“My job, for starters.” He finishes his sandwich and washes it down with more coffee. “I sort of up and quit without notice.”
“Do you wish you hadn’t?”
“No. I was losing my mind in that place. I should’ve changed course years ago.”
“Changed from what?”
“Real estate,” he says with a grimace.
“You mean, like, real-life House Hunters?” I cannot picture Silas guiding a stuffy middle-aged couple through a four-bedroom bungalow as they ooh and ahh over crown molding.
“Commercial real estate, but yeah, pretty much.” He gathers our dirty breakfast plates and sets them in the sink. “As for where I’m headed, who the hell knows. What about you?”
I close one eye and pretend to study him closely. “I’m thinking lumberjack.”
“Maybe in a few weeks.” He palms his stubble. “But I meant, where are you headed?”
I shrug. “Don’t know. Someplace far from home.”
“Where’s home?”
“Maryland. We moved there eight years ago, when my dad got a job at the hospital in DC.”
I note his look of disbelief. “Was your dad a doctor?”
“Hospital administrator.”
“That’s almost more surprising,” he says. “I can’t picture Jack putting on a suit every day.”
I can’t imagine my dad not wearing a suit and tie to work, but apparently Silas knew him before all that. “What was my dad like as a kid?”
He tips back in his chair. “A little neurotic, but happy. He loved coming out here even more than I did. His dad tried hard to get him into hunting, but Jack couldn’t hurt a gnat on a fly’s back.”
“Seriously?” Now it’s my turn to stare in disbelief. “He used to take me hunting out here every summer.”
Silas squints at me over the rim of his mug. “Jack hunted?”
“Of course. He taught me how to shoot. I mean, I never got anything, but it was nice just to be out there with him. Some of his rifles are still here, in the safe.”
A strange look passes over Silas’s features, then vanishes. I’m starting to think there’s more to the story between him and my dad than he’s willing to share.
“I know my dad wasn’t perfect,” I tell him. “He told me he got into some really shady stuff before I was born. But for as long as I knew him, he was a good man, even if he wasn’t around much. He saw the best in people.” I don’t finish the thought out loud: in the end, that’s what got him killed.
“People change, I guess,” Silas says.
“Some people can.” Tears burn my eyes. Taking my mug to the sink, I pour out the cold coffee and then start to put away the fixings from breakfast. As I reach up to store the peanut butter on the top shelf of the cupboard, I feel the warm sweep of a feather-light stroke on my right hip.
"Where’d you get this?" Silas asks. He’s so close I can feel his breath on my neck and the heat from his body behind me. Again, he traces the V-shaped scar on my hip. My shirt must’ve ridden up when I went to put away the peanut butter.
"My ex gave it to me,” I tell him. “He used a bent metal coat hanger. Heated it up with his lighter. He promised it wouldn’t hurt. He lied."
Silas doesn’t move a muscle, but I can feel his anger crackling around him like the quiet before a crash of thunder. Brody hadn’t forced me to take his brand, but with him, it was never a choice. He just assumed that I would always do what he commanded. And in the end, I always did.
"Why a V?" Silas asks. I put the sink at my back and Silas in front of me. I’m not ready for the look on his face, or the rage he’s barely containing for my sake. It’s a look I would’ve expected to find on my dad’s face, had I gathered the courage to tell him what Brody was doing to me. Silas has no reason to care beyond general pity, but he’s obviously taking my situation to heart.
“It means virgin. Brody got off on the idea of me being ‘untouched.’ He’d fuck my mouth twice a day, but he wouldn't touch my pussy. He said he was saving it for a special occasion."
I don’t know why I’m telling him this, beyond the simplest reason: because he asked. Normally, when it comes to keeping secrets, I’m a fortress. But something about Silas makes me want to tell him things I’ve never told anyone. I feel like I can trust him. I don’t even flinch when he reaches out to squeeze my shoulder. I don’t mind that he’s placed himself well within my personal bubble, or that he’s made it his business to worry about me.