Chapter 20
Devin
I'm awake and listening to everyone below us.
The bar goes quiet around eleven. I can track the sounds of people settling.
Knox's door closing, the steady weight of him moving in the room he shares with Toby.
Ezra and Nico's low murmur, indistinct, the language of two people who finish each other's thoughts. Vaughn left with Robin an hour ago.
I'm in Silas's bed. Toby's blanket still around my shoulders because I haven't taken it off and Silas hasn't asked me to. My face aches, the bruise deeper now, the purple spreading into green, and my knuckles are stiff from the punch I threw Thursday night in a common room that isn't mine anymore.
Silas is behind me. Spooned around my back, his arm across my waist, his breath against my neck. We've been lying like this for a long time and neither of us is asleep and we both know it.
"You're thinking," I say.
"Yeah."
"Loud thoughts?"
"The loudest."
I turn in his arms so we're face to face.
The room is dark. Just the streetlight through the window, the orange glow that makes everything look like it exists outside of time.
His face is close. His eyes are open and steady and looking at me with something that isn't anger or pity or even the tenderness I've gotten used to.
It's harder. Something that costs him to hold.
"Tell me," I say.
"I need to say something and I need you to hear all of it before you respond."
My stomach drops. The instinct fires, the old one, the survival one. This is where they tell you it's not working. This is where they say you're too much trouble. Pack your bag. I feel my face start to go blank, the mask reaching for the surface, and I fight it. Push it back down. Stay present.
"Okay," I say.
Silas is quiet for a moment. Gathering. I've learned his rhythms by now, the way he thinks in full paragraphs before he speaks, the way he builds sentences the way he reads books, carefully, with attention to every word.
"I love you," he says. "That's not in question. That was true in the laundromat and it's true now and it'll be true tomorrow. But I need something from you, and if I don't say it now, it's going to sit between us and rot."
"Okay."
"The wall. The virginity. The shelter." He says each one separately, giving them weight.
"Three times, Dev. Three times you've hidden something from me because you were afraid of how I'd react.
Three times you've edited yourself, managed me, controlled what I knew, given me the version you thought I could handle instead of the truth. "
I open my mouth. He shakes his head.
"Let me finish. Please."
I close my mouth.
"Each time, you had a reason. A good reason.
On the wall, you walked away because I taught you that your inexperience was dangerous.
With the virginity, you lied because you were afraid honesty would cost you the thing you wanted.
With the shelter, you hid because asking for help felt like failure.
" His hand is on my hip, steady. "I understand every single one of those reasons.
They make sense. Inside the logic of your life, the foster homes, the system, the way you've had to survive, they make perfect sense. "
"Then —"
"But I can't live inside that logic." His voice is quiet but there's no hesitation in it.
No waver. "I can't be with someone who decides what I can handle.
I can't build something with a person who curates the truth because they think the full version will break me.
It won't break me, Dev. The truth won't break me.
But the editing will. Eventually, it will. "
The words settle in the dark between us.
"I'm not giving you an ultimatum," Silas continues.
"I'm not saying tell me everything or I leave.
I'm saying, I need you to try. I need you to choose honesty even when it's terrifying.
Even when your brain says if I tell him this, he'll spiral or if I tell him this, he'll rescue me or if I tell him this, he'll see the version of me that isn't worth keeping.
I need you to tell me anyway. And trust that I'll still be here. "
"What if you're not?"
"What?"
"What if I tell you something and you're not still here?" My voice is thin. The question I've been carrying since I was eight, since the first time I learned that being honest about how I felt got me moved to the next placement. "What if the full version really is too much?"
"Then we deal with that. Together. But the alternative, the one where you keep editing and I keep finding out afterward, that ends us, Dev. Not today. Not next week. But eventually. Because I can't trust someone who doesn't trust me with the truth. And without trust, this is just —"
"Just what?"
"Just two people who like each other's book recommendations."
I almost laugh. Almost. It catches in my throat, half-laugh half-sob, and I press my face into the pillow for a second to collect myself.
"That's not fair," I mumble into the pillow. "Using books against me."
"I use what works."
I surface. Look at him. His face in the orange light, serious, open, more vulnerable than I've ever seen him.
Because this is costing him too. Asking for things costs Silas.
He's the quiet one, the patient one, the one who reads in corners and fixes carburetors and doesn't demand much from anyone.
He lets the world come to him. But right now he's reaching out and asking me for something and the effort of it is visible in every line of his body.
"You're scared too," I say.
"Terrified."
"Of what?"
"That you'll say yes and not mean it. That you'll promise to be honest and then the next time something happens, the editing instinct will kick in and you'll hide again.
And I'll find out from a phone call or a text or a look on Robin's face, and each time will erode a little more of the thing we're building until there's nothing left. "
"That's specific."
"I've been thinking about it for days. Since the virginity conversation. I almost said this then but I didn't because the timing was wrong and you'd just been so brave and I didn't want to —"
"You were editing," I say.
He stops. Blinks.
"You were editing," I repeat. "You had something to say and you didn't say it because you were managing my reaction. Waiting for the right time. Curating the conversation."
The silence that follows is different from the others. Not heavy. Illuminated. The slow recognition of a pattern that runs both ways.
"Yeah," Silas says quietly. "I was."
"So we both do it."
"Apparently."
"You just do it more gently."
"I do it with better intentions."
"Same result though." I reach for his hand on my hip, thread my fingers through his. "I hide the big things because I'm afraid of being too much. You hold back the hard conversations because you're afraid of pushing me away. We're both editing."
"That's... horribly accurate."
"I'm very smart."
"You are. It's annoying."
The room is quiet. Our hands linked between us. The blanket warm over both of us. Somewhere in the building, a pipe settles with a low groan. The bar breathing, the way old buildings do at night.
"Here's what I can promise," I say. "I can promise to try.
I can't promise I'll never hide, because the instinct is, Silas, it's been my operating system for twenty-one years.
It's not a habit. It's architecture. It's how I'm built.
Caseworkers, foster parents, shelters, every system I've ever been in rewarded me for being easy, for not making waves, for giving people the version of me that didn't cause problems. Unlearning that doesn't happen because someone asks me to.
It happens slowly, over time, in a place where being honest doesn't get me moved. "
"This is that place."
"I know. I'm starting to know. But I'll mess up. I'll default to the mask. I'll catch myself editing and sometimes I'll catch it too late and you'll find out from someone else and it'll hurt."
"I can handle the hurt if you're trying."
"Then I'm trying. That's my promise. Not perfection. Trying." I squeeze his hand. "But I need something from you too."
"Anything."
"When you have something hard to say, say it.
Don't wait. Don't curate the timing. Don't hold back because you think I'm too fragile or too stressed or too fresh off the latest crisis.
I need the full version of you too. Including the parts that are frustrated with me.
Including the parts that want more than I'm giving. Including the parts that are scared."
"I can do that."
"Starting now?"
"Starting now."
"Then tell me something you've been holding back."
He's quiet for a beat. Then: "I've been adding bookshelves to the house plans."
"What?"
"The house. On the five acres. Knox's contractor is building it. And I asked for built-in bookshelves, floor to ceiling, both walls of the second bedroom. And a reading nook with a window seat."
I stare at him. The streetlight. His face. The careful, nervous set of his jaw.
"When?" I ask.
"Two weeks ago. After you mentioned bookshelves once, on a sidewalk, while we were walking home from Lucia's."
"I mentioned bookshelves once and you redesigned a house."
"The second bedroom was going to be storage. I changed it."
"You changed a room in a house that doesn't exist yet because I said the word bookshelves one time."
"It exists. The foundation's poured. Dave has the revised drawings."
"Silas."
"You said you wanted bookshelves and a reading nook by a window.
I told the contractor. That's the thing I've been holding back.
That I'm building a house with your name all over it and I've been afraid to tell you because it feels like pressure and I don't want to be another person putting expectations on your timeline. "
I'm crying. Again. For the third time today. I'm going to dehydrate at this rate.
"That's not pressure," I manage. "That's the most — Silas, that's —"