Chapter 20
Octavia
The text doesn’t just catch my attention. It tears straight through the room, lodging somewhere deep enough that everything else starts sounding far away.
Do you think death erases debt?
Unknown number. California area code.
I stare at the screen until the words blur slightly, then sharpen again.
My thumb hovers uselessly over the message, not because I’m considering answering it, but because my body has gone still in that awful way it does when fear arrives too fast for panic to catch up.
For one second all I can hear is my own pulse as the word debt starts echoing through me like something living.
Someone is messing with me.
That has to be the explanation. Some sick prank.
Some wrong-number cruelty. Maybe someone from Brightside got my number somehow.
Maybe someone heard too much through the grapevine and decided to have a little fun with the girl from the motel room.
People are disgusting enough for that. People always have been.
But knowing that should make it easier to breathe, yet…it doesn’t.
Debt.
The word opens doors in my mind I have spent years trying to nail shut.
It drags up memories I can usually keep blurred around the edges if I don’t touch them too directly.
Men who smelled like cigarettes and sweat.
My mother’s voice slurring promises in one room while I learned in another what it meant to be held down by someone old enough to know better and cruel enough not to care.
The faded tallies on my stomach. The reality of being turned into a solution for a problem that was never mine.
My teeth find the edge of my thumbnail before I even realize I’m biting it.
Around me, my room keeps moving like nothing happened.
Cheyenne is flopped on the floor at the foot of my bed, kicking one foot absently while she scrolls through streaming options.
Maria has commandeered the remote and is already arguing with her over whether tonight requires “good horror” or “camp horror,” as if there’s a meaningful distinction.
Their voices overlap in a familiar, affectionate mess.
Under other circumstances, the sound of them would drag me back to myself.
Now it barely reaches me.
“Hey.”
Kadin’s voice pulls me up just enough that I blink and realize he’s crossed the room.
He lowers himself onto the bed beside me, close enough that the mattress shifts under his weight.
The nearness of him should feel grounding.
Instead it makes my stomach dip. I become hyperaware all at once of my own posture, of the phone still in my hand, of how little room there is between us.
“You okay?” he asks.
He sounds genuinely concerned, which makes lying to him feel worse than it should.
“Fine,” I say anyway.
The word comes out thin and automatic.
He studies my face for half a second, clearly unconvinced, but instead of pressing, he smiles softly and leans in to kiss my cheek. It’s a sweet gesture. Normal. The kind of thing any girl should be able to accept without her body going rigid for reasons she can’t explain.
I barely have time to register the warmth of it before movement in the hallway catches my eye.
Silas.
Walking past my room, he stops the second he sees us.
The pause is brief, but it lands with enough force that it changes the whole shape of the room.
He doesn’t speak right away. He just stands there in the doorway with that quiet, dangerous stillness of his.
The text in my hand. Kadin beside me. Silas in the doorway.
My skin is suddenly too tight for all of it.
Cheyenne spots him first and, because she never lets discomfort breathe for long, smiles brightly. “Silas,” she says. “Horror or comedy?”
He leans one shoulder into the doorframe, posture loose enough to pass for casual if you don’t know how much of him is built out of restraint.
“That depends,” he says, his eyes shifting to Kadin. “You a little bitch, Anderson?”
The line should sound playful. It almost does. But there’s an edge under it sharp enough to catch.
Kadin clears his throat, dropping a hand onto my thigh with an ease that feels suddenly much more possessive than affectionate.
His fingers squeeze lightly. For one suspended second I stop thinking about the text because every nerve in me is too busy registering what that touch looks like from where Silas is standing.
The smirk disappears from Silas’s face.
It doesn’t happen dramatically. It just vanishes, leaving something harder in its place.
“Not in the slightest,” Kadin says, smiling back at him.
I don’t know whether he’s trying to stake a claim or simply refusing to look intimidated.
Maybe he doesn’t even know himself. Maybe this is nothing more than testosterone and bad instincts colliding in a small room.
But the moment stretches wrong enough that I can feel the tension settle over my skin like heat.
Silas’s gaze lingers on Kadin’s hand before lifting again.
“You heard the boy,” he says, putting just enough weight on boy to make the word sting. “I’m always in favor of a little fear.”
Crossing into my room, he drops into my rocking chair like he’s always belonged there.
The motion should look lazy. Instead it looks controlled in that infuriating way only he can manage, all sharpened edges wrapped in ease.
He leans back, spreading out without asking permission, the posture unsettling me in ways it wouldn’t have before.
I know what his body looks like under his clothes.
I know what it feels like when he stops pretending not to want.
That knowledge turns the sight of him simply sitting there into something intimate enough to make my face warm.
The message on my phone flashes through my mind again.
Debt.
Men.
My mother.
Silas.
Kadin’s hand still on my thigh.
The room suddenly feels much too bright for all of this.
“Can we turn the lights off?” I ask.
The request comes out softer than I intend, almost frayed at the edges. “Please.”
Maria, thankfully, doesn’t ask questions. She hops up and goes to the switch while Cheyenne keeps arguing about movies, seemingly oblivious to the current running under the room.
The overhead light clicks off.
For one final second before the television glow takes over, my eyes find Silas’s across the dark.
He is the last thing I see clearly.
Watching the screen flicker to life, it throws pale light over all of us as the room rearranges itself into shadows.