“The fight was over me. Us.”
“Evan and Olivia?”
“Yeah.” I take a deep breath, press the palms of my hands into my knees. “This is so fucked up.”
Slowly, I give him a rundown of what happened, and he doesn’t say anything. I don’t look at him, but I can feel Silas watching me the way I can always feel it when he’s watching me, like his attention is a sunbeam. When I finish, he’s quiet for a moment and I take a deep breath, shift so I’m sitting with my hands behind me and my legs in front, the same position he’s in. Our legs nearly touching. The knowledge of it prickles through my whole body, and I close my eyes, tilt my head back.
“I can’t believe I did this,” I say.
“We.”
I look at him, and he looks right back. Serious and steady, with deep blue eyes and barely-there freckles, so close I swear I can feel warmth radiating from his skin.
“If you’re gonna have a crisis I at least want credit,” Silas says.
“We lied and deceived and manipulated our way into fucking up someone else’s life,” I say, looking at the river again. “We basically stalked my ex, and we clearly made his girlfriend uncomfortable enough that she stole his car to get away from him, and—”
I inhale, close my eyes, try to think of some words besides fuck to get across the gravity of the situation. All I get is the faint scent of sweat and hotel shampoo, and it makes me want to bury my face in his neck and sniff and it makes me want to jump into the river to get away. Good to know I can always come up with ways to make things more awkward.
“What the fuck was I thinking?” I ask the universe. “Who does this? What is wrong with me?”
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Silas says, and the angry edge in his voice makes me look at him.
“I just stalked someone—”
“We.”
“We just stalked someone and made sex noises until his girlfriend left him,” I say. I’m positive I’m bright red. “Because—why? Because he broke up with me in a way I didn’t like? Because—”
Because he treated you like dirt, I think, but the words die on my lips in a flash of anger.
“He didn’t break up with you,” Silas says, and even though he’s in a casual pose—leaning on his hands, legs out in front of him—I can feel the tension humming through him. “He lied and cheated and then did something he knew would humiliate you, and he deserves to be miserable and alone.”
“I didn’t have to be the one to do it.”
“We.”
“I didn’t have to drag you into my stupid revenge scheme, either,” I go on. “Sorry.”
That gets a disbelieving laugh out of Silas, and I finally turn to look at him again.
“You’re sorry now?” he says, voice low and cutting and shining with anger, though I can’t even tell where it’s directed. I can’t even tell where mine is directed, only that it’s there, pumping through my veins, glittering like broken glass next to panic and shame and regret, all borne along by adrenaline.
“Well, I can’t be sorry yesterday, can I?” I snap back.
I swear the whole world falls into a dead silence as Silas and I stare at each other and I feel like something is going to burst through my skin.
“Would you be?” he asks. I can barely hear him over the river, and I swallow, my mouth suddenly dry despite the humidity.
No, I want to say, but I can’t make my mouth form the word.
“I’m sorry I got you involved,” is what I say instead. Silas’s face is perfectly blank, and I turn away again, close my eyes. “We can stop. If you want. Mission accomplished.”
The silence that follows is somehow even more silent. A black hole for sound, drinking everything down.
“Kat,” Silas finally says. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, back ramrod straight.
“Kat,” he says again.