I could end this self-impose exile and come home. That everything would be okay.

  Everything was different now.

  I wasn’t that hot-headed boy I once was. And Grace had changed, too.

  And perhaps she was different because of me, because of my actions. I needed to face that head on.

  But could I do it?

  Could I face everyone I had hurt by my own selfish actions?

  I pressed the intercom on my desk and a soft familiar voice came through. “Yes, sir?”

  “Candace, I need you to book me a ticket to Chicago.”

  “And when should we expect you back, sir?”

  I hesitated, but only for a second. “Never. I’m going home.”

  2

  Olivia

  Present day

  There were times in my life I wished I could escape from reality. To just shut off my brain, if only for a little while. To just… not be here anymore.

  Anywhere but here. Please, just take me away from here.

  “Olivia, are you listening to me?” Max’s voice was gentle, and I hated it. Hated how he talked to me like I was on the verge of breaking. Hated that it might be true. That I was breaking, and I didn’t know how to fix it.

  I whimpered, then found myself in his strong arms, my face buried in his chest. Still, the tears wouldn’t come. I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry so badly, it literally hurt. My hand moved between our bodies until I found my chest and rubbed at the dull ache taking residence there.

  Nothing helped eased the pain, and I slumped against his hard body, resigned.

  “I don’t want you to worry about anything, okay? All you need to do is focus on graduating. I will be here with you every step of the way, I promise.”

  “You will?” My voice cracked on the last word. Wasn’t that the kind of promises mothers made to their daughters?

  You gave me life, you’re bound to me, so why was it so easy for you to leave me behind?

  Why did she leave me, and why was Max staying when he had no familial obligation to me whatsoever?

  “She didn’t tell you where she was going?”

  His eyes were sad when they met mine. There was a world of heartbreak in those blue eyes of his. “I’m sorry. She didn’t tell me anything.”

  I looked to the side of his head, unable to meet his eyes any longer. Mom didn’t just leave me behind. She left behind the one man who had loved her more than anything in the world. The one man who would have given her the universe had she only asked for it.

  But she never asked.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  He shook his head and let out a humorless laugh. “Me? I don’t know what I am right now.”

  “Yeah.” I knew the sentiment.

  “Listen to me, sweetheart. This isn’t on you. And it’s not on me. We didn’t do anything wrong, even if it feels like that now. I know how easy it is to blame yourself when these things happen, but you have to remember, we did everything we could for her. Some people are just beyond saving.”

  Did my mom need saving? I always thought it was me who was drowning, and she was my only lifeline. And now that was gone. And now she was gone.

  I had wished her goodnight before I went to bed, and when morning came and she had left, along with all of her clothes and possession. Her room stood to be nothing more than an empty shell, and I wasn’t sure if I had place in this house anymore.

  That was why Max wanted me to pack up my stuff, leave the house I grew up in behind, and move in with him. This still felt like nothing more than a nightmare.

  “Come on,” he said, his voice soft. “Let’s get you all packed up. I have a room set up for you at my house.”

  I nodded and followed along. I no longer had the energy to do anything else.

&nbs
p; We spent the better part of the weekend clearing out the house. Max didn’t want me there because he wasn’t sure my mom would continue making her monthly mortgage payment. He was certain we were going to lose the house at some point, and he didn’t want me to be here when that happened.

  I didn’t doubt him.

  Most of the furniture in the house was older than me, so we donated the bulk of it to a thrift store, while the things he thought I might want to hold onto went into storage. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that there was nothing here that I wanted. We were both dealing with this heartbreak in our own way, and so I let him do whatever he thought was best.

  Max cleared out everything in the house with a single-minded focus. I didn’t ask him if he was okay again.

  I knew he wasn’t.

  We worked mostly in silence.

  I was in my room, packing everything but the furniture to take to my new home when Max suddenly appeared in the doorway. There was something in his eyes that I didn’t like. He was holding onto a small stack of paper that I assumed contained some sort of bad news. The kind of news we didn’t need.

  Wordlessly, he walked over to my bed and sat down. I took a seat next to him, taking the paper from his hand. They were debt collection notices. For everything.

  My mom maxed out every credit card she owned, every loan the bank gave her, and she never paid them back. There was even a foreclosure notice on the house, asking that all the residents move out within the month.

  The letter was dated three weeks ago. Anger surged in my veins, the paper crumbling beneath my fist. “I can’t believe she did this. She didn’t even tell me she stopped making payments. What did she think was going to happen a week from now, had I still been living here while she went off to God knows where, doing God knows what?”

  I tried to keep my voice calm, but even I saw the careful control I held onto was slipping.

  Max wrapped his arms around me. I shook my head, trying to pull away. I didn’t need him to comfort me. I needed him to be as angry as I was and not be the adult in this situation. He was only fifteen years older than me. Still too damn young to be taking on the responsibility of someone else’s kid.

  But Max was different. He was good.

  He wouldn’t throw me out on the street just because I would be turning eighteen in a few months. He would take care of me for as long as I needed him to. He would be supporting me financially, physically and emotionally… and it wasn’t even his damn responsibility.

  I wasn’t his damn responsibility.

  “Shh, Olive. It’s okay. I’m here.”

  A sob burst free from my throat then, and Max tightened his arms around me. “That’s the thing. You don’t have to be here. No one would blame you if you washed your hands free of my mom and me. This isn’t your mess to clean up.”

  He pulled away far enough to catch my gaze. I looked away, refusing to meet his eyes.

  “Look at me.” I shook my head. He cupped my cheek in his large hand and tilted my head up until I looked at him. “You’re my family.”

  “I’m not, really.”

  “Are you joking? Who drove you to your first day of kindergarten?”

  When I didn’t answer, he shook my gently. “You,” I whispered.

  “Who taught you how to read? Held your hand at the dentist? And who taught you how to drive?” Max’s eyes turned misty, and my lips trembled.

  “You,” I said, louder.

  “Didn’t I promise you I would always be here? We’re not related my blood, but I watched you grow up into this amazing young lady. I am proud of the person you’ve become and of everything you’ve accomplished. And had your mom felt differently about me, I would have married her and brought you into my family. I would’ve continued to take care of you as if you were my own.”

  I let out a shuddering laugh then, the tears clogging up my throat a bit. “You’re too young to be a parent to a seventeen-year-old.” Even though my mom was only a year older than Max, he still shouldn’t be burdened with the responsibility. I wasn’t his mistake.

  He shot me a small smile, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. “You’re my family. That’s all there is to it. Who says we need to label what this relationship is?”

  “Thank you,” I said. “For always being here for me.” And that was true. I couldn’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t have him with me.

  “Of course, kiddo. Now why don’t we clean up all of this mess and let bank do what they want with the house. You don’t need to worry about it anymore. Your home is with me now.”

  I nodded. He patted my shoulder on his way out and I watched him leave, before letting out a long exhale.

  My home was with Max now.

  Max lived in a nice, suburban neighborhood.

  I couldn’t help but notice the disparity between his life and my mom’s life every time I came to visit. It was so glaringly obvious that his three-bedroom house felt more like a castle compared to my mom’s modest ranch house.

  And now I got to live in this castle. Although I couldn’t help but feel out of place.

  Max had been in love with my mom since forever. Her family and his family had been friends since way before either one of them were born. But then my mom got pregnant with me at sixteen, and her parents kicked her out.

  She tried so hard to make a life for herself with her high-school sweetheart. She wanted to prove my grandparents wrong: that she hadn’t thrown her life away when she decided to keep me, despite everyone’s protest, that what she had with my dad was real, and that they were going to have the kind of love storybooks were written about.

  They almost had me fooled. Then one day, my dad left without a backward glance, making it so that the last image I had of him was his back to me—a world of possibilities open for a man who didn’t have a child at home to drag him down.

  For a year, I waited for him to come back. I was only twelve when he left; I still believed in fairy tales then. I gave up on him on my thirteenth birthday. Mom forgot she had a kid at home who needed her, as she drowned herself in the misery that her broken marriage had left behind.

  And through it all, Max had been a steady presence, waiting for her to wake up one day and recognize that he’d been there all along.

  She woke up one day and decided to leave everything behind instead, including her only daughter. I was nothing more than a throwaway child, and Max…

  I let out shuddering breath, so sure I would break down from the slightest pressure, and I didn’t want him to see.

  I often wondered if it wasn’t that she forgot about me sometimes, but that she wanted to. The only thing I got from her was her brown eyes. Everything else, I got from my dad. From my fair skin, to my upturned nose and my light chestnut brown hair. Did I look too much like him? Was that considered a sin in her book?

  Max pulled into his castle, dragging me out of my thoughts, and parked his silver Mercedes in the attached garage. I didn’t have a car, even though I had a driver’s license. Mom had made some pretty bad financial decision in her life. This wasn’t the first time our house was threatened. It was two years ago when we received the first foreclosure warning letter—that I knew of, anyway. I really thought we were finally on the right track when I got the job at the grocery store with her and was able to help out with the bills.

  I didn’t know she decided to stop paying the mortgage this time around.

  Sometimes, it felt like she wanted to lose the house. That she wanted to lose everything, because only then would she have nothing left to lose.

  Pretty messed up logic, if you ask me. But what did I know? I was only seventeen. Still a kid in most states. Old enough to be able to take care of myself and young enough not to know how.

  That was where Max came in. He shut off the ignition and turned to me.

  I attempted a smile, but it felt more like a grimace.

  “We’re going to be okay, kid,” he said confidently.

  I nodded. I knew t
hat. I had Max.

  I took the bus to school Monday morning, as though my world hadn’t been turned upside down overnight, because it hadn’t. I refused to let my parents’ abandonment define my life. I refused to beg for love. So even though Max insisted on driving me to school, I told him I wanted to take the bus instead.

  I didn’t want to make a big deal out of this. And the fact that I attended a relatively big high school meant that no one, save for Lizzie O’Connor, my best friend since middle school, knew what happened.

  The bus stopped in front of the school, and I waited for all the kids to get off before I followed behind them.

  Most of the kids that rode the bus were freshman and sophomores. I was one of the few seniors. I didn’t really care that I didn’t have a car, but I wondered if everyone was silently judging me because of it.

  I wasn’t exactly popular or well-known around school. In fact, I spent the majority of my high school years in the background. And I didn’t mind it much.

  I smiled at the bus driver and hopped off. Lizzie was already waiting for me by the curb, a cup of coffee in hand. My best friend was a coffee addict and brilliantly lazy. She was also exuberant, a scary movie junky, a night owl… the complete opposite of me. And yet, we clicked on that first day of seventh grade.