Watercolour Smile (16 page)

“Truth,” I whispered, so shaky that I thought he might not hear me.

His chest stopped heaving, his eyes grew blank, and his arm fell. The plank clattered to the gravel, but he made no move other than that.

“Silas,” I urged quietly. “Ask me something.” I stepped closer and he tracked me until I set a hand against his bloodstained stomach.

He looked like a wild, injured beast. His chest still wasn’t moving, like he wasn’t even breathing anymore. That animalistic glare was back, fixed with careful precision on my face.

He wasn’t going to speak.

I blinked away helpless tears, and his eyes tracked their path down to my chin, where they trembled for an instant before plopping onto the black material of my dress. The disassociated glare didn’t give anything away, and when my hand twitched on his stomach, his eyes jerked back to my face. I was suddenly freezing cold, a breeze stirring my shoulders and infiltrating the tight bun that I had woven my hair into, setting cold fingers against my skull. The black dress was knee-length, and the hem stirred against my skin uncomfortably, the brush of the silk-blend material almost icy.

I had seen Silas break twice now, and each time it seemed to affect me more dramatically. A fissure of emotion was quickly serrating a path through me, carving a delicate chasm into my heart, filling it with darkness and despair. There had always been a beast inside me—a restless feeling that stirred with my valcrick and whispered ominously with my forecasting—but Silas’s beast was on the outside. He stalked the shadows that dogged my every step, growling at me to stay away, even though his hands sometimes reached out to capture me and drag me close. He was a nightmarish creature, but he swam on my periphery, protecting me from the real monsters, taking on their darkness and wearing it like a badge, allowing it to mark him.

I didn’t know how to save him, but I wanted to.

He moved to pull away, and I quickly grabbed his hand, my grip strong despite the chattering of my teeth and the numbness that had begun to creep into my limbs—from the overload of adrenaline, I suspected.

“Truth.” I was begging him this time, and I knew that it wasn’t for him anymore. This time it was for me. I couldn’t handle whatever it was he would do once I released him. Who would he hurt? How would he dispel this hatred?

“How…” His throat worked, his hand flexing in mine, seconds away from breaking my grip. He pulled, causing me to stagger forward, my forehead smacking into his chest. His voice lowered, grating through my body. “How far would you run,” he spoke with a short, stilted timbre, full of pain, “if the bond wasn’t making you stay?”

Astonishment rocked through me, and I tried to pull back to see his face, but he tugged our joined hands further behind his back, forcing me to stick where I was. I turned my face to the side, my breath puffing out against his skin. My cheeks felt sticky, and I knew it was from the blood. He thought that the bond was making me stay?

Wasn’t it
?

I didn’t have an answer for him, and that wasn’t a good thing. But then Cabe stepped into my line of sight, edging carefully to the side of Silas, still far enough back so as not to breach our little bubble, but close enough to convince me that they were slowly, carefully closing in. His eyes were wide, terrified, and his curls were tousled, standing on end. I knew, without a doubt, that they would brave Silas cracking further to pull me away from him. They would chance his reaction, and threaten their relationship with him… to keep me safe. That caused my heart to crack even further.

I didn’t want them to put me above any one of them. I wanted us to be equal.

I blinked at Cabe, and he blinked back, stilling. Tears were slipping down my face again, and Cabe seemed confused for a moment. It was almost like he could see the thoughts light up in my eyes, but I didn’t try to mask my face, for once. I was too busy grappling with myself; with the tug-of-war that was currently trying to tear me in half. On one side, I could see my love for them as people, as friends, stripped of the bond and complete in its own little pocket of feeling, and on the other side, fate reclined in languorous respite, threatening cessation; it competed with every last ounce of my strength. It wasn’t fair, that I cared for these boys, that I wanted them in my life. It wasn’t fair, because I wanted it
my
way, and not… not in the way it was happening.

I wanted Cabe’s smile, Noah’s influential presence, Quillan’s support.

I didn’t want to examine what it was about Silas that drew me. It would be like acknowledging a fate that I wasn’t entirely ready to welcome: we all had a dark side, made up of urges that we didn’t understand, of secrets that shamed us. My feelings for Silas existed in that part of myself that I avoided: some masochistic pocket of my subconscious that bristled with each hint of violence; not quite agitated, but certainly not running away. That masochistic pocket had a pocket of its own, too. It was sadism in its purest form; an answering battle cry, an
understanding
.

I wasn’t ready to examine those feelings. I wasn’t sure that I would survive the process.

“I’d still be here,” I said against Silas’s chest. “I wouldn’t go anywhere.”

It was true
, I thought.

Without the bond, we might have all been together the way I wanted. Together, without the pressure, without the intensity, the danger. Without the bond, I wouldn’t have been the bane of Silas’s existence, the cause of every jagged scar that tagged his body, the memory of each laceration deep enough to reach into his chest and suffocate his heart. I wouldn’t be the reason that Aiden had been murdered.

Things might have been different, but one thing was for sure: I would still be there.

We were a team, bond or no bond.

“Tell me what to do,” Silas muttered harshly.

“Give me your hands.”

He allowed me to pull back and I grabbed his bloodied hands before he could change his mind. I realised that we must have been standing like that for a long time, because the sudden stir of movement had brought the other guys closer, briefly surging in. Silas’s eyes flicked over my head, narrowing. I glimpsed the human in him peeking out from behind the cage that separated the two parts of his personality, but I pushed away the hope that threatened to lower my guard. 

I flattened my palms, allowing his injured hands to curl over mine, and then I closed my eyes and pulled up a memory. The one that came to mind was strange, almost unwarranted. It was the sound of rain and the feel of pyjama pants and fluffy socks. I was a child, and I curled on a rug, pushing toy cars around a road of Lego blocks that Tariq had built. He was rolling around beside me, laughing uproariously because there was a woman hovering over him, tickling his stomach. Joy filled me, burning behind my eyelids, but joy wasn’t the emotion that I had been after. I focussed on the rain, the pants, and the socks. The feel of them was comfortable, like a breeze of solace that settled into my soul. A nice shiver curved out from the base of my spine and a smile lit my face. I laughed, the sound alien with its tinkling innocence, too pure and light to be mine.

It was a sound that I had never made before.

It was a sound that I had never
heard
before.

I felt a tug on my hands and then Silas was drawing me against him. He lifted me and I tucked my hands behind his neck. My fingertips reached behind the collar of the shirt that now hung loosely off his shoulders. He breathed out against my hair, his body trembling as much as mine was, his hands clutching at my back, fingers curling inwards, digging with an almost-familiar pressure. When Silas put his hands on me, his fingers always seemed to curl into my skin, like he was afraid of the touch, and equally afraid to relinquish it.

He whispered something against my hair, but I didn’t catch what it was.

I grabbed Silas’s hands when he set me down, wanting to see for myself. Sure enough, only angry red scars marked his fingers and palms, along with the blood that had already been spilled.

“If anyone drives past, they’re going to report you two to the police,” Cabe remarked, landing beside me.

I turned and grinned at him, feeling absurdly light, catching sight of Quillan over his shoulder. Quillan’s eyes were wide, his mouth hanging open. I looked down, realising that I had bloody handprints all over me. I blinked, and then launched myself at Cabe.

He cried out in surprise, his hands catching me around the waist, his grip light—as though he knew Silas had been trying to crush my ribcage only a moment ago. “
Nooo
,” he cried out. “You’ll get blood on my suit!”

I clung on, laughing, and eventually he gave up and hugged me close.

“We’re family, remember, Lucifer?” I teased him. “Sharing is caring.”

He hunched over, burying his head in the crook of my neck. The breath he released seemed to deplete him—his shoulders sagged, his body leaning into mine. I tried not to fall over from the extra weight.

“I thought he would hurt you,” he whispered. “Will you stop throwing yourself in the firing-line like that?”

“Family?” Tariq questioned, having approached after I had thrown myself at Cabe.

“Yeah.” Noah extracted me from Cabe—who now wore his usual happy face. It surprised me, since I had always assumed Cabe to wear his emotions, I hadn’t realised until now how good he was at hiding them.

Noah captured my wrists, turning me strategically to stop me from marking everyone with blood. “She was making a really bad joke. We’re pretending to be siblings at Hollow Ground College.”

Tariq cringed, and chose not to comment.

I laughed, the sound containing a tinkle reminiscent of the unadulterated bliss that had I had heard in my earlier laugh. Everyone seemed to quieten.

“You can blame Miro,” I said, my smile still wide. “It was his idea.”

I wasn’t sure why I was so happy. I had survived my first encounter with Weston; I had discovered something
wonderful
about my valcrick; and Silas had hugged me again. Maybe the latter shouldn’t have had the power to influence my emotions so heavily, but I couldn’t seem to help it.  

Quillan visibly gathered himself together. He said, “That reminds me. You have a few punishments lined up.”

I made a gurgled sound of surprise.
Seriously
?

He held up three fingers and my smile slipped a little bit. “Seriously?” I said, out loud this time. “You’re actually keeping count?”

“Of course I am.”

“She did just prevent…” Tariq waved his hand, unsure how to finish his sentence.

“Another Avengers sequel?” Cabe supplied. “Don’t worry, Silas would never go
full
Hulk with so many people watching.”

Behind us, Silas scoffed, and Tariq shot him a quick look.

“So you can maybe reduce the punishments, Mr. Quillan?” Tariq sounded half-hopeful.

Quillan cringed. “I’m not a teacher at your school anymore, Tariq. You can call me Miro.”

“Yeah, but you’ll be back soon, and then I’ll have to get used to Mr. Quillan again.”

Quillan didn’t answer him, and Tariq’s face creased into a look of confusion. “You are coming back soon, right?” He looked at me.

“I…” I glanced at the others. “Maybe Tariq should come back with us… and when I say maybe—”

“You mean that Tariq is definitely coming back with us,” Cabe finished for me.

“I’m starting to think you might be right,” Quillan said, though I had never even had the chance to fight for my idea—or even voice it. They had probably been considering bringing Tariq back with us since I had filled them in on his possible involvement with the messenger the week before.

“I’m not ready to move back here yet,” Quillan admitted, “and you three will be out of high school next year. The messenger was harassing Seph almost everyday when we were here, but we’ve barely heard from him since we left. Plus, Weston’s base is here in Seattle, so there is merit in being as far away from him as possible. We can pass Tariq off as another bastard child—”

“Bastard child?” Tariq interrupted.

“He didn’t mean it like that,” I said. “Weston has a lot of illegitimate children, apparently. We’ve been pretending that I’m one of them, Noah and Cabe’s sister. We’ll say the same about you and nobody will think twice about you living with us.”

“How does he have so many children?” Tariq looked equal parts confused and alarmed.

“He bonded with our mothers, his pair,” Cabe answered, “and then pushed them away. He married Yvonne first and had Silas and Miro, and then he divorced her and married Tabby. He ignored Tabby for the first year and Yvonne for the next seven years, and then he ignored them both. He married them simply to give himself a few heirs. He only speaks to them now if he needs something from them. That kind of shit can really mess a person up—rejecting your bond, I mean. He tried to fill the void by sleeping with every eligible—or ineligible—woman in Washington. Most of his bastard children are here or in Maple Falls. Apparently the guy doesn’t believe in contraception.”