Perching on the edge of the mattress, I reached out and nudged his shoulder, gently running my fingers through his sun-kissed hair.
“Hey, baby,” I whispered in a raw octave.
Si shifted, letting out a soft, content groan as his eyes fluttered open. He saw me and smiled, the trauma from last night clearly had not fully kicked in yet. Stretching his arms over his head with a long, satisfying yawn, his back arched against the sheets.
“Why’re you up so early?” he asked with a sleep-thickened voice.
Then his eyes focused. He took note of the expression on my face: red swollen eyes, pale skin, an invisible physical weight sagging my shoulders. His smile vanished instantly. “Cal? What’s wrong?”
A jagged and broken sound escaped my chest. “I need you to sit up for me, baby.”
He immediately sat up, his pupils dilating as the memories of the alley started to rush back. The storm was about to hit, and the least I could do was to try and calm it as it did. Reaching out to hold his hand, I brought his knuckles to my lips, pressing a desperate kiss to his engagement band.
“Cal, what the hell is going on?” His voice rose, laced with an icy dread.
I paused to look at him, to commit the last few seconds of his innocence to memory, before I shattered his world completely. “Baby, last night—”
“No. Nonononono!” He cut me off, shooting up off the bed as if the mattress had caught fire. The absolute terror in his voice rang through the room like an alarm. He backed away, his hands flying to his head to pull at his hair.
“Baby…” I stood up and reached for him.
Before I could get more words out, Silas was already speaking again, his chest heaving as each painful breath forced its way into his lungs. “Please, do not tell me what I think you’re about to tell me,” he begged. “Tell me it’s not out there.”
With his words, the pleading in his voice, the terror to his tone…I couldn't contain myself any longer.The dam shattered.
Tears, which I’d been fighting so hard against since last night, finally spilled over. They were relentless, streaming down my face as I looked at Silas. Watching as the man I loved more than breathing currently begged for me to tell him his nightmare wasn’t becoming a reality.
“Si, I’m so sorry,” I choked out, a sob tearing through my throat. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Without another word, without a shout or a scream, he turned, walked into our en-suite bathroom, and shut the door softly behind him. I dropped onto the edge of the bed from my knees giving out. My head fell into the palms of my trembling hands as the world continued to collapse. Our lives were about to change. Hell, they already had. We were out, the secret was dead, and we didn’t get any kind of say in the matter. Everything we had built together was now in the hands of strangers and executives who didn’t care if we lived or died, so long as the ratings held.
I sat there gasping for air, forcing oxygen into my unwilling lungs, trying to pull myself together the best I could. There was no time for me to break. Silas needed me, and he was the priority.Always.
Without another thought, I headed for the bathroom knocking softly and resting my forehead against the wood. When there was no answer, I nudged the handle, and it pushed open gently.
The sight of him stole whatever breath I had managed to obtain. Silas was sitting on the cold tile of our bathroom floor, his back against the tub. His knees were pulled to his chest, his head bowed down. His hands were buried deep in his hair. Curled into the tightest ball, he gripped the strands as if it would hold his skull together, as small, jagged, and broken sobs fell from his lips, echoing off the porcelain.
“I wasn’t ready,” he mumbled into his knees.
Hearing how small he sounded, how timid… It broke me all over again, shattering the last remaining pieces of my heart.
I ran to his side, dropping to my knees on the hard floor, and wrapped my arms around his shaking frame. Pulling his body as close to mine as physically possible, I tucked his head under my chin and rubbed soothing circles against his back.
We didn’t say a word. We didn’t have to. There were no words in the English language that could fix the reality waiting for us on the other side of that 8:00 AM phone call. Right now, all we needed was to hold each other, and that’s what we did. We sat on the cold floor, hugging each other, crying, mourning, and aching in the silence.
The thing we’d fought so hard to protect, the sacred secret we had shielded from the world with our blood, the love we had weaponized in the ring to keep ourselves safe, was now out in the open. And we could never, ever take it back.
Our peace in the bathroom lasted all of ten minutes before the world started clawing at the door again.
The sound started small, a distant frantic vibration coming from the bedroom. Silas’s phone, buried deep in the nightstand drawer where I’d stashed it like a piece of radioactive waste. We both sat on the floor, our shoulders touching, eyes glaring, pretending the piece of furniture wasn’t currently rattling against the drywall. I could feel the tension radiating off him in waves as his fingers twitched against his knees. Eventually, the rattling stopped, only to be replaced seconds later with a sharp and abusingly loud ringtone.Mine.
It rang five times the first go-round, the screen lighting up the darkened bedroom like a distress signal. I didn’t even have to look at it to know who it was. It was time. The dread had become a physical thing now, the air in the bathroom thickening until I felt like I was trying to breathe through wet wool. Silas felt it, too. His eyes were locked on the doorway, his skin pale and features hollow.
“Are you ready for this?” I asked, every word sounding like it had been dragged through a rock crusher. I reached out, tangling my fingers with his, my thumb tracing the black band on his finger as we got to our feet.
He looked at me, his jaw set tight, and with a shaky breath he nodded. “I guess we have to be. We can’t hide in the bathroom forever.”
The second we opened the door, my phone started screaming again against the mattress. The sound hit like a punch to the gut, a shrill reminder that our bubble of safety was about to burst in a matter of seconds.
