The beauty of being a trust fund baby, along with having a high salary job, was I had enough funds to blow on something as ridiculous as a two hundred thousand dollar set of chains I was going to happily dress him up in.
And he’d remain none the wiser the second I had the metal soldered in place.
Avery sighed at me. “Fine. Keep it to yourself. But listen, if you need anything, please don’t hesitate to ask. All right? I don’t like you not talking to us for weeks on end.”
Guilt wasn’t an emotion I experienced often. However, both Avery and Marlow were experts in coaxing it out of the deep depths I’d shoved it down into many years ago.
His words were a subtle nudge to come back to the friendship. They’d allowed me to remain on the outskirts for a while but now it was time to come home. I dreaded having to integrate myself in their new lives. But if that was what it took to make them happy, I’d try.
My voice was quiet when I spoke again. Hardly a murmur. “Okay.”
He smiled. “Good. Call me when you can.”
Waving him off, we both parted for our cars and climbed in.
The second the door to mine was closed, I leaned forward to rest my head against the steering wheel and sighed.
I really hated change.
CHAPTER 17
Terran
Silas J.Montgomery.
Age: 34. Birthday: October 30th. Parents: Margaret and Johannes Montgomery. No known siblings. Occupation: Trauma Surgeon at Ellington Med. Graduated Summa Cum Laude from UCL Medical School. Filing status: single. Dependants: none claimed.
I paused my scrolling, my finger hesitating over the wheel on the mouse, voices on the other side of the door coming and going as people passed by, a loud conversation about someone’s vacation coming up that I could only hear the tail end of as their voices faded down the hall.
The rest of the spare office was quiet, the door to the room tightly closed to keep me sealed in here with no one else roaming around the precinct being the wiser. I’d snuck in during everyone’s lunch break and before anyone could spot me and send me home for coming back before my leave was up.
The chair under me squeaked as I leaned back into it. The screen in front of me flickered slightly as the ten year oldmonitor struggled to keep up with the rapid cooling of the CPU seated on the floor, the heat from the fan kicking up and warming me slightly as it bounced off the underside of the desk.
Unmarried. No kids.
Well, at least that confirmed I wasn’t some closeted secret stowed away from his family. As far as last year’s tax records were concerned, anyway. Things could’ve changed drastically in the past seven months since then, but I highly doubted it.
His friends struck me as the type who would call him out for something like that, not seem surprisingly delighted to walk in on me staying over and rope me into cooking them a two-course breakfast.
That had to be a good sign, right?
Clicking through to the next page to last year’s tax filings had me immediately moving back to the first one when my gaze latched onto theseveralzeros at the end of his salary.
Why the surprise of him being absolutely loaded still shocked me was anyone’s guess at this point. If not the car, the house was a dead giveaway. Gated community, personal guards down at the front perimeter checking people in and out of the neighborhood. His blatant uncaring attitude as we rolled through the Starbucks drive thru and I’d been coerced into getting the ritzy-est fucking drink of my life that actually cost half a tank of gas for my beater.
What was it about Silas that made me so fixated on him?
It wasn’t the money, even if it was flattering as hell to be spoiled with it. That wasn’t where the interest was harboring. There was something else I couldn’t put my finger on.
His attitude?
Personality?
Looks?
Whatever it was, it was driving me absolutely fucking mad.
Funny how only a handful of days between us seeing each other again had begun to feel like weeks the more that time passed. Four days was all I needed to wait for Wednesday to come rolling around and already two days in was making me want to crawl out of my skin withwant.
