Guilty As Sin (Sin Trilogy#2)

Part of me wants to know where the hell she was flying to see the Seychelles, but that’s not important. What’s important is making the visual in my mind—Whitney standing in the water up to her knees, wearing a tiny blue bikini—a reality.

“Seychelles sounds incredible,” I reply, reaching for another taco. “So, how did you manage to discover Torchy’s Tacos if you didn’t get to see more than the hotels and venues?”

“There was a veteran roadie from Austin on all the tours. He was actually an amazing bass guitarist, but he wouldn’t ever audition for a band because he never believed he was good enough. Every time we rolled into Austin, his sister would show up within an hour and she’d have all his favorites. He asked me to join him one day, and I was hooked. After that, he always saved me some because he knew how much I loved it.”

It shouldn’t surprise me that Whitney would make friends with roadies or that they would make sure she always got her favorite tacos. Whitney’s sweet. Smart. Witty. Sarcastic.

Sitting around and eating lunch with her is the best part of my day.

This is what drew me to her before—how easy it was to be around her. How often she made me laugh and smile. It wasn’t just the insanely addictive chemistry, although I can’t not think about that too.

Whitney Gable is, by definition, the whole package. Unfortunately for me, she’s also the one who got away. It hammers home exactly how stupid I was back then. I knew what I had, and I lost her.

And then I had her yesterday morning . . . and fucked up again.

She was totally right when she told me she deserved better. She does. She deserves the best I can give her, and I’m going to bring it. No more fuckups. No more mistakes. No more regrets.

One step at a time, I remind myself. I have to take things slowly and earn her trust back. Maybe that was our problem last time. We had one speed, and it was full tilt.

What I want from her isn’t a sprint to the finish—I want the marathon.

I purposely keep things light, and we trade stories as we finish eating our lunch. When I cross the room to toss the empty wrappers in the trash can beneath the desk, scattered pieces of hotel stationery spread out on top of it catch my eye.

They’re covered in her handwriting.

I know I shouldn’t be prying, but I’m hungry for every bit of information I can get about Whitney.

It looks like . . . poetry? Then I remember what Ricky Rango had claimed—she wrote him a love letter.

“Are you a writer?” I ask as I glance over my shoulder at Whitney.

She bolts out of her chair and rushes across the room.

“Oh, God. Don’t look at those. They’re . . . nothing. Really, nothing.” She practically hip checks me out of the way to get to the desk and shuffles the papers together. “I just write stuff. Sometimes.”

“Is that poetry?”

She jerks her head up with a nervous laugh. “Oh, hell no. I’m no poet. I wouldn’t even call myself a songwriter, really. No matter how long I’ve been doing it.”

“A songwriter?” I ask as she clutches the papers to her chest. “You wrote songs? Like . . . for Ricky Rango?”

Whitney takes a step away from the desk. “Does it matter?”

“I’m just curious. I remember . . . I remember he said you wrote him a letter.”

She looks away. “I didn’t write him a letter. He sent me a shitty love song, and I fixed it out of habit and sent it back. That’s what I did for Ricky for years. Fixed his shit. And then he just gave up writing completely . . . and it was all on me.”

She didn’t write him a letter. She fixed his goddamn song. She wrote his goddamned songs.

“That lying piece of shit.” I say it more to myself than her, but Whitney huffs out a breath.

“Oh, you have no idea. He might have been a crappy songwriter, but Ricky was a great liar. All the way up until the end. Even his last freaking social media post that set all his fans on me like rabid dogs. He neglected to mention that the reason I filed for divorce was because he gave me an STD from some woman he was cheating on me with.”

My brows hike up. “He cheated on you?”

She looks up at me, her lips pressed together. “Yeah, apparently he never stopped, and I was too stupid to realize it. But when I found out, I was done. I might have been a doormat for most of my life, but I never will be again. Oh, and for the record, I’m clean. I took care of that immediately.”

“I wasn’t worried about that, but I am glad you took a stand. You’re right—you deserve a hell of a lot better.”

“It took me a while to realize that.” She looks out the window, and her voice quiets. “My brother would have killed Ricky if he hadn’t . . .”

Asa isn’t the only one who would be lining up to bury Rango for what he did to Whitney. And now . . . now he’s haunting both of us.

“I’m so sorry, Blue. I wish I could go back and change everything.”

She turns back toward me, and instead of looking broken, she straightens her shoulders. “It happened. It’s over. Now I have to live with the consequences and figure out what’s next.”

More than anything, I want to be first in line for what’s next with Whitney Gable, but that’s not what she needs from me right now. I can offer her a safe haven to start rebuilding her life, and in the process, do everything in my power to earn the right to be a part of it.

But there’s one thing that doesn’t quite make sense.



“You wrote or cowrote Ricky Rango’s songs for his whole career?”

She nods. “I sure did. His first number-one hit, “Summer Thunder”? I cowrote that when I was nineteen. Then there was his first platinum album, Long Live Regret. He didn’t write a single song on it.”

“How did I not know this?”

“No one does. I’m not listed as a songwriter or cowriter on any of them. Ricky convinced me that he would look bad if he wasn’t the one writing all of his own music. He was terrified people would think he was a poser.”

That piece of shit.

I keep my rage locked down because wanting to kill a dead man isn’t going to help anything. But still, something here doesn’t add up. According to Hunter’s information from Cricket, Whitney is broke. According to Whitney, Rango’s mom is the executor of his estate.

I’m still trying to figure out how to ask the questions in my head, when Whitney says, “And now his mother is the sole beneficiary of the mess he left behind. It wasn’t much, because the bank took everything. She couldn’t even afford to fight the bank for the future royalties because she didn’t save a penny of the fortune Ricky spent on her over the years.”

My rage blooms into something even sharper. “You’ve got to be joking. You wrote the songs. He took credit for them. And he left you nothing?”

Whitney nods slowly. “I spent ten years of my life busting my ass on his career, making him look like the rock star he claimed to be . . . and I walked away with nothing. But at least I got to walk away.”

My brain is spinning with how to fix this for her. How she could get back her hard work. “I’d have to talk to my legal team, but you should be able to file a copyright suit against the estate and the creditors. Prove that you were the writer and didn’t consent to the assignment of the future royalties.”

“Sure, if I had a mountain of money I was sitting on.” She slaps the papers down on the desk. “But that’s not the case, and right now, all I want to do is move on.”

The thought of her walking away from a decade of number-one songs and platinum albums kills me.

“But you can’t let this go. I’ll fund it.”

Whitney whips around to face me. “No way in hell. First, I’m not a charity case. I wasn’t before, and I’m not now either. Second, how do you think the press and Ricky’s fans would react if I destroyed his legacy by telling them the truth—that he didn’t write any of the shit they thought he did? I’ve already been through hell with them. I’m not doing it again.”

I press my fingers to my temples. “I want to help. We can figure this out.”

“I’m not asking for your help. I’m telling you that some things just aren’t worth the cost you have to pay to get there. It’s not worth it right now.”