Chapter 36
Silas
“Ican’t tell my parents.”
The words leave her in a whisper so small it almost disappears between us.
Her forehead is pressed to mine beneath the covers, her whole body folded into me so tightly that I can feel the frantic beat of her heart against my chest. We are wrapped in my sheets, tangled together in the dark after the kind of evening that leaves a person feeling scraped hollow.
Her room had become too haunted after the call.
Mine was barely better. So I brought her here, shut the door, pulled her into bed, and for the last hour have done everything in my power to keep her breathing in the same world as me.
After the phone call, after the picture, after the recording of her younger voice whimpering through my speaker like somebody had dug pain out of the ground and pressed play, I made her friends leave.
Not because they did anything wrong. Because their fear was making the room smaller, and she needed air she could still recognize.
Dinner after that was a performance. Steph trying too hard to sound normal, Jacob watching both of us with that awful, steady calm of a man who knows enough to stop asking in front of other people.
Octavia sat through it like a ghost wearing her own face.
Jacob stopped me in the kitchen while she went upstairs.
Keep an eye on her, he’d said.
As if there were anything else I could possibly do.
How the hell am I supposed to explain what happened on that phone?
The blocked number. The texts disappearing.
The malware in her phone. The way whoever did this knew exactly what picture to send, exactly what recording to play, exactly which pieces of our lives to dig up and lay side by side until both of us were bleeding from places we thought were long scarred over.
The whimpering won’t leave my head.
That old, terrified version of her, trapped in a motel room was piped straight into the present, lodging itself somewhere vicious in me.
Every time I think about it, something black and murderous rises in my throat.
Whoever put that sound in my hands is still alive somewhere, still breathing, still thinking he can touch her from a distance and call it debt.
My hand slides to her hip, pulling her closer until there is no space left between us at all.
“I know, beautiful,” I whisper. “I know.”
The name comes out soft because I can’t survive hearing how frightened she is and answer her with anything less.
“But you know I won’t let anything happen to you, right?” My thumb strokes once over the curve of her side beneath my shirt on her body. “Whoever this is, whatever they think this is, they don’t get to you. Not anymore.”
She gives the smallest shake of her head, tears sliding freely now, wetting both our cheeks where our faces still touch.
“You don’t know that, Silas,” she says. Hearing my name break in her mouth like that does something unfixable to my chest. “They knew about me. About you.”
They did.
That is the part that terrifies me the most. Not just that somebody reached for her. That they reached for both of us at once. Like our histories run along the same filthy road. Like the men who damaged us belonged to the same circles, drank in the same rooms, traded in the same rot.
“Something tells me those fucking pervs all ran in the same crowds,” I murmur, the hatred in my voice a living thing. “My father was no better than your mother.”
The second I say her name, she folds harder into me.
“My mom,” she chokes out. “God, I fucking hate her, but they have her body…”
The grief in that sentence is impossible to untangle.
Hate, horror, guilt and the sick, involuntary bond that exists no matter what kind of mother she was.
They dug up the woman who made her life hell and somehow still found a way to make that desecration hurt her worse than if they’d come for a stranger.
“Shh,” I whisper, pressing her head down against my chest so she can hear my heart and maybe anchor herself to something alive.
My fingers move through her hair again and again in slow, repetitive strokes, the only rhythm I have to offer her besides my breathing.
“There is nothing in this world that will hurt you so long as I am alive.”
The promise is too big. I know it is. I say it anyway.
Because the truth underneath it is bigger.
“I lost you once,” I say against the top of her head. “I will never lose you again.”
That sentence lives in me like a vow and a wound at the same time.
I didn’t know where she ended up after I was dragged out of her room at Brightside.
Didn’t know whether she healed or broke or disappeared into some version of herself the world made smaller.
Then she walked back into my life under a different roof with a scar on her cheek and the same impossible heart.
Now that I’ve found her again, the idea of anything taking her from me feels less like fear and more like madness.
She nuzzles deeper into my chest, her tears warm on my skin.
“I’m scared, Silas.”
The confession nearly undoes me.
God, I know.
I know because I am too. I am so fucking scared I can feel it in my bones.
One wrong move and whoever is behind this gets closer.
One wrong move and the old violence in me makes things worse instead of better.
One wrong move and I fail her in the exact way every man in her life has failed her before.
But she doesn’t need my fear.
She needs my arms around her. My body between hers and the world.
So I hold her tighter.
My mouth finds her temple, then the corner of her forehead, then her damp cheek. Little kisses, quiet ones, each of them meant less to arouse than to remind.
I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.
Then she says something that cracks me open all over again.
“I think,” she whispers, her voice so small, I almost don’t hear it, “you’re the first person who has truly loved me. All of me. Damaged and all.”
For a second I can’t answer.
Because no one should have to say that like a revelation.
No one should have to discover love this late, this bruised, this unsure of whether they are even allowed to believe what it feels like.
The thought of all the hands that touched her before mine, all the mouths that used her, all the eyes that looked at her damage and saw invitation or burden or opportunity, makes grief and rage rise together so fast I have to swallow before I speak.
Slipping my hand from her hair to her face, I tip her chin up carefully until she looks at me.
“No,” I whisper. “Not damaged and all.”
She blinks at me through wet lashes, confused.
“All of you,” I say. “Not in spite of it. Not because I’m overlooking it.
All of you. The hurt parts. The angry parts.
The soft parts. The girl who survived. The woman who still loves too hard after everything the world taught her.
” My thumb drags gently beneath her eye, catching the fresh tears there.
“I love all of you because all of you is you.”
Her mouth trembles.
I kiss it before she can break again.
The kiss is soft. Slow. Nothing like the frantic hunger that usually takes us when we’ve been apart too long or too frightened for too many hours. This is something else. Tenderness stripped bare. My mouth on hers like prayer. Like apology for every ugly thing in the world that got to her first.
When I pull back, I rest my forehead to hers and tell her another truth.
“I love the way you still choose gentleness when life gave you every reason to become cruel.”
Then I kiss her again.
This time her hand slides up my chest and into the back of my neck, keeping me close. Her lips part under mine with that same trembling need that has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with being held exactly where she is most wounded.
When we break apart, she breathes my name and whispers, “I love the way you make me feel safe even when I know how dangerous you can be.”
That one hits somewhere deep.
So I kiss her again.
My hand cups the side of her face. My mouth moves over hers carefully, reverently, because every reason I love her keeps surfacing too fast to hold in one sentence. When I pull back, I tell her another.
“I love that you still fight,” I murmur. “Even after everything. Especially after everything.”
Her fingers tighten against my neck. She looks at me like she’s trying to memorize the shape of being loved, then leans up, kissing me first this time. It’s a small kiss, desperate in its sincerity. When she draws away, she gives me a reason of her own.
“I love that you never look at me like I’m too much.”
The words are almost enough to break me.
So I kiss her again.
Over and over like that, we trade the truth back and forth, each confession followed by a kiss as if our mouths are the only place the words can safely land.
I tell her I love her laugh when it catches her off guard.
I tell her I love the way she reaches for me in her sleep.
She tells me she loves that I never ask her to make herself smaller.
I tell her I love the way she saw me when I was a miserable boy and somehow still sees me now.
She tells me she loves that I touch her like her body belongs to no one but herself.
Every reason gets its own kiss.
Every kiss feels like building something no one ever taught either of us how to hold.
By the time the tears slow and the shaking in her body eases enough for breath to come easier, my mouth is swollen with her, my chest aching with the unbearable tenderness of being trusted this completely.
I press one last kiss to her lips, then to her forehead, then keep my mouth there when I finally tell her the reason that has been sitting deepest in me all night.
“I love you,” I whisper, “because you looked at a boy with every reason to die and made him want to live.”
She goes very still after that.
Not frozen. Not distant. The kind of stillness that happens when something lands so deeply it has to be felt all the way through before it can be answered.
Her eyes search mine in the dark, red-rimmed and shining, her hand still cradling the side of my face like she’s afraid I’ll disappear if she lets go too fast.
Then her mouth softens.
A breath leaves her, shaky at first, then steadier.
“I love you,” she whispers, the words so quiet I feel them more than hear them. “Because you never made me earn your tenderness.”
The sentence hits me cleanly.
Before I can answer, she leans in and kisses me.
It’s a slow kiss to start. Her lips move against mine with the same softness as her voice, as if she’s trying to place the truth of it directly into my mouth. One hand stays at my jaw. The other slides over my chest, fingertips dragging lightly through the hair there until my breathing roughens.
When she pulls back just enough to speak again, her nose brushes mine.
“I love you,” she says, “because you make me feel wanted without ever making me feel owned.”
Then she kisses me again.
Longer this time.
My hand slips to her waist instinctively, holding her close while she shifts higher against me beneath the sheets.
The kiss deepens on its own, not hurried, just fuller, warmer, her mouth parting under mine as if every reason she gives me opens something else between us.
The fear is still in the room somewhere, the call still hanging in the walls, but for these few breaths she is pulling me out of it with nothing but her mouth and the honesty in her voice.
When she lifts her head again, her lips are pinker, her breath softer against mine.
“I love you because,” she murmurs, thumb brushing once beneath my eye, “you see the ugliest things in me and still look at me like I’m something worth keeping.”
That one nearly undoes me.
Her kiss after it is less gentle.
Not rough. Just needier. Hungrier around the edges.
She presses in closer, one thigh sliding over mine, the warmth of her body against me pulling a low sound from my throat before I can stop it.
My grip on her waist tightens. Her mouth tilts over mine with growing confidence, as if each confession is stripping away another layer of uncertainty.
She breaks it again only to breathe my name.
“I love you because you never ask me to lie to myself.”
Then her mouth is on mine once more. This time her hand slips lower.
The touch is almost absentminded at first, fingers gliding down my stomach beneath the sheet, tracing the line of muscle there as if she’s still speaking through touch even after she’s run out of breath. But then her fingertips catch the waistband of my boxers, and the gesture turns calculated.
My whole body goes taut.
She feels it immediately.
Her mouth curves faintly against mine, not into a smile exactly, more like a soft, wicked little acknowledgment that she knows exactly what she’s doing now. Her fingers hook the waistband lightly, tugging just enough to make my breath catch harder.
“Beautiful,” I murmur against her mouth, warning and want tangled together.
But she just kisses me again.
Slower. Hotter. Her body settling over mine with more intention now, every place we touch starting to build toward something neither of us is pretending not to feel.
Her hand stays at my waist, teasing the band of my boxers with small, dangerous little pulls while my own hand slides up her back beneath her shirt, needing more of her, all over again.
And when she whispers the next reason against my lips, the words come wrapped in heat.
“I love you,” she breathes, “because even when you’re trying to hold yourself together… you still come apart for me.”
God.
This woman is my salvation.
Not in the clean, church-fed way people like to use that word.
Not in any neat, holy sense that would make it easier to say aloud without sounding insane.
She does not save me from darkness by banishing it.
She saves me by stepping into it, by putting her hands on the worst parts of me and refusing to look away.
By reminding me, over and over, that there is still something in me worth coming back for.
She is not rescue. She is resurrection.
The only beautiful thing to ever grow from soil this ruined.