33. Silas
Silas
I let the shower run longer than it should, focusing on the scalding heat burning my skin.
The air around me was thick, but I barely noticed.
I was too busy yelling at myself. My hands braced against the wall in front of me as I stood there.
I’d been in this same position for a while, not wanting to move.
I just couldn’t make myself…because the second I stepped out of this shower, I had to tell her.
I had convinced myself to wait. First, it was because I didn’t want to ruin the simple happiness that a measly pile of fries gave her. Then, I didn't want her to feel trapped in the car. Now, we both had opened up and—I couldn’t wait any longer. It wasn’t fair to her.
But how the hell was I supposed to tell her the truth?
Dragging my hands down my face, I pushed away from the wall and shut the water off.
As the bathroom fell silent, so did my mind.
The only sound was the faint drip of water hitting the tile.
With each drop, I pieced together one more word of what the conversation would be.
As I grabbed the towel from the rack and dried off slowly, my mind was still trying to figure it out.
There was no good way to tell someone their privacy had been ripped away from them.
There was no gentle version of that kind of heartbreak.
I pulled on clean clothes, dragging a shirt over my head, fingers slower than usual. When I stepped into the hallway, I tamped down everything to focus on her. “Ember?”
No response.
As I turned toward the kitchen, I realized it was empty. So were the living room and the bedrooms. Opening the back door, I called outside. “Ember?”
Still nothing, which caused a strange tension to spread inside me.
When I stepped back into the kitchen, the first thing I noticed was the floor. Water pooled across the wood, and a bottle had cracked open. My gaze snapped to the counter and onto my phone, where the screen was open and glowing.
I stopped breathing altogether when I saw the screen.
The background was toggled between the call log and my folder on her, with a video paused. My mind instantly locked me out with panic because she saw it—she watched everything.
“Fuck!” I screamed, grabbing everything within my reach and throwing it to the ground. Shards of glass exploded around me, but I kept going until I felt a fraction of the anger dissipate. It was only when I looked across the room and saw the photo of me and my brothers, that I stopped.
What the fuck am I supposed to do now, guys?
Not only was she gone, but she left without me explaining everything to her, which made it all so much worse.
I was the man who kidnapped her, who watched her, who kept a folder full of that footage.
She’s going to think it’s me in the videos.
My grip tightened around the phone as I stared down at the mess around me.
I had to find her, to explain. She needed to know the truth before she got hurt. Before—
The phone suddenly vibrated in my hand. The caller ID showed Knox, which caused my blood pressure to spike to dangerous heights. “Please tell me you got him.”
“Yes. I couldn’t do it using face recognition in the database, but I got a match from the ring he's wearing. You can see it in the video on his hand, a championship ring from last year. Football. The emblem is for the quarterback—I double checked that information with the tracker you found. The necklace was registered as a gift and labeled under a woman named Kinsley.”
I bit down on my tongue so hard I tasted blood.
That Mother Fucker.
It was her “brother,” the quarterback.
“Do you want me to call the police?”
“No,“ I ground out, my voice radiating with rage. “I got it.”
For a few seconds, everything in my brain went black. I forced myself to inhale as the wrath living in my chest begged for escape.
The fucking quarterback.
As Knox ended the call, I stared down at my phone and the call log that was now displayed on my screen.
Blinking through my red vision, I looked at the numbers listed at the top.
There had been calls made this morning, while I was in the shower.
Kinsley’s name hung there, now a permanent contact, but that was not what my eyes snagged on.
Above Kinsley’s timestamp was another number, the last one on my outgoing call list.
If Kinsley hadn’t answered, she would have called someone else for help. I ran for my keys when I realized it wasn’t Kolby, that number I had looked up after going through her texts.
“FUCK,” I yelled out again, running to my car.
Ember had called Bodhi, thinking he would be the one to save her from me.