22. PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA #3
Silas’s lower lip trembled, his eyes shimmering with tears.
Confessions continued to tear out of my chest, each one compounding onto the last until they were ready to choke me.
“During those seven years apart, there were so many moments where I considered reaching out. I almost asked Evan if you got a new number a hundred times. The night your grandfather died, when we were doing a loop through the Carolinas and Ev was supposed to come visit you. He was hammered. I was the one who listened to the voicemail you left him. The second I heard it, I got in a rental car and just started driving. Evan told me how to get to the land. I drove for hours. Si, I was more than halfway there, and I ended up turning around. I slammed on the brakes and went back because I wasn’t sure I could face you, and I didn’t think you wanted to see me. ”
Silas let out a choked sob, burying his face in my neck. He held onto me so tight I could feel each individual beat of his heart.
“I wanted to see you. God, Cal. I wanted to see you every single day,” he cried softly into my skin.
“I need to tell you something, too,” he whispered as he pulled back from me and wiped at his eyes.
His voice was shaky, like he was holding onto a heavy shame.
“During our years apart, there was a time when the memory of you became too much for me to carry. The silence in those woods was suffocating, and I was so desperate to stop the aching in my chest. I wanted to prove to myself that I could be normal, so I tried to completely erase the thought of you. I had myself convinced I could do what she wanted, be what she wanted, and I could build the life my dad wanted for me.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, a tear tracking through the stubble on his jaw.
“But every time I looked at Amanda, or she touched me, all I could hear in my head were the final words you said to me on the night I left. Your voice screaming that I could hide in the woods, marry a woman and have a million kids, but I would never be able to forget you. And you were right, I couldn’t.
It was all a lie.” He inhaled a shaky breath as his hands started to tremble.
“The night I finally broke it off with her, I did something I’ve never told anyone.
I was so disgusted with myself and broken over knowing I’d wasted years trying to run from the truth, that I drove to a liquor store.
I grabbed a bottle of bourbon and drank nearly the whole thing.
For the first time in my entire life, I got completely and utterly hammered. ”
I went completely rigid against the sofa cushions as a sudden, sharp wave of uneasiness flooded my gut, and my protective instincts flared up.
Both Silas and I were strictly and fiercely straight-edge.
We built our entire lives around being sober due to the trauma from our biological fathers who were unhinged alcoholics.
Hearing that Silas, the same man who wouldn’t even take a Tylenol unless he absolutely had to, had gotten drunk made my stomach turn.
“Why?” I asked with a tight voice. I was desperate to understand the depth of the fracture. “Did you… Have you ever done it again?”
“Never,” Silas swore fiercely, his eyes flying open and locking onto mine with an unyielding sincerity.
“I swear to God and on my life, I hated every single second of it. The next morning, the self-loathing was so suffocating I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror. It made me feel exactly like Maverick.
“The worst part of it was that drunk Silas didn’t forget. Drunk Silas remembered you even more vividly. I spent the entire night crying on the kitchen floor, screaming your name into an empty house. The alcohol didn’t erase the fire. It fueled it.”
A long, shuddering breath passed between my lips as the uneasiness melted into a profound, aching sympathy. I pulled him back down against my chest to hold him, and we stayed like that until the shadows in the room grew long, and our eyes grew tired.
It was three AM when I was violently pulled from a deep sleep by a restless energy in the room. The bed beside me was cold as I sat up to squint through the darkness. A crack in the blinds painted pale white streaks that cut across the carpet and showed Silas. Pacing.
He was moving across the room, frantically walking from the window to the bathroom and back again. His broad shoulders were hunched, He was consistently, aggressively scratching at the side of his neck, digging his nails into his own skin until the flesh was visibly raw.
This was a full-blown panic attack.
I jumped out of bed, my bare feet hitting the carpet as I closed the distance between us. “Si! Silas! Baby, stop! Look at me.”
Reaching out, I grabbed his wrists and forced him to stop and hold onto me.
His skin was burning hot, yet slick with a cold sweat, and his chest was heaving in short, hyperventilating hitches.
There was an unnerving vacancy in his wide, dilated eyes as he stared at me.
It was as if he was looking right through me, like he was trapped in a nightmare he couldn’t wake up from.
“I can’t,” Silas finally gasped out, high-pitched and wheezy. “Cal, I can’t do it. I can’t get in that ring tomorrow night. I’m scared. I’m so fucking scared.”
“Silas, breathe,” I commanded fiercely, my hands sliding up to cup his face, forcing his gaze to lock onto mine. “Look at my eyes, baby. Sync with my breathing.”
With trembling shoulders, he began to sob, and his knees buckled from the strain.
“I’m scared of getting hurt again or hurting someone else.
The second my eyes closed, all I could dream about was how I was back on top of that ladder.
I could feel the air rushing past my face and hear the wood splintering.
Th-then there was the p-pop. When I opened my eyes, all I could see was your face.
You were looking down at me from the apron, staring at me like I was dead. ”
He collapsed completely, his knees hitting the hotel carpet with a large thud. I dropped with him since I wasn’t about to let go, not for a single second. My arms wrapped around his waist and I pulled him into a tight, crushing hug, burying my face in his chest as we sat there together.
“I’ve got you,” I vowed, the three words coming out strong and clear over the sound of his hyperventilating. I held onto him with every single ounce of physical strength I possessed, becoming the immovable wall and anchor to reality he needed.
“Listen to my voice, Si. That was eight years ago! The ladder is gone, the silence is gone. You are not alone anymore.”
Silas buried his face in my shoulder as his hands gripped my back so hard that his nails dug into my skin.
He was weeping, the trauma of his injury finally breaching the surface after pretending he was completely fine.
I knew was trying his absolute hardest to pull himself out of the spiral, but the ghost of the botch was looming.
“I’m going to be in that match with you,” I whispered against his ear.
My hand was gently running through his hair, trying to soothe the erratic rhythm of his body.
“Presley doesn’t want the world to know, but I’m dropping into that match, Si.
The second that bell rings, I’ll be standing right beside you.
I’m your partner, your shield. If anyone even looks at your shoulder wrong, I will put them through the canvas. You hear me?”
He let out a long, shuddering gasp before his breathing finally started to slow down. Each lungful mimicking the steady rise and fall of my own chest.
“And Evan will be there too,” I reminded him softly, kissing his wet cheek.
“We have the entire day tomorrow to go to the arena, lock ourselves in that ring, and practice every single spot until we’ve got it down.
We’ll get it right. I won’t let you fall.
I promise on my life, I will never let you fall again. ”
We sat on the floor for another twenty minutes as his suffocating panic slowly receded, leaving behind a quiet, exhausted peace. Si’s trembling finally stopped, his head resting gently against my shoulder as he let out a long, clean breath.
I stood up slowly, hoisting his massive frame up with me, and guided him back toward the bed. Pulling the heavy duvet back, I tucked him in and climbed in after him.
As soon as I was in and laying on my back, Silas quietly crawled on top of me.
His entire weight sprawled over my body as he wrapped his arms around my neck and buried his face into the crook of my shoulder, right over his own name.
He needed the physical contact, the certainty of my presence to keep the ghosts at bay.
I held him tight, pulling the blankets over his shoulders. “I’ve got you, husband,” I whispered into the quiet room.
Silas let out a soft, content sigh, and his body finally relaxed as he drifted back to sleep, safely in my arms.