Chapter 30
Silas
What unsettles me most about Jacob isn’t the warning he gave me.
It’s the fact that he trusted me enough to give one at all.
A man like him could have made the whole thing ugly if he wanted to.
Could have dragged me out of the house, could have looked at Octavia asleep on my chest and decided whatever else he suspected didn’t matter next to the simple visual of his daughter tangled around a man he took in out of obligation and old blood.
Instead, he poured coffee this morning like none of it had happened.
Asked if I wanted eggs. Asked if I slept.
Then, with that same maddening calm, suggested that maybe sometime when the girls did one of their all-day things, he and I could catch a movie.
Like I hadn’t spent the night with my mouth on his daughter.
Like he hadn’t told me to keep her safe.
Now the house is too quiet, and his words keep coming back anyway.
Steph and Jacob are gone. Octavia is upstairs getting ready for school.
The kitchen is full of the leftovers of a morning that felt almost normal if I ignored the fact that the only reason I could act normal at all was because I’d spent half the night trying and failing not to go back into her room after I carried her to bed.
Coffee sits on the table cooling beside me.
The shower I took at three in the morning did nothing but make me more aware of how deeply she got into my skin.
The mirror offered me the same face as always.
A little meaner. A little more wrecked. A little too hungry for a girl upstairs in one of my shirts.
And underneath all of that are the texts.
The article.
The image of her face when she looked at the screen and went white in a way no one else in the room understood.
The way she shook after, not just with fear, but with recognition.
That message reached straight into her past and came back carrying pieces she has spent years trying to bury.
Every time I think about it, every instinct in me goes taut again.
Keep her safe.
Movement at the front window catches my eye.
Blonde hair through the curtain.
Cheyenne.
She’s not knocking casually. She’s peering in, trying to see whether anyone’s home, one hand curled around her phone, her whole posture sharp with the kind of restless concern people wear when they’ve been turning a situation over in their heads all night and didn’t like any of the answers.
By the time I get to the door, the decision is already made.
The second I open it, she startles, then narrows her eyes at me like she’s trying to decide whether to be suspicious or furious first.
“Is Octavia here?” she asks, leaning slightly to look past me. “I thought I could give her a ride or…”
The normal answer would be yes.
The normal answer would be to let her in and keep this simple.
Instead, I look her dead in the face and decide I’m done with simple.
“We slept together.”
The sentence lands like a brick through glass.
Her whole body stills. For one full beat she just stares at me, like maybe if she waits long enough the words will rearrange into something else. Then her mouth parts.
“What?”
“We slept together,” I repeat, quieter this time, not because I’m softening it, but because I want her to hear that I mean it. “And before you start deciding what that means, no, it’s not why she blew up on you yesterday.”
A flush rises high in her face, more shock than embarrassment. “You cannot just say that to me on a porch.”
“Apparently I can.”
“Silas.”
There’s warning in my name now, maybe even anger. But under it, confusion. She came here expecting something, but not this. Definitely not this.
Leaning one shoulder against the frame, I keep my voice low, because the last thing I need is Octavia hearing this before I’m done saying it.
“What happened yesterday wasn’t about you,” I tell her. “Not really. She shouldn’t have taken it out on you. She owes you better than that. But it wasn’t about you.”
Cheyenne folds her arms. “Funny, because it sure felt like it had a lot to do with me when she screamed at me to get out of her room.”
“I know.”
The answer comes too honestly, throwing her for a second. That’s the problem with truth. People are less prepared for it than they think.
A gust of wind catches a strand of her hair, blowing it across her mouth. She brushes it back, staring at me harder. “Then why are you telling me any of this?”
“Because Kadin’s already building a story,” I say. “And if you’re going to be angry, I’d rather you be angry with the whole picture instead of whatever version of events he’s about to hand you.”
The mention of Kadin changes something in her face.
Not because she trusts me.
Because she already suspects something.
“What exactly did he hand me?” she asks carefully.
I don’t answer right away. The smarter move would probably be to say less, not more. But smart has not been my strongest instinct where Octavia is concerned.
“He told you I’m the reason she’s spiraling,” I say. “That I’m in her head, or dangerous, or taking advantage of her, or whatever version made him feel like the good guy in this.”
Cheyenne’s brows pull together. “He didn’t say all that.”
“No,” I scoff. “Probably not out loud.”
She goes quiet.
For a second neither of us speaks. The porch boards creak when she shifts her weight, still clutching the phone in one hand. Her nails tap once against the case, nervously.
“You punched him,” she says finally.
“Yes.”
The word doesn’t surprise her. That’s telling.
“And from the look on his face last night,” she adds, “I’m guessing it wasn’t just once.”
“No.”
She exhales through her nose. Not quite disbelief. More like irritation at having one suspicion confirmed while five new ones are forming behind it.
“You are making it really hard to believe you’re somehow the less chaotic option here.”
“That’s fair.”
The answer catches her again.
“What is wrong with you?” she asks. This time the question sounds less accusatory than genuinely baffled.
Plenty, I think.
Instead I say, “Enough that I know what men like him do when they feel humiliated.”
The words settle between us.
Cheyenne studies me more closely now. Some of the anger in her face has given way to scrutiny.
She’s trying to decide whether I’m just posturing or whether I actually know what I’m talking about.
More importantly, she’s trying to decide whether any of this has anything to do with Octavia beyond sex and bad judgment.
“What happened to her?” she asks.
That one cuts deeper than the rest because it sounds careful. Because it sounds like she’s asking not out of gossip, but out of fear.
My jaw tightens. “That’s hers to tell.”
“I’m her best friend.”
“And it’s still hers to tell.”
The answer comes out harder than I mean it to, but I don’t take it back. Cheyenne flinches slightly anyway, then squares herself again.
“She doesn’t tell me everything,” she says, almost to herself.
“No,” I say. “She doesn’t.”
That lands too.
The porch is very quiet now. Traffic somewhere down the street. A dog barking in the distance. The ordinary noises of morning moving around the fact that nothing about this feels ordinary.
Cheyenne looks down at the phone in her hand, then back at me. “Maria called me after she dropped Kadin off,” she says. “He made it sound like you were the reason she fell apart.”
“I might be part of the reason,” I say. “But not for the reasons he thinks.”
Her eyes narrow. “What does that mean?”
“It means this isn’t simple.”
“No shit.”
That almost gets a laugh out of me. Almost.
Noticing the almost, something in her posture loosens, not into trust, but into something more complicated. Realization, maybe, that whatever this is, I’m not standing here trying to charm her into an easy version of events.
“She really…” Cheyenne stops, looking away toward the driveway, then back at me. “This wasn’t just you pushing yourself on her?”
The question should piss me off.
It mostly makes me tired.
“No,” I say. “It wasn’t that.”
She holds my gaze, and I let her. Let her look for the lie. Let her decide whether she sees one.
There must be enough in my face to answer for me, because some of the fight drains out of her, leaving behind a much rawer confusion.
“You actually care about her.”
There’s disbelief in it. Maybe even a little fear.
“Yes.”
The word comes out before I can polish it. Maybe that’s for the best.
Her eyes flick up toward the second floor for a brief second, toward the room where Octavia is still getting ready, still completely unaware that I’m out here telling one of the people she loves most the one thing she has every right to be furious with me for saying first.
“And she knows?” Cheyenne asks.
A pause pulls between us.
“Yes,” I say.
This time, I feel the answer land harder.
Because it’s one thing for Cheyenne to suspect I want Octavia. Another to know Octavia knows it too. That this isn’t me circling her from a distance or making decisions for her in the dark. That something already passed between us too real to be dressed up as confusion.
Cheyenne rubs a hand over her forehead, clearly trying to reorganize the whole situation in her head. “Jesus Christ.”
“Yeah.”
“She still owes me an apology.”
“She does.”
That earns me the first look from her that isn’t outright hostile.
Small, but noticeable.
Then her face sharpens again. “If you hurt her, I will make your life hell.”
“I figured.”
“And if Kadin’s really doing what you think he’s doing…”
“He is.”
The certainty in my voice stops her again.
Because I don’t say it like a guess. I say it like I know exactly how boys like him move when they get rejected in the wrong way. Through people. Through rumors. Through concern that sounds clean until it starts poisoning the room.
Cheyenne looks down at her phone again, then back at me. Her mouth opens, closes, opens again.
“Why tell me now?” she asks. “Why not just let me hate you?”