“I’m—fine.” I am not fine. My heart is sprinting. He smells like cedar and smoke and night.
“Six years,” he says. His gaze doesn’t move. “Welcome home.”
“Six years,” I echo, and hear how it lands. “You look…”
He waits.
“…different.” Broader. Harder. Like someone who’s carried things he can’t speak about and didn’t set them down.
“Yeah.” His attention flicks to my heels, then back to my eyes. “So do you.”
The party lifts behind us—cheers, a champagne cork, a burst of music—and fades again. He leans one hip against the rail. Doesn’t invade. Doesn’t retreat. It’s the same stillness I remember from him when everyone else was noise.
“How’s California?” His voice is low, unhurried.
“Busy.” I try to shape the conversation normally. “I had a pitch this week. Waiting to hear how it went on Tuesday.”
He nods once, like he files the information underimportant.“You always land what you aim at.”
It shouldn’t warm me the way it does. “That’s optimistic.”
“True.” A beat. “You always hated being underestimated.”
I huff a breath that isn’t a laugh. “I hated being handled.”
His jaw works. “I know.”
It’s too easy to fall into the old orbit, the gravity that made me seventeen and furious and…seen. I swallow. Shake it off. “You, Jace, and Cal own the hotel.”
“Among other things.”
Of course. “Generous of you. Running Charlie’s whole week.”
“Family,” he says, like it’s a vow, not a word.
The old kettle boils in my chest. “Family,” I repeat, too light.
His eyes sharpen—storm to steel. “Say what you’re thinking.”
“You want the short version?” Heat climbs my throat.Fine. “All four of you—Charlie included—spent my entire senior year treating me like a bomb. At every party, someone shadowed me. Every time I breathed wrong, someone took my drink, threw a towel over me, drove me home like a problem to be contained. I wasn’t your best friend's sister. I was your responsibility.”
Silas absorbs it without flinching. “We kept you safe.”
“I didn’t ask to be kept.”
“No,” he says quietly. “You asked to be seen.”
The words punch lower than anger. “You didn’t see me. You caged me.”
“We were boys with orders and guns we hadn’t earned yet.” His mouth flattens. “You think I liked being your shadow? Liked telling Jace when you slipped out? Liked watching Cal drive you home while you cried and beat the dashboard with your fists?” A slow inhale. “You think any of that felt like winning?”
Silence opens between us. Cicadas buzz. A boat coughs to life somewhere beyond the slips.
I look away first. “I left because staying felt like prison.”
“I know.” He doesn’t push closer. He doesn’t soothe. “You were right to go.”
That…is not the fight I braced for. “What?”
