Delaney’s laugh is brittle. “Yes, you are.”
Silas opens his mouth.
Closes it.
Because she’s right.
“I never used my position?—”
“I know, Boone,” Delaney says, too fast. “I know you didn’t. None of you did. That’s the worst part. Because it felt… good. It felt safe. And I don’t trust anything that feels safe anymore.”
The room goes quiet again.
The fire pops.
Somewhere outside, wind moves through the trees as a warning.
Silas presses his palms to his eyes. When he drops them, he looks tired.
“I brought you here to talk,” he says. “Not to watch you punish yourself.”
Delaney’s eyes flash. “I’m not punishing myself. I’m protecting myself.”
“By cutting us off?” Silas asks. “By pretending you don’t want what you clearly want?”
Boone’s head jerks toward Silas. “Don’t.”
Silas shoots back, “Why not? You all keep doing this thing where you stand there like you’re made of stone, and you think it counts as restraint.”
Boone rises halfway out of his chair. “Watch your mouth.”
Silas stands too. “Make me.”
The air cracks.
Delaney’s breath catches as if she’s back in a kitchen with shouting men and breaking glass.
I stand. Not to fight. To stop it.
“Enough,” I say. My voice doesn’t carry Boone’s weight or Silas’s charm, but it’s calming. It lands.
They both freeze.
Boone’s gaze snaps to me. Silas’s chest heaves once, then he looks away.
Delaney’s eyes are wide, overwhelmed.
I turn to her, softer. “Nobody here wants to hurt you.”
She swallows hard. “That’s what I thought last time.”
Silas’s face shifts. Pain, guilt, sadness.
Boone is quieter now. “So what do you want, Delaney?”
Delaney hates that question. Hates that she even has to answer.
“I want to stop feeling like I’m standing on a trapdoor,” she whispers. “I want to do my job. I want Sadie to be okay. I want… the town to forget me.”
