Chapter 34
Octavia
By the time we turn onto our street, the whole day has settled into my body in the strangest way.
The anger from the hallway should still be the loudest thing in me.
The humiliation, the sting in my knuckles, the ugly echo of Kadin’s voice, all of it should still be winning.
Instead, every glance at Silas keeps turning those feelings into something warmer, something far less daunting.
Every time I look at his mouth, I remember the classroom.
Every time I catch the line of his jaw tightening around thoughts he won’t share, I think about what happened after he walked away from me.
A sane girl would press him for answers. A sane girl would worry first.
All I can think about is how frighteningly good it feels to be the reason his control frays.
By the time he parks in the driveway, my pulse is already moving in that traitorous, anticipatory way it has started doing far too often around him. The air changes the second we step out of the car. It always does now. Ordinary space starts feeling charged the moment we are close enough to touch.
He falls into step beside me as we head toward the house, the heat of him still close enough to make my thoughts soften before he even reaches for me.
I should care that my parents might be home.
I should care that my mom could glance out the front window, or my dad could come to the door, or one of the neighbors could happen to look over and see far too much.
None of that lands the way it should. Something about Silas strips the caution out of me too fast. One look from him, one shift in the set of his shoulders, one little drop in his voice, and the sensible parts of my mind start dissolving into heat.
So when I catch that familiar darkness in his eyes, the words leave me before reason can.
“Maybe we can pick up where we left off in that classroom tonight.”
The effect is immediate.
Not dramatic. More dangerous than that. His eyes darken in that subtle way I am learning too well, the kind of look that always makes something low in my stomach tighten.
He closes the distance between us without hesitation until my back is nearly against the side of the car.
His hands find my hips like they have been there all day in his mind, firm enough to make my breath catch, certain enough to make my knees feel weaker than they should from something so simple.
“God,” he murmurs, his voice already rougher, carrying that half-contained hunger I can never think clearly through. “You really just want to be stumbling to class, don’t you?”
A laugh tries to come out, but it thins into something softer the second he bends and kisses just below my jaw.
The contact is brief. Devastating for exactly that reason.
His mouth is gentle, the kind of kiss that feels less like affection than a promise about what happens if he keeps going.
My head tips without permission, giving him more room, giving him everything far too easily.
One kiss, one grip at my hips, one sentence in that wrecked voice of his, and my whole body starts answering before my mind can keep up.
He feels it.
He always feels it.
His fingers tighten just enough to tell me he knows exactly what he is doing.
The heat that had been simmering all through the drive flares instantly.
For one reckless second, the house stops mattering.
The windows stop mattering. The possibility of being seen stops mattering.
The whole world narrows to his mouth near my throat and the dangerous promise in the way his thumbs press into my hips, like he is already deciding whether he can get me inside before he loses patience entirely.
Then he stops.
Not slowly. Not reluctantly. Completely.
The kiss does not deepen. His hands go still. The whole moment snaps off so sharply it leaves me disoriented as my eyes open fully.
That is when I see what he has seen.
The Warden’s car is parked in our driveway.
Every bit of heat in me goes cold. His hands fall from my hips at the exact same second, the silence that opens between us full of fear.
“W-why is he here?”
The question leaves me in a whisper, all the heat that had been burning through me seconds ago gone so completely it feels as if somebody dumped ice water straight into my veins.
My eyes stay fixed on the car because looking away somehow feels like it might make the whole thing worse.
The Warden’s presence never means anything small.
Men like him do not appear in driveways without a reason.
They arrive already carrying trouble in both hands.
Beside me, Silas goes still in a frightening, the kind of stillness that always means whatever he is feeling is too dangerous to let show all at once. His jaw tightens hard enough that I can see the muscle jump beneath his skin.
“I have a feeling,” he says, his voice low, edged with something fearful enough to make my stomach turn, “it has something to do with a little pest I should have put ten feet underground.”
The words come out with enough venom to tell me I don’t need to ask who he means.
Kadin.
I don’t have time to decide whether that confirms my suspicion or deepens it, because Silas is already moving.
He starts toward the front door with the kind of purpose that makes me want to grab his arm and stop him, not because I think he’s wrong, but because I know that look on him now.
It is the look he gets when anger has already chosen a direction and all that’s left is deciding how much damage it’s going to do when it arrives.
Falling in behind him immediately, I'm only a few steps back, my pulse climbing harder with every foot we get closer to the house.
The front walk suddenly feels too short.
The whole evening has changed shape so quickly that my body hasn’t caught up yet.
A minute ago I was pinned half against the car with his mouth at my jaw and his hands at my hips, too distracted to care whether my parents were home.
Now all I can think about is the Warden’s voice, the article, the texts, Kadin’s face when Silas warned him, and the horrible certainty that whatever waits behind that front door is not going to stay contained for long.
Silas reaches the porch first.
He doesn’t hesitate, his hand closes around the knob.
Even from behind him I can see the way his shoulders square, the way he draws one controlled breath as if he is trying to force the violence back down into something more useful before he walks inside.
Stopping just behind him, I'm close enough to feel the tension radiating off his body, close enough that if this goes bad, I know I’m going to step in whether I should or not. My fingers curl uselessly at my sides.
The moment we step inside, the whole house feels wrong.
Not loud. Not chaotic. Worse than that. Quiet. The kind of stillness adults create when they’ve already been sitting in something uncomfortable long enough for the air to thicken around it. The front door shuts behind us, the sound pulling every eye in the kitchen our way at once.
The Warden is sitting at our kitchen table.
That alone is enough to make my skin crawl.
He looks obscenely comfortable there, one hand curled around a coffee mug as if this is some ordinary afternoon visit and not an intrusion sharp enough to poison the whole room.
My mom is standing near the counter with her arms folded too tightly across herself, her face composed in that brittle way it gets when she’s trying not to let anger show too early.
My dad is seated at the table across from the Warden, shoulders squared, one forearm resting on the wood, his expression much harder to read.
Every head turns.
The Warden’s gaze settles on Silas first, a little smile touching his mouth, one that makes me hate him on sight even more than I already do.
“Silas,” he says in acknowledgment.
But it’s me who speaks before Silas can.
“What are you doing here?”
The question comes out sharper than fear probably permits, but I do not care. Not anymore. Not after the call, not after the driveway, not after the way he keeps inserting himself into Silas’s life like ownership and concern are somehow the same thing.
The Warden lets out a small scoff, setting his mug down with deliberate care.
“See what I mean?” he says, glancing briefly toward my parents as if my tone has just proven something useful. “I do fear that Octavia and Silas may be forming an unhealthy attachment to one another.”
The sentence lands like acid.
My mother’s brows pull together immediately, but the Warden keeps going before either of us can interrupt him, slipping into that awful, measured cadence men like him use when they want lies to sound procedural.
“First the phone call to me,” he says, “where she saw fit to use some rather crude language. Then the incident at the party where they were both present. And now Kadin Anderson’s claims regarding violence from both of them.”
Silas goes very still beside me.
The mention of Kadin sends something mean through my chest, but before I can say a word, my dad's voice cuts cleanly across the room.
“Is what he’s saying true, Silas?”
He doesn’t look at me when he asks it.
That part hurts more than I expect.
Not because I think he doubts me. Because his attention has gone exactly where it needs to. Past the noise, past the manipulation, straight to the person at the center of the accusation. There is no panic in him. No spectacle. Just the question, laid out plainly.
Silas answers without hesitation.
“I kept her safe,” he says coldly. “I will continue to do so.”
The words settle into the room with a force I can feel in my bones.