That is all Cheyenne gives me.
No grand speech. No promise. No clean forgiveness. Just those last few words and the heavy quiet that follows them as she turns and walks back toward her car, leaving the porch full of everything we just said and everything she now knows.
For a second I just stand there in the doorway watching, the weight of the conversation still settling in my chest. Then Octavia’s voice cuts through it from behind me.
“I should kill you.”
My head turns instantly.
She is standing in the entryway, one hand still near the banister, looking at me with an expression that should match the words and doesn’t. There is no real anger in her eyes. No fury. Only that soft, wrecked honesty she gets when she’s trying to say something difficult without dressing it up first.
The line hits anyway, mostly because she sounds tired enough to mean at least part of it.
“But,” she adds, the faintest, saddest humor touching her mouth, “after what you did to me last night… I’m afraid I would only hurt myself more.”
My jaw tightens so hard it aches.
Because I know what she means.
Not just the sex. Not just the way we came apart on each other. The truth of it. The fact that I went and told Cheyenne what happened between us because fear and love collided and apparently my idea of strategy now includes detonating my own life in the driveway.
She studies my face for a second longer, as if waiting to see whether I’ll defend myself or apologize or make it worse by trying to explain too much.
Instead, the only question that rises is the one I least want answered.
“Do you hate me?”
The words come out quieter than I mean them to.
A weak smile pulls at her lips, small enough to stop my heart for half a beat.
“No,” she says.
Just that.
No.
Then she crosses the space between us.
It isn’t rushed. It isn’t hesitant either. She comes to me like she has already decided the answer to every question that matters and now the rest is just learning how to live inside it. Her hands find me first, light against my chest, then she leans up, gently kissing me.
It is not the kind of kiss that begs or burns.
It is softer than that.
A kiss given to steady me.
When she pulls back, she glances out toward the driveway. Following her gaze, Cheyenne is already in her car, hands on the wheel, but she’s very obviously watching the front door. Even from here I can see the wide-eyed look on her face when she catches us standing too close, our lips still warm from one another.
Octavia leans in then, close enough that her mouth brushes my ear when she speaks.
“I love you, Silas,” she whispers.
Every part of me goes still.
Adding, softer, with that same tired little thread of humor, “but I’m not the only one suffering this car ride alone.”
Before I can answer, she slips past me, swinging open the passenger-side door of Cheyenne’s car, leaning in just enough to make the point without saying it outright.
