Silas (7 page)

I turned the corner into the living
room, where Sloane was sitting in front of the TV.

“
Well,” she said, “we made
the news.”

I sat down next to her.
“Shit. They saw us.”

“
They saw my car, anyway,”
she said. “In fairness, black sedan is a pretty generic
description. There were probably a ton of black sedans at the hotel
that night.”

“
Yeah, but if the news media
has that much information, imagine what Rolf has,” I said. “He
probably saw you grab me and drive off. Hell, he probably followed
us.”

“
If anyone was following us,
I lost them,” said Sloane.

“
No, I know. I’m not
questioning your ability to lose a tail.”

“
So, even if he tried, he
failed.”

“
I don’t know. If we were
smart, we’d get out of here for a few weeks, let everything blow
over.”

“
We can’t do that,” she
said. “We have the wedding.”

“
You
have the wedding,” I said. “I got kicked out,
remember?”

She sighed. “Speaking of
which, you should really talk to Griffin.”

“
No, I shouldn’t. He doesn’t
want to talk to me,” I said. “And besides, I hardly think that’s
what we should be focusing on right now. Rolf could be hunting us
down.”

“
He’s not going to find us,”
she said. “No one followed me. We’re going to be fine. And after
the wedding, we’ll pick up his trail, and we’ll find him again, and
we’ll kill him. I promise. But, for now, you need to try not to
think about it.”

I got up. “I don’t know,
Sloane. What if he does find us? We’re vulnerable here.” I headed
back out of the living room into the foyer. I tried the front door.
“The door’s unlocked. He could walk right in.”

She appeared in the doorway
of the living room. “Silas, don’t start getting paranoid. I can’t
handle it when you’re paranoid.”

Easy for her to say. She
didn’t have to get paranoid. I always kept her safe. Away from the
messy work, from the heart-pounding danger of a knife inches from
her neck. She didn’t have shit like that rattling around in her
head. I did.

I locked the door. “Just try
to keep the door locked, especially when we’re home?”

She rolled her eyes. “You
realize that’s the exact opposite of what everyone else
does?”

“
Yeah.” I went to the front
window and tested it to see if it was locked. “And they’re idiots.
What’s more important? Your stuff or your life?” I tried the window
next to it. “Keep the lower-level windows locked too,
okay?”

She rubbed her forehead.
“You
are
getting
paranoid.”

“
I’m just trying to keep us
safe,” I said. “You want to give me a hand? Help me check the other
windows?”

“
What I want you to do is to
stop this shit and agree to talk to Griffin.”

I went into the kitchen to
check those windows as well. “Griffin? Who cares about Griffin
right now?”

She followed me. “He’s your
best friend.”

“
He’s not my best friend.”
The window by the table was open. I slammed it shut and locked
it.

“
He’s the only friend you
have that you can be completely honest with.”

“
Big freaking deal. That’s
such a chick thing to care about.”

“
Like hell,” she said. “As
much as you happen to be in denial about it, Silas, you are a human
being with human emotions.”

I left the kitchen and
jogged down the stairs to the basement.

“
Don’t walk away from me!”
Sloane came after me.

I went into our gun room and
opened the case. “We need to keep a loaded gun in every room. Just
in case.”

She folded her arms over her
chest. “No. I don’t like that. It’s dangerous. What if you start
having those dreams again, and you’re so freaked out when you wake
up that you shoot me or something?”

“
I would never shoot you,” I
said.

“
You wouldn’t mean to,” she
said. “But after those dreams, you’re disoriented and—”

“
I haven’t had them in a
long time.” I took two hand guns out of the case.

“
Silas, you scare me when
you get like this.”

I looked up at her. She was
giving me her pleading eyes. They were big and concerned and hard
to ignore. I set down the guns and went to her. “Look, it’ll just
be until after the wedding.”

She bit down on her lip.

That hadn’t been enough for
her, huh? I heaved a huge sigh. “I’ll talk to Griffin.”

“
You will?”

“
Yeah, sure, I
will.”

She hugged me. “That’s good.
You need to try to smooth things over with him.”

I hugged her back. “But
we’re keeping guns upstairs.”

She let go of me.
“Silas—”

“
Fine. I won’t load them,” I
said. “But I swear to god, if you don’t let me at least have
unloaded guns up there, I’m not going to be able to handle
it.”

“
Okay,” she said. “I guess
that’s okay. You’ll tell me if you start—”

“
I’m
fine
.” Maybe it came out
a little more sharply than I intended.

She nodded. “You won’t need
to tell me anyway. I’ll be able to tell.” She patted me on the arm.
“I’m glad you’re going to talk to Griffin.”

* * *

“
You know the only reason
I’m here is because Leigh made me come, don’t you?” Griffin was
sitting stiffly at my kitchen table. He’d been waiting for me when
I got home from class that afternoon. I’d asked him to come by a
little later, but I wasn’t going to point out how early he was. Not
when he clearly still hated my guts.

I was standing by the
refrigerator. “You want a beer?”

“
I guess.”

“
Wait, Leigh put you up to
this?”

“
That’s what I said.” He
inspected his fingernails. “She said that I wasn’t allowed to ruin
her wedding just because I was being an ass.”

I took two bottles out of
the refrigerator. “Yeah, well, Sloane roped
me
into it.” I opened the beers.
“Fucking girls.”

Griffin let out a small
laugh of agreement.

I handed him his beer and
sat down opposite him. “Look, I get it. If I thought someone was
hurting Sloane, I’d go apeshit. So, I’m sorry.”

Griffin took a drink of the
beer. “Is this something you made?”

“
Nah. It’s a homebrew,
though. My buddy made it. It’s a little heavy on the orange peel, I
think, but otherwise it’s okay.”

“
It’s good,” said Griffin.
He set it down on the table. “I don’t want to talk about you and
Christa.”

“
I thought that was what we
were doing.”

“
Yeah, but, what’s there to
say? She’s my sister. I don’t want think about her… you know, doing
it. And I don’t like to think about you doing it either, so, let’s
drop it. She seems to be handling it okay. She’s got enough sense
not to have feelings for your pathetic ass.”

Ouch. Why did that sting? It
wasn’t because Griffin called me pathetic. I didn’t mind
that.

It was because… I wanted
Christa to have feelings for me? That was crazy. That didn’t make
any sense at all.

I nodded. “Okay. Well, I’m
good with that.”

“
Cool.” He upended the beer
into his mouth and swallowed it in three draws. Then he set it
down. “Well, you’re back in the wedding. Leigh’s happy, so I’m
happy.” He stood up.

“
You’re leaving?”

“
Yup.” He started out of the
room. It was still earlier than the time I’d set for us to meet and
hang out. He’d barely been here for five minutes.

I stood up. “Hey, hold on a
second.”

Griffin turned to me.
“What?”

“
Just… we’re not okay yet,
are we?”

He rubbed the top of his
head. “I don’t know, man.”

“
I really am sorry about
Christa.”

“
Yeah, it’s not really about
that,” he said. “I mean, it is. Kind of.”

“
So what’s it
about?”

He sighed. “I don’t even
want to get into it.”

He didn’t? I was realizing
that I wanted us to be okay. That I didn’t like the idea of not
having Griffin as a friend, no matter what I said to Sloane. “Is
there something I could do to make this better?”

“
I don’t think so.” He
looked at the floor. “Generally, I’d say that what you do with your
down time is your own business, and if you want to sleep around, I
don’t care. But… you know, when it comes down to it, I think it’s
sort of fucked up. And I kind of always have.”

I picked up my beer, feeling
defensive. “Yeah, you know what? It
is
my business. Not
yours.”

“
Right,” he said. “Well, I’m
not sure if I can hang out with you without thinking about how
fucked up it is all the time.”

“
Why not?” What the hell did
Griffin care?

“
I don’t know. I guess
because I’m not that kind of guy, and I never wanted to be that
kind of guy, and I never thought I would be close friends with that
kind of guy.”

“
What ‘kind of
guy’?”

“
Whatever Sloane calls you,”
he said. “A manwhore.”

I rolled my eyes. “You
serious? I’m in college. I’m not ready to settle down. I’m acting
normal. You’re the one who’s getting married too young.”

“
Too young.” Griffin shook
his head. “I guess maybe I used to kind of tell myself that.
Because I am older than you, and I thought maybe you were just
going to grow out of it, like it was a faze or something, you know?
Like maybe you’d mature, or you’d meet the right girl, or
something. But I don’t think so. This is a way of life for you,
isn’t it? You really don’t believe in relationships.”

I drank some of my beer. “I
guess not. At least not for me. If it really works for you guys,
more power to you. But you were currently forced over here against
your will to talk to me. If you didn’t want to make Leigh happy,
you wouldn’t have to do that. And how many more concessions can you
make to her happiness before you start resenting her?”

He laughed in disbelief.
“You don’t get it at all. It’s not like making her happy makes me
miserable. It’s more like I’m miserable without her, and I’m
miserable if she’s not happy. And so anything I can do for her, I
do. Because I love her. And it’s not like you don’t understand the
idea of loving someone. You care about Sloane.”

“
She’s my sister. That’s not
the same thing.”

“
No,” said Griffin. “It’s
not.” He started to say something, and then he stopped.

“
What?”

“
No, I don’t know if I want
to go there.” His jaw twitched.

“
Now you kind of have to,” I
said. “You can’t bring it up and then leave me hanging.”

He took a deep breath.
“Look, I think it’s kind of… predatory and disgusting what you do.
You’ve got it all down to just a physical connection, and it’s not
about emotion. And I’ve seen that kind of approach to sex before.
It’s the way that the guys… when I was in jail treated me. It’s
dehumanizing. It’s disgusting. And when I look at you…” He shook
his head.

“
That’s not fair,” I said.
“I’m not a rapist.”

He shrugged. “They’re all
objects to you, Silas. You use them. You don’t even think about how
they feel. Maybe it’s not rape, not exactly, but it’s still fucked
up.”

I licked my lips, searching for
something to say.

But Griffin turned and walked out of
the kitchen.

I didn’t stop
him.

I heard him leave through
the front door.

I only went after him to make sure it
was locked. I checked the windows again, even though I knew that
neither Sloane nor I would have had any reason to unlocked
them.

What he said about me wasn’t
true.

Or…

If it was, maybe I didn’t
care. So, I was an asshole to girls. So what?

CHAPTER FIVE

“
So, how was Griffin?”
Sloane asked me, depositing her book bag on the kitchen table. She
was getting back from her last class of the day. This semester,
Sloane had somehow crammed all of her classes onto Tuesdays and
Thursdays, meaning she had Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays off.
However, she went from eight in the morning to seven at night on
the other days. I didn’t know if it was worth it or not.

Admittedly, Sloane was taking more
classes than I was. She was taking this whole college thing a lot
more seriously than I was.

I didn’t quite see the
point. We’d managed to steal a lot of money from Op Wraith when
they went under, which meant that we were set for life. We’d been
able to buy a house and pay for our college educations outright. We
weren’t hurting for money, and that probably wasn’t going to
change.