Chapter 2 #2
Lucian’s words have haunted me ever since Vivienne’s funeral. We both agreed that Vivienne’s death wasn’t actually suicide—a theory Silas won’t even entertain—but we disagreed on Silas, as usual. There’s a thorn in my chest. It’s pushed in a little deeper every time I think of Silas.
He tells me where to be careful as we talk, a protective hand around my shoulders at times. This is the man I’m going to marry. So why do I sometimes feel so terrible around him? I forgave him. The Lord forgave him. He’s met my family.
So why can’t things just go back to normal? Why does my heart rate pick up when he’s around? Why does every kiss feel like I should be expecting a sharp edge?
Even as he’s holding my hand, leading me toward whatever surprise he thinks will make me forget my grief, I’m expecting his grip to turn hostile, for a jolt of pain to snake up my arm. It doesn’t come, but it feels like it should.
When the path starts to slope, and Silas picks me up, I figure out where we’re heading.
“You’d be insane to be taking me back to that boathouse,” I say.
I’m not sure where the thought comes from, but it’s out of my mouth before I can think it through. Silas stills momentarily—and that’s when I’m sure fire will fall from the sky.
But it doesn’t.
“The boathouse burned down,” he says, flatly. “I don’t want to talk about anything that happened before I apologized to you. You agreed to start from scratch.”
He’s right.
I shouldn’t remind him of the past, because I shouldn’t be keeping track of it. When they asked the Lord how many times one should forgive, he didn’t agree to seven times. No, he said seventy-seven times. We’re not meant to keep score.
When we forgive, we’re supposed to forget.
I swallow thickly.
I hope the Lord will give me grace because I’m still working on forgetting. The scarred pentagram stares at me in the mirror after every shower. I still have bruises—from the sex, from getting tossed around in that classroom, from getting punched in the face.
Stop thinking about it.
When Silas finally removes my blindfold, I’m met with a scene that looks straight out of a story book—the kind of scene I dreamed about as a child.
“Silas, I…”
He leads me down a sandy path.
The sun sets in the distance, painting the sky in muted colors.
There’s a picnic blanket spread out, a golden tray filled with imported cheeses, grapes and caviar.
Bottles of wine and champagne in a cooler.
And at the center, sits a large gift-wrapped box.
This is the most romantic thing he’s ever done for me.
My eyes start getting wet.
He helps me sit, then pours me a glass of wine.
Even though it’s legal for me to drink, I don’t do it often. But the week I’ve had warrants a drink—or two. I take the glass from him, taking a deep sip. It’s a rich, dry red wine that warms all the cold spots of my body.
“I figured you’re really stressed.”
I take another gulp. Stress and grief are two different things—but I don’t have the energy to argue with Silas.
She might have been in a relationship with his best friend’s sister, but that hardly changes the fact he didn’t like Vivienne very much.
He attacked her when he thought she was interfering in our relationship.
I can’t expect him to understand how I feel—everyday I wake up with a hole in my chest that only seems to get bigger as the days pass.
“Thank you,” I say softly. “This helps.”
It isn’t a lie.
We watch the sunset together—he feeds me grapes, and caviar on paper-thin wafers. I let him do most of the talking for a while. He says I shouldn’t bring up anything from before we agreed to turn over a new leaf, and he doesn’t want to talk about Vivienne, so…
“It was nice meeting your father,” I say. “You’re the spitting image of him.”
There’s a soft chuckle. “You say that because you’ve never seen my mother.”
“You look more like her?”
He nods. “If I wasn’t their firstborn, she probably would have named me Alexander.” He looks off into the distance. “Her name was Alexandra.”
“She must have been beautiful,” I murmur.
He nods. “I want to name one of our daughters that,” he says. “Our firstborn son will be Silas Peregrine Ashford V, of course—but we can get creative with the others. Would you name any of our children after your parents?”
I stop mid-gulp.
Oh, right. Silas has only ever seen the right side of my parents.
Their perfectly curated image. I shake my head.
“I don’t like the name Evelyn for my daughter,” I say, hoping my disdain isn’t evident.
“And my younger brother is already named William Lockhart, so naming my son after my father would be pointless.”
“Younger brother?”
“Yes. I have two younger brothers. Twins. William and Andrew.” I look down into the glass of dark red in my hands. “They’re eleven.”
Silas sets his glass down, leans back on his palms.
“What is having siblings like?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
The silence stretches between us. I know Silas doesn’t understand my explanation and I don’t care to answer—in fact the whole conversation about what we’ll name our children makes me upset. This is one of the reasons I dislike being sad.
My emotions always morph into different things. Sadness turns to anger, which turns to more sadness, which turns to self-hatred until my head is spinning and I can barely keep up. I can’t afford for that to happen—not in front of Silas, at least.
“This wasn’t the entire surprise.” He breaks the silence, thankfully changing the topic.
I give him a curious glance.
“Then what was?”
He reaches into the pocket of his uniform jacket, handing me something that glints in the fading light, delicate and gold. I take it. It’s my golden cross necklace.
The one I lost.
“I realized you hadn’t been wearing it. It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. But I eventually found it by the tree where you forgave me. I had it cleaned.”
I run my fingers along the metal, along the new clasp.
The weight of it in my palm feels—odd. I’ve been so long without it that I don’t even remember what it feels like.
“Thank you.” I give him a smile. Turning my back to him, I let him put it around my neck. “This is thoughtful.”
I can’t manage to say anything else.
“And you’re enjoying this moment too much,” he replies.
I quirk an eyebrow. Shouldn’t I be enjoying it? “What’s your point?”
“You’re right, I don’t have one. I lose my train of thought a lot when I’m around you.” He chuckles. “On any other day I would be taking you right here, as the sun sets, swallowing all your screams and leaving my marks all over you.”
Thank you, Lord.
God knows I couldn’t handle sex with Silas today. He only wanted forgiveness for how he treated me outside of the bedroom—and I’m not sure if I can bring myself to tell him that I want that to change, too.
I’d want to try having sex in a bed. And not always from behind or with my body in a weird position, or hanging out of a window. I suppose that’s a conversation for another day.
An especially strong pang of grief hits me then.
I have no one to talk to about this. As much as Vivienne hated Silas, at least she would have helped me figure out what to say. Maybe she’d even be happy that I’m trying to stand up for myself more—she always wanted me to do that.
Probably I should.
The lake in front of us is still, reflecting the last streaks of gold in the sky. It’s on the tip of my tongue—to tell Silas what I want, to see how he takes it. But he starts talking before I can get a word in.
“There’s something else I want more than your body right now.” Silas tilts his head, smiling. “I have one more gift for you.”
Whatever reprieve I felt from the wine by the lake is long gone.
Instead, I walk back to my dorm in the dark with a heaviness in my chest. The necklace burns against my skin.
I should be happy.
I should feel safe.
But I stick to the shadows as I walk, my hands folded behind me. I’ve just sealed something irreversible, and for the first time—I don’t feel sure.
Silas and I were by the lake for hours. The sun has long since set, and it’s almost curfew so very few students are out and about at this hour. I have to pass the place where they found Vivienne’s body on my walk back. I run past the spot, squeezing my eyes tight.
But the image of her—twisted and bloody like a beautiful, macabre doll—is burned into my memory. It’s there, lurking in the back of my head as I walk up the flights of stairs to what used to be our dorm room. I didn’t realize how much a privilege it was to call it that.
And as I fumble with my key, I hope she’s sitting on her bed when I open the door. I hope she’s there, smiling—with her perfect messy hair and sharp wit, thumbing through some obscure book—teasing me for being such a wimp, for getting so wrapped up in my feelings when she never really left.
A sliver of happiness courses through me.
But I push open the door.
And there, in the darkness. kneels Anastazya.
She doesn’t seem to realize that I’ve entered.
The room is shrouded in darkness, the only light coming from the moonlight streaming through the open window. I stand at the threshold of the door, trying to figure out what she’s doing. She’s kneeling by the side of her bed, murmuring to herself.
Oh. Praying.
At first, it doesn’t bother me.
Maybe she likes to pray before bed.
That’s never worked for me though, because I tend to fall asleep, so I pray in the mornings. Yet there’s something different about Anastazya’s prayers.
Her voice crackles over her Hail Marys, the rosary beads digging into her fingers, leaving bruises on her pale skin that I can see from this distance. How long has she been doing this? I can barely make out what she’s saying, but it’s a prayer for forgiveness.
I don’t interrupt her.
Instead, I slip over to my bed and back, then close the door and leave the Dormitory.
My feet lead me to the only safe place on campus.