“You wanted your life to be yours.” He tips his chin to the harbor. “You took it.”
“And now?”
“Now you’re standing on our patio with a heartbeat I can hear from here.” A flick of heat in his eyes, there and gone. “So maybe it isn’t all theirs anymore.”
The door swings; laughter spills out. He straightens.
“Jace has been watching the courtyard for fifteen minutes,” he says, like he's talking about the weather. “Cal’s pretending he isn’t.”
“Of course they are.”
He turns to go, then pauses. “Parker.”
I meet the storm in his gaze.
His voice is roughened velvet. “Don’t run if you don’t want to. And don’t stay if it isn’t your choice.”
My breath catches. “Silas?—”
He’s already gone, the door falling shut behind his shoulders like the end of a sentence.
My phone buzzes in my clutch.
I don’t check it.
3
SILAS
The open bar is mine.
Well, me, Jace, and Cal's. Charles has little to do with it, but when he needed a venue for this entertaining week, it was the best option for him and Sienna. Our hotel. Our liquor. Our cameras. Our fucking problem is when guests drink too much and start making scenes.
Right now, I don’t give a shit about any of that.
I round the bar, ignoring the bartender’s questioning look, and grab the Macallan from the top shelf. The expensive stuff. The bottle we save for high-rollers and special occasions.
Fuck it. This qualifies.
I pour three fingers into a tumbler. Throw it back. The burn is good. Clean. It doesn’t touch the knot in my chest, but at least it’s something.
Six years.
Six fucking years since I’ve seen Parker Carter, and the first thing I do is pick a fight with her on a patio while she looks at melike I’m still just her brother’s annoying friend who won’t leave her alone.
You weren’t my friends, Silas. Not really. You put up with me because of Charles.
I pour another drink.
She has no idea. No fucking clue.
And maybe that’s on me. On us. On the code we lived by—the one that said sisters are off limits. Best friend’s sisters are double off-limits. And Parker fucking Carter? She might as well have had “untouchable” tattooed across her forehead.
Guy code. Man code. Whatever you want to call it. The rules were clear.
Except I’ve wanted to break those rules since I was sixteen years old, and she showed up to one of our parties wearing a dress that made my brain short-circuit. Since I watched her laugh at someone else’s joke and wanted to be the only one who made her smile like that. Since graduation night, when Jace threw her over his shoulder, and every cell in my body screamed to fight him for her, even though he was doing exactly what needed to be done.
Maybe that’s the real joke. My parents saw it before I did—the volatility, the obsession, the parts of me that didn’t bend the way normal people’s did. They were afraid I’d ruin someone. Afraid I’d breed another version of me.
