Chapter Thirteen
Silas
My hands won’t stop fucking shaking. Though I clench them into fists and press them hard against my thighs, the tremors keep coming. The image of that asshole’s hands on Skye—touching what’s mine, claiming what he has no right to even look at—burns behind my eyelids every time I blink.
I can still feel the satisfying give of his throat under my palm, and I replay the way his eyes widened with shock when he realized he’d fucked with the wrong person.
Part of me wishes I hadn’t pulled away, and that same part wanted to keep squeezing until his entitled smirk was permanently wiped from his face.
“Breathe, Si.” Zay’s voice cuts through the chaos in my head. He’s twisted around in the passenger seat, looking at me with concern. “You’re spiraling.”
I force air into my lungs, but it’s as if I’m breathing through cotton. My chest is too tight, and the car feels smaller than it should.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. None of it was supposed to happen like this.
Skye sits pressed against the opposite door, as far from me as she can get.
Her eyes are wide, shifting warily between the three of us.
Her dress has ridden up slightly, exposing her thighs, and I have to dig my nails into my palms to keep from reaching for her.
She knows. She fucking knows who we are, and everything is ruined.
“This is kidnapping,” she says calmly. “You can’t just—”
“Funny,” Zay interrupts her, “I seem to remember you specifically requesting kidnapping fantasies alongside your stalker ones. And judging by the way you’re pressing your thighs together, I’d say this is making you wet rather than scared.”
Her cheeks flush pink, and she shifts in her seat.
The movement sends a bolt of electricity straight through me. Even now, when everything has gone to shit, my body responds to her like she’s a fucking drug I can’t get enough of.
“That was different—that was fantasy,” she snaps. “This is . . .”
“Real?” Kain offers. “From where I was standing, you looked pretty relieved when we showed up.”
I watch her throat as she swallows; she’s trying to process what happens now that the masks are gone.
“You’ve been lying to me,” she whispers. “All of you. This whole time.”
“Not lying,” I say, my voice rougher than I intended. “Protecting.”
Her eyes snap to mine, and I see the hurt. “Protecting who? Me or yourselves?”
The question hangs in the air like a loaded gun. The truth is, I don’t know anymore. What started as a way to indulge my obsession became something else entirely.
“You,” I say finally. “Always you.”
She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Right, because stalking and lying to someone about who you are is so protective.”
“You signed the contract,” Zay points out. “You asked for this.”
“I asked for a fantasy! I didn’t ask to be manipulated.” Her voice cracks on the last word, and something breaks inside my chest.
Kain’s eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. There’s a warning there, a reminder to keep my shit together. But my control is hanging by a thread that’s getting thinner by the second.
“Where are you taking me?” she demands.
“Somewhere we can talk,” Kain says. “Somewhere safe.”
“Safe for who?”
The car falls silent.
I should say something. Explain how this started, how it evolved into something I never intended, but the words stick in my throat—all she will hear are excuses.
She’s angry, scared, and confused. But underneath it all, I can see something else, something that gives me hope.
Skye’s still here. She could have screamed for help at the gala.
Could have fought when Kain threw her over his shoulder.
Demanded we take her home the moment we put her in the car. She did none of those things.
The car slows, and Kain turns onto a narrow dirt track.
“Oh, perfect,” Skye says, her voice laced with sarcasm.
“Taking me to a secluded location in the middle of nowhere. You know this is exactly how every true-crime podcast starts.” She lets out a bitter laugh.
“Well, if you’re planning to murder me, at least it’ll teach me a lesson about trusting masked strangers off the internet. ”
Kain brings the car to a stop in a small clearing and cuts the engine.
“Nobody’s murdering anyone,” Zay says.
“Right, you three seem like the poster boys of mental stability right now.” She crosses her arms, the movement pushing her breasts up in a way that makes my mouth go dry. “Let me guess, you brought me here so we could ‘talk’ without witnesses?”
“We brought you here because you need to understand,” I say, finally finding my voice. “What happened back there with your date—”
Her eyes flash with anger. “I could have handled him myself.”
“He was hurting you,” I say quietly.
“And that’s your business because?”
“Because you’re m—”
“I’m your what?” she snaps.
Kain turns in his seat to face us, his gray eyes moving between Skye and me.
“You signed a contract.” I backtrack, even though every instinct screams at me to shut up. “You asked to be watched and followed.”
“I asked for a fantasy!” She leans toward me, her face flushed with anger. “Not for my fucking TA to actually stalk me!”
“It was never a fantasy for me,” I blurt out. “For me, this was very real.”
She stares at me for a long moment. “And what am I to you, Silas?”
Everything. My obsession. The missing piece I didn’t know I needed until I saw her.
“Mine,” I whisper.
“This is fucking bullshit,” she says, her voice shaking. “I need the truth because I can’t understand how or why this is happening.”
She pulls her hair out of its twist and runs her hands through it, messing up the perfect style from the gala. “You’re my TA. You”—she points at Zay—“hit on me at the coffee shop. And you”—her finger swings to Kain—“were hired by my mother as security. How does that connect to masked men?”
Kain’s jaw ticks. “It doesn’t. Not in the way you think.”
“Then explain it to me like I’m five, because right now I feel like I’m losing my fucking mind.”
I take a shaky breath. She deserves the truth, even if it destroys whatever chance I might’ve had with her.
“I’ve been watching you for six months,” I tell her quietly. “It was before the contract. Before Wild Steps. Before any of this.”
Her face goes pale. “Watching me how?”
“Cameras in your apartment building and . . . following you.” The words taste like dirt in my mouth. “I was stealing small amounts from your stepfather’s accounts. You weren’t supposed to be part of it, but then I saw your photo and . . .”
“And what?” Her voice is barely a whisper.
“And I couldn’t stop,” I admit, desperate for her to understand. “Skye, I know how it sounds. I know what I am. But I never touched you, never approached you, did nothing to make you feel unsafe until you signed that contract asking for exactly what I’d been wanting to give you.”
Zay shifts in his seat. “The contract was real, pumpkin. Just not processed through Wild Steps.”
“What do you mean?”
“I hacked their website,” I reply honestly.
The silence that follows is deafening. I watch the pieces click into place and see the exact moment she realizes the scope of what we’ve done.
“None of it was real,” she says slowly.
“The feelings were real,” I say desperately.
She laughs, but it’s a broken sound. “Real? What part of this is real, Silas? The part where you illegally watched me? The part where you manipulated me into signing a fake contract?”
I flinch at each accusation because they’re all true. Every word she’s saying is true, and I have no defense except the pathetic truth that I love her more than I’ve ever loved anything in my life.
“The part where I would do anything to protect you,” I say. “Where seeing another man’s hands on you made me want to commit murder. The part where you’re the only thing that matters to me in this entire fucked-up world besides them.” I nod toward Zay and Kain.
Her eyes fill with tears, and it kills me. “That’s not love, Silas, that’s obsession.”
“I know.”
The admission hangs between us like a fucking death sentence. A tear slides down her cheek, and everything inside me screams. I want to wipe it away, to comfort her, to fix this somehow. Yet I can’t do anything but watch as the truth destroys whatever we might have had.
“Jesus Christ,” she whispers, pressing her hands against her eyes. “Six months. You’ve been watching me for six months.”
“Skye—”
“No.” She holds up a hand, stopping me. “Don’t. Just . . . don’t.”
The car fills with suffocating silence. All I can focus on is her, and the way her shoulders shake as she curls in on herself like she’s trying to disappear.
I did this to her—I broke her.
“I need to know,” she says finally, her voice muffled by her hands. “Did you—did you ever hurt anyone because of me?”
My stomach drops. “The guy from the coffee shop,” I murmur. “I broke his hand.”
She looks up at me then, and the fear in her eyes is like a knife to the chest. “What else?”
“Nothing else. I don’t hurt innocent people. Just the ones who hurt what’s mine.”
“I’m not yours!” The words explode out of her. “I’m not anyone’s! I’m a person, not a possession!”
“You’re right. But that doesn’t change how I feel about you.”
“How you feel about me?” She laughs bitterly. “You don’t even know me.”
“I know you take your coffee with two sugars and no cream,” I say, my voice steady despite the chaos in my head. “I know you listen to Teddy Swims when you’re sad. I know you’re stronger than you think you are, and that you’re terrified of ending up in a marriage like your mother’s.”
Her breath catches. “Stop.”
“I know you fake your orgasms with the men you date because they don’t take the time to learn your body.
You crave danger because your life has been wrapped in cotton wool since the day you were born.
I know you took off those pearls because you’re finally ready to choose who you want to be instead of who everyone expects you to be. ”
“Stop,” she whispers again.