She looks from me to the kitchen, and then, clearly making some conscious effort at social inclusion, turns toward me with a bright smile that is only half genuine.
“Silas,” she says, as though she’s trying the name on for size. “Adjusting well?”
The question is harmless on the surface. The kind of thing people ask when they know nothing and want credit for trying.
“Perfect,” I say.
The word comes out smooth enough to pass if no one looks too closely.
Steph claps her hands together lightly at the counter, pleased by the crowding kitchen and the sound of young voices in her house. “Do you kids want to stay?”
Jacob rolls his eyes almost invisibly.
Maria, incapable of subtlety in any room she enters, answers first. “Well, that was the plan, wasn’t it?”
She says it like the invitation had always existed, like they aren’t actively inventing the shape of this visit as they go. Turning toward Steph with that breezy friendliness she weaponizes so well, she adds, “Octavia talked about doing a movie marathon here today while you and Mr. Marrow were out. We figured there’d be no harm in inviting Kadin.”
The lie hits the room, hanging there.
Octavia picks it up fast, because she has to.
“Oh, yeah,” she says, forcing brightness into her voice. “You mentioned it on the phone last night.”
Looking at Kadin, she gives him a smile that is almost convincing if you don’t know how carefully she’s arranging every muscle in her face to make it happen.
I know too much now.
That’s the problem.
I know the difference between her real reactions and the ones she performs for safety. I know what she looks like when she wants something. I know what she sounds like when she stops lying to herself. Watching her fake-smile at him while my body still remembers exactly how she came apart for me only hours ago is enough to make my teeth ache.
Steph, blissfully unaware, beams at the whole ridiculous arrangement. “That sounds fun.”
Jacob folds his arms. “As long as Silas stays and watches over all of you,” he says, half joking, half not, “I don’t see any harm.”
The sentence lands in me with almost comical cruelty.
Me.
Watching over them.
Keeping my face neutral, it takes all my effort.
Jacob shifts closer again under cover of the room’s noise, lowering his voice just enough that only I catch it.
“If they’ve got something going on,” he says, meaning Kadin and Octavia, “tell me, alright?”
For one impossible second, all I can do is stand there, keeping my expression from splitting open.
Oh, Jacob.
You’d be nowhere near me if you knew what my mouth did to her last night.
The thought hits so hard I actually have to look away from him.
If you knew what she asked me to hide from you. If you knew the sounds your daughter made with my hands on her and my name in her throat. If you knew that I am standing in yourkitchen trying not to drag every one of those memories back up just from the sight of some college boy hugging her like concern makes him clean.
I swallow it all.
