28. Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Jackie
I fire up my laptop and try to get back into my cover design, but my heart isn’t in it and my thoughts are still on Silas. I get that he wants to be alone right now, but it doesn’t change the fact that I want to be with him. I wish he felt he could be vulnerable with me. And not ashamed of whatever it is he’s feeling.
When he’s still not back half an hour later, I go looking for him. And in another half hour, I head back to the camper, hoping I somehow missed him and he’ll be sprawled out on his bed, skimming through one of the guidebooks like he sometimes does when he has a hard time falling asleep.
But he’s not here.
And eventually I go back to bed. It takes me another full hour before I finally fall back to sleep.
Sometime in the early hours of the morning, I’m woken up by the sound of the door slamming. Then cursing.
“ Shit… stupid door.”
I glance at my phone. 3:23am.
Silas stumbles up the two steps, swaying then faltering across the floor onto the couch, which he never set up into his bed this evening.
“Jax,” he slurs when he notices me shuffling out of the bedroom. “Sorry… Dint meanto wake you. ”
“Where were you?” I ask, keeping my voice level… reminding myself he had a horrible nightmare just a few hours ago, and I can’t go flipping out on him just because he wanted to be alone.
“Juss… outforra smoke.”
“Oh… Where did you go?”
I want to know how he managed to score liquor at two in the morning. Enough liquor to get him thoroughly wasted.
He lifts his head and his bloodshot eyes meet mine, barely focusing. Barely even conscious. I hate seeing him like this almost as much as I hated seeing him suffering through that nightmare earlier.
“Shit, you’re beautiful,” he says, managing to almost sound sober.
I can’t help rolling my eyes: I’m wearing one of his ratty T-shirts and am rocking some serious bedhead.
He stretches out, rolling onto his side and resting his head against his folded arm.
“So tired…” he mumbles, his heavy lids falling closed.
“Where were you this whole time?” I try again. But he doesn’t answer. He’s already fallen asleep.
It takes me another half hour before I finally do the same.