Chapter 26 #2
Silas’s grin is gone when I make eye contact with him again, and the wine is really getting to me, because I decide to smile hugely at this and nod heavily in his direction.
I hold my head up high when I edge behind him to get past their table, shamefully taking advantage of seeing his date’s face. She’s flawless, of course.
I do my business and wash my hands, quickly assessing my own state of appearance. The rain made my hair wavier and uneven in places, my eyes and lips are wine-glazed, and my makeup is mildly smeared. I look freshly fucked. I hope he gets a good look at me and thinks that, too.
Jesus Christ, I have no reason, no right to hope that! He isn’t even my date. I’m going to need to summon a ride home and get up early enough to grab my car in the morning. What a fucking mess.
Silas is in the darkened hallway outside the bathroom when I reemerge, waiting for me with his hands trapped behind him against the wall. I’m not sure why I’m not surprised.
“Hey, Red,” comes his deep voice.
I match his stance on the wall opposite. “Hi, Si.”
I feel his stare all over me, so heady and hot it makes me itch. He looks at me like he knows exactly what I look like naked and is picturing it vividly. “Drink a little too much?” he asks, one eyebrow cocked.
“Did you follow me back here? Come to lob some clever insults at my date?”
He shakes his head. “Just checking on you.”
I scoff unflatteringly. “I’m fine.” I push myself off the wall to invade his space. He’s invaded my head far too much today, and I think I’d like a little revenge. “C’mon, you know you want to.”
He tilts, eyes drifting to my mouth. Jaw muscles flexing. “Nah. If someone like that makes you happy . . . I’ve got nothing bad to say.”
I study him for a beat. Imagine my gaze carving a path down his neck, over the ridges of his broad shoulders, like I can mark everywhere I touch. “Liar.”
A laugh bubbles out of his chest, and I’m powerless against a grin.
Watching a laugh work its magic over him is like taking a hit of something.
“Fine. How about this? More than one thing can be true. I can think he looks like he drinks chocolate milk with his breakfast before he calls his mommy, and I can also mean it when I say that if he makes you happy, that’s all that matters. ”
The shadow of his Adam’s apple bobs, and I clench my fist, trying not to remember tracing it with my fingertips. I don’t know why three years suddenly feels like three minutes. I stumble slightly and one of his hands latches around my hip to stabilize me. We both look down at it.
The silence stretches too long, and my thoughts get too fuzzy. That spot on my hip feels scalded. “I better get back,” I murmur. He lets go and tucks his hand behind his back again. “Thank you, Silas, for not . . . for keeping what happened between us to yourself.”
I’ve taken two steps away when he asks, “Merritt’s okay, then? She wasn’t—wasn’t too upset?”
“Upset?”
He shoves off the wall with a bemused frown. “I mean—I tried to be as gentle about it as possible.” He can’t quite meet my eyes. He feels genuinely bad about something.
“You tried to be gentle? Gentle with what?” Alarm thumps in my temples.
He curses under his breath and wipes his hand over his mouth like he wishes he could take back a few sentences.
“She—kissed me. Or tried . . . Well, she did, I guess, and I just froze. I wasn’t about to throw her off her own porch or something.
I—I tried to put it on me as much as I could and told her I was sorry if I gave her the wrong idea.
Told her I didn’t mean to. That I didn’t think we’d be good that way.
” His sigh is forceful, frustrated. “I assumed she’d told you. ”
Oh, Mer.
She didn’t tell me, because she was mortified.
Knowing her, she was so embarrassed, she wanted to skip right past it and into a new narrative.
Whatever her feelings were, they weren’t quite as out of her system as she let on.
Sympathy and protectiveness swirl around my chest until they lodge beneath my breastbone and make me stand a little taller.
“Oh, that?” I croak. Tug my mouth into a wobbly smile. “She told me. Didn’t seem like a big deal at all. She was totally fine.”
His brow grooves deeper. I don’t know what it says about me that I still want to reach up and smooth it for him. “Okay,” he says. “Good.”
“Good,” I agree, jaw gritted hard enough to hurt.
“Amazing,” he says.
“Might’ve been,” I toss back. “Guess we’ll never know.”
His big arms fold across his chest. “We both know what might’ve been, Bea.”
I sigh and turn away from him again, pressing my cool palm against my overheated head. I don’t even know what we’re talking about anymore. “I have to go, Silas. It was good seeing you.”
Because he was right—more than one thing can be true.
It’s always good to see him, but up close and personal .
. . it’s also painful and irrational and stirs up a mess of out-of-control, out-of-order feelings.
After having no control for nearly two relentless years and feeling way too much from moment to moment, I have no interest in that anymore.
It was good seeing him. And it hurt.
Because tonight only confirmed what I already knew: I can be friends with Silas Byrd, but only from a safe distance.
I go home with Brendan that night and sleep with him. I don’t feel much of anything.