The shower helped with the chlorine. It washed away the stale scent of the party, the sticky gloss Maria left on my mouth, the sweat and dampness from sleeping in someone else’s bed. It did nothing for my memory. It did nothing for the bruises at my hips that bloomed darker while I got dressed. It did nothing for the image of Silas standing in his doorway in nothing but a towel, or the way my body reacted before my mind could catch up and remind me what a terrible idea any of this is.
So now I stand at the counter in black leggings and a Spokehaven University sweatshirt, chewing on a frozen waffle like it somehow counts as breakfast, trying very hard not to think about any of it.
It isn’t working.
The messages from Cheyenne, Maria, and Kadin are still sitting in my phone like a weight I keep picking up and setting back down. The worst part isn’t even the panic in them anymore. It’s the finality. The certainty. The message that still sits at the top of my head no matter what else I try to think over it.
He did not make it.
A boy is dead.
And somewhere upstairs, the boy who tried to bring him back is getting dressed for his first day at my school.
Footsteps sound in the hallway before I hear him.
They’re light, almost annoyingly quiet. By the time I glance up, Silas is already in the kitchen.
He doesn’t announce himself. Doesn’t say good morning. He just moves toward the pantry with the ease of someone who already understands how to exist in a room without asking permission for the space he takes up. He opens the pantry door, grabs a protein bar, and shuts it again without so much as glancing my way.
He’s dressed now. Hoodie zipped halfway, dark jeans clinging to those tall legs, ball cap pulled low so his expression stays half-shadowed. The look should be ordinary, but it suits him with a precision that smooths him back into someone sharper, someone harder to read, someone far closer to the boy who stepped into my life than the one who let me feel his mouth trembling on my skin in the dark. My gaze makes the mistake of catching on his mouth for maybe half a second.
That’s all it takes.
Heat rockets into my face so fast it burns. I jerk my eyes away, shove another bite of waffle into my mouth like chewing can erase what his lips did to me, like syrup can drown out the memory of his tongue sliding over the scars I spent years hiding. But the second I blink I see it again: the way he sucked at me, the way his tongue tasted me through my underwear until his mouth turned wet with me, the way my knees buckled when he groaned perfect into my stomach. It’s worse now because I know how he looks under the hoodie, under the jeans, how his shoulders stretch bare, how the tattoo curls over his hip, how the length of him pressed hard against soaked sweats consumes my mind.
The chair across from me scrapes softly as he sits.
Silence sprawls between us, crowded with everything we didn’t say: the boy on the patio, the brutal ride home, the way I slept with his arms still around me and ran the second I could. He unwraps a protein bar slowly, fingers steady, expression unreadable beneath that cap. I keep my eyes pinned to the sad wedge of waffle, trying not to replay the sight of his tongue glistening with me.
“Where are Steph and Jacob?” he asks. The question cuts through the unsettling quiet, ordinary words carrying the weight of everything unspoken, dragging me back into a room where his mouth is no longer on me, but my body still remembers every second it was.
The question catches for a second because I’m still not used to hearing him say their names like that, not Mom and Dad, not your parents, just Steph and Jacob, as if he’s holding himself at a careful distance from the whole arrangement.
“They’re at work,” I say, setting the waffle down because I realize I haven’t really been eating it. “My mom leaves early on Mondays. My dad had some meeting before court.”
Silas nods once.
That’s it.
No follow-up. No attempt at conversation. He takes a bite of the protein bar like we are two strangers accidentally sharing a table instead of two people who spent half the night trying not to unravel in each other’s hands.
I don’t know whether to be angry at him for that or grateful.
Probably both.
The silence stretches again, every passing second the truth I haven’t told him pressing harder against the back of my teeth. He doesn’t know. Or if he does, he’s hiding it well. The whole drive home, the way he moved, the way he tried to keep going even after he’d lost the pulse, makes it impossible for me not to imagine what hearing it will do to him.
My fingers tighten around the edge of the plate.
“You should know,” I say finally.
He stills.
It’s subtle. The kind of stillness most people would miss. But I see it. The tiny pause before he takes another bite. The way his shoulders tighten almost imperceptibly beneath the hoodie.
I force myself to keep going before I can lose my nerve.
“About the boy from last night.”
