7. Selene
SELENE
My body aches in places I didn't know could ache, a deep throb between my legs that pulses with every breath, a reminder of what he did to me on the plywood and then again in this bed, slower the second time, like he was memorizing every sound I made.
The mattress dips beside me, his weight still warm in the cotton, his arm heavy where it draped across my ribs until moments ago.
Then the knock comes. Three sharp raps against wood, precise and final.
Silas goes rigid beside me. I feel it in the air before I see it, the shift from exhausted satisfaction to coiled alertness, every muscle in his massive frame tightening at once.
He rises without a word, the bed creaking, the floorboards groaning under his bare feet.
He pulls on his jeans, zips them with a sound that seems too loud in the stillness, and moves toward the door with the silence of a predator who knows the territory.
"Silas," I whisper, my voice scraped raw from screaming his name.
He looks back at me. Moonlight spills through the window, catching the tattoos on his chest, the ink curling over muscle and scar, sweat still gleaming on his throat. His eyes are dark and endless, burning into me.
"Stay here," he says. "Don't move. Don't make a sound."
He opens the door. Richard stands in the hallway, fully dressed, his face pale. He doesn't look at me. I pull the sheet to my chin, heart pounding.
"We need to talk," Richard says. His voice is quiet, controlled, the voice of a man who has already made up his mind about something terrible. "Alone."
Silas steps into the hallway and pulls the door until only a crack of light shows. I hear their footsteps—one heavy, one lighter—moving down the hall toward Richard's study.
I count to thirty. The house is silent except for the old refrigerator humming downstairs and the distant crash of Atlantic waves through the open window. My mother's room is on the other side of the house. Maya's guest room is below. They are asleep, or pretending to be.
I throw off the sheet. My shirt and skirt are crumpled on the floor, stained with dirt. I pull the shirt over my head, wincing as it drags across my nipples. No time for underwear. Besides, I can still feel him inside me, warm and thick, marking me with every step.
The hallway carpet is soft beneath my bare feet, the walls lined with photographs that suddenly feel like evidence.
My mother at a garden party. Richard at a charity gala.
Silas at sixteen, already tall, already sullen, his eyes fixed on something beyond the camera.
I move past them all, past the door to my old room with its stuck window and thin walls, past the bathroom where I touched myself that first night while he listened.
Richard's study door is closed. I press my ear to the crack, my hand over my mouth, my pulse hammering so hard I can feel it in my fingertips.
"Stella will destroy her," Richard says. His voice is low, resigned, the weight of the situation heavy on every syllable. "You know that. She'll tear Selene apart before she lets this continue."
Silence. I picture Silas standing there, arms crossed over his chest, his jaw tight, his eyes fixed on some point beyond his father's head.
"You need to end this," Richard continues, "or you need to leave. Those are your only choices."
More silence. Long enough that I think Silas might not answer. Long enough that I press harder against the door, my breath fogging the wood, my body trembling.
"I'll leave."
Richard makes a sound like something breaking inside his chest. "Silas, she's my wife's daughter. She's?—"
"She's mine." The words cut through the oak like a blade through silk, sharp and final and utterly without compromise. "She's been mine since the day she walked through that door. I'm not ending it. So I'll leave."
"Silas, think about what you're giving up. The business. Your home. Your family. For a girl who?—"
"Don't." One word, packed with enough violence to silence a room. "Don't finish that sentence. Not if you want me to keep respecting you."
Footsteps. Heavy, approaching. I barely have time to step back, to press myself against the wall beside a bookcase stuffed with legal volumes and maritime memorabilia, before the door swings open.
Silas fills the frame, six feet six inches of tattooed fury and desperate love, his eyes finding me immediately in the shadows.
He doesn't look surprised. He looks like he knew I would be here, like he felt my presence through the wood the same way I feel his now, a gravitational pull that bends everything toward him.
"Pack your bag," he says. His voice is gravel and command, the same voice that told me not to touch myself that first night, the same voice that made me count strokes while he stretched me with his fingers. "We're leaving."
I don't hesitate. I don't ask where or for how long or what happens when my mother wakes up to find us gone. I turn and run to my room, my bare feet silent on the carpet, my heart a trapped bird in a cage of ribs.
My duffel is in the closet where I left it weeks ago, still half packed from my failed sublet in the city.
I throw in the dresses I brought, the underwear I never wore, the book I was pretending to read on the porch that first afternoon.
I grab my phone, my charger, the photograph of my father that I keep tucked in my wallet.
I don't take the jewelry my mother gave me for graduation.
I don't take the sweaters she knitted. I leave the window open, the way he left it that first day, a gap of fifteen inches that let the August heat pour in and changed everything.
I meet him in the hallway. He has a bag too, a leather duffel slung over his shoulder, his keys in his hand. Richard stands in his study doorway, his face gray in the dim light, hands in the pockets of his slacks.
"Silas," Richard says, and his voice cracks on the name. "At least let me talk to Stella first. Let me prepare her. This will destroy her."
"She'll survive," Silas says. He doesn't look back. His hand finds the small of my back, pressing me forward, guiding me down the stairs with a touch that is both possession and protection.
"She's my wife."
"And Selene is mine."
We reach the bottom of the stairs. The foyer is dark, the chandelier casting prisms of moonlight across the marble floor. I see my reflection in the hall mirror, a ghost in dirty clothes, my hair wild, my lips swollen, marks on my throat that glow like accusations.
I don't recognize myself.
Silas opens the front door. The August night rushes in, warm and thick and smelling of cut grass and salt. His truck waits in the driveway, the engine already rumbling from the remote start.
He helps me into the passenger seat, his hands spanning my waist, lifting me like I weigh nothing. The leather is cool against the backs of my thighs. He buckles my seatbelt, his fingers brushing my hip, his eyes dark and burning in the dashboard light.
"Trust me," he says.
"I do." The words come out without thought, automatic and absolute. I trust him more than I trust gravity, more than I trust the sun to rise. I trust him with my body and my heart and whatever comes next, even if what comes next is destruction.
He closes my door. Circles the truck. Gets in beside me, his frame filling the driver's seat, his shoulders brushing either side of the headrest. He puts the truck in drive and we roll down the driveway, gravel crunching beneath the tires, the house receding in the side mirror like a dream I'm already forgetting.
I don't look back. If I do, I'll see my mother in the window, or Richard on the porch, or Maya watching. I'll lose my nerve. I'll ask him to turn around, to take me back, to let me be the girl who didn't know what this felt like.
"Where are we going?" I ask, my voice small in the cab.
"The site." His hand finds mine on the center console, his palm rough with calluses from years of swinging hammers and guiding saws. "Our house. We'll stay there tonight. Figure out the rest in the morning."
Our house.
The words settle in my chest like warm stones. The half framed structure on the cliff, the exposed studs and plywood floors, the mattress where he first claimed me completely. Our house.
The drive takes twelve minutes, the same route we took this afternoon, past the darkened storefronts of Southampton, past the beach where I walked alone that first week, past the life I was living before he became my entire world.
The truck's headlights cut through the darkness, illuminating scrub pine and salt marsh, the occasional deer frozen in the beams before bounding into the undergrowth.
Silas doesn't speak. His jaw is tight, his knuckles white on the steering wheel, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. But his thumb traces circles on the back of my hand, a silent language that says everything he can't put into words. I'm here. I chose you. I burned it all and I would do it again.
The construction site appears around a bend, the frame of the house rising against the star scattered sky like the skeleton of some great beast. He parks beside the foundation, kills the engine.
The sudden silence is enormous, broken only by the distant crash of waves against the cliff and the chirp of crickets in the tall grass.
He comes around to my side, opens my door, lifts me down. His hands span my waist, his thumbs pressing into the bruises he left this afternoon, and I gasp, my body arching toward him without permission.
"Still sore?" he asks, his voice low.
"Yes." I look up at him, at the face that has become my religion, all sharp angles and dark stubble and eyes that see through every lie I've ever told. "I feel you everywhere."