Page 42 of Little Wing (Shades of Fairhaven #1)

E ach day since the incident at Little Wing, I watched my phone flood with messages from Silas. Messages that I didn’t have the heart to read. In my mind, I still had the image of a man who looked at me with adoration in his eyes. What if his messages aimed to shatter that memory?

While I teetered between picking up my phone and throwing it out the window of the apartment, Kait helped seal my final decision after she came home from work and told me she saw Silas. Or rather, Silas demanded to speak to her.

Silas wanted to know if I was safe. He wanted to see me.

He wanted to meet me at my apartment where he knew I would feel safe.

When I finally listened to his voicemails and read his messages, I felt my heart ache at how much I missed him.

Hiding always came easily to me. I was expected to do it when I was with my brother and then when I worked to conceal who I was.

But knowing that my brother was truly somewhere near Fairhaven, I allowed rage to simmer inside me.

Too much of my existence was dictated by Luca and I’d had enough.

After nearly a week at Kait’s, I made the decision to finally leave and face whatever storm was on the horizon.

I showered, put on a knee-length floral dress that Reina dropped off for me, and even put my hair up.

It was just a few hours before sundown, but it was overcast enough where the sun would only make me feel fatigued.

I was going to meet Silas at his house instead of my apartment.

I thought that if I would leave early enough, I could catch him before he left.

I knew he wanted to meet me at my apartment, but after disappearing, I thought it would be best to meet him on his turf.

An olive branch after the craziness since we last saw each other.

“You sure you don’t want me to drive you?” Kait asked, pouring herself a cup of tea. “You usually don’t head out this early. Plus, Silas did mention he would be heading to yours at sundown, right?”

I threw on a light sweater and grabbed my crossbody bag before walking to her. “I’ll be alright,” I assured her. “I’m just really grateful you let me crash here for so long. I admit it was longer than I anticipated, but… thank you.”

“Any time. You always have a safe space here. Look, if whatever happens doesn’t happen how you want it—” Kait stepped from her kitchen and wrapped her arms around my shoulders, holding me close against her chest. “You come right back here and we’ll board up the windows and doors. We’ll keep you safe.”

I held onto her, feeling the security in the warmth of her touch.

The last week was spent in the company of the two women who made me feel joy in being able to trust someone.

Reina and Kait listened to me and believed me when I told them my story.

Even if others still longed for my death, at least I had my family beside me.

Even if I did die, I would feel comfort in knowing there were people who didn’t see me as a monster.

I said my thanks again and walked out of Kait’s home, so that I could face my next challenge of coming face-to-face with the man who never stopped reaching out. My skin buzzed with the missing of him. The phantom caresses that I longed for so badly—would I ever feel them again?

As I walked to Silas’s house, I muttered under my breath, practicing what I wanted to say to him.

How would I even start this off? What if he’ll be unhappy to see me?

I practiced that conversation too. I wanted to rehearse every possible scenario, but I knew that I’d never truly know what it would be like until I would stand at his door and ring the bell.

Whatever would happen, I had to be prepared to handle it in whatever way necessary. Even if it meant walking away from him.

Before long, I was standing on his driveway, staring at the car parked there. He was home. Suddenly, the steady breaths that carried me the entire way to his neighborhood became short and labored.

If he did not want to hear me out, would he turn me in? Would I beg him to hear me out? Would he hurt me? No… No… it’ll be okay. Silas will hear me out. If he wanted to hurt me, he wouldn’t keep checking in on me. Right… he will want to listen. Right?

My thoughts galloped like a wild horse in my brain as I stood on his welcome mat that had a large black bat on it.

I recalled the memories I cherished of my time spent with Silas and his family.

Mateo and Quinn included me and made me feel like I was part of a community.

For once in my existence, I felt like I had comfort in my own people.

But now that I was standing at his door, my limbs were frozen.

I just had to knock. Just one knock.

I didn’t even have a chance to ring the doorbell before the door swung open. Silas stood on the other side with his jacket under his arm. He looked disheveled, sullen, and just plain tired.

“Silas,” I began .

“Lotus,” he said my name softly. He opened the door a little wider to lean against the door frame. “I was just about to go to your apartment.”

I nodded. “I figured, so I left earlier to come here.”

He was looking down now, his eyes staring at my arms that I folded over my chest in a self-soothing embrace. It was all I could do to keep from flinging my arms around him. I didn’t know if I had the right to do that anymore. Especially as he chewed on his bottom lip and tipped his chin at me.

“Your brother paid me a visit at Little Wing.”

“Did he?” I said flatly. The weight on my heart was almost too much to bear, but I didn’t want him to know just how shaken I felt. Not at my brother being around, but at what he might have revealed to Silas.

“He shared some things about you.”

“Did he?” I said again.

Silas nodded and opened the door further, creating enough space for me to walk past the threshold. “I’d much rather hear them from you.”

Inside there wasn’t much noise besides the soft voices coming from the television.

Silas was home alone. I watched him walk to the couch in the living room just beyond the foyer after closing the door behind me.

Once he noticed that I wasn’t right behind him and still standing near the door, he looked over his shoulder and motioned with his hand for me to join him.

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

All the confident scenarios I practiced at Kait’s were erased from my memory.

It was different now that I knew Luca talked to him.

And all I could think about now was what lies my brother fed Silas.

What slander did he use to poison the mind of the man who gifted me his kindness?

I couldn’t move, fearing that the beautiful story Silas and I could’ve cherished was one sentence away from concluding. I wasn’t ready for that. I didn’t want to let go.

Silas’s brows furrowed as he frowned and pointed the remote at the TV to turn it off. He cautiously walked back to me, like he was trying not to scare me away. When I didn’t flinch, he exhaled quietly and cupped my face in his hands. Slowly, he guided my eyes back up to his.

I couldn’t help it. Tears welled in my eyes as his thumbs stroked my cheeks.

His tenderness embraced me, softened my stiff limbs and allowed me to melt into his touch.

Maybe we still had a chance if he was touching me this way?

Or was this perhaps his way of manipulating me into being captured and turned in?

I reached up to put my hands over his, making the difficult decision to lower his hands from my face.

“Please,” I whispered even as his frown returned. “I would like to sit down now. I need to talk to you.”

When we were finally seated, I chose to sit on the couch adjacent to him. Though my body ached for his comfort, I had to keep my distance so I could force myself to let the words spill.

“Where do I begin?” I uttered, mostly to myself. I smoothed the fabric of my dress over my lap and looked over at him.

“The beginning,” Silas stated. “Why did you lie?”

The words stung, but I remembered one of our first conversations when he questioned me about pretending to be a human. “I never lied. I just did not share the darkness that surrounded my name.”

Part of me believed Silas would have a more expressive reaction, but he just leaned back against the couch and crossed his leg over his knee. “Is your name really Lotus?”

“Yes.”

“Why Evans?” he asked. “Not much of a change from Everett.”

I nodded. “I had to come up with that on the spot. Once one person used it, I had to keep it up if I intended on staying in Fairhaven. I never wanted to hide.” I frowned and wrapped my arms around myself. “I just wanted to be free.”

“Did you know he was going to hurt those women?”

“No!” I yelped, sinking deeper into myself.

I shook my head over and over, feeling strands of my hair coming loose from my bun.

I’d never waste a second in denying my involvement with the women my brother hurt.

I only knew what was written about them, and even then, it was very little.

Luca kept his life private, so while he tormented me for loving a human man, he got himself tangled with humans himself.

Whether he sincerely loved them was still a mystery to me.

As I continued to answer my beloved’s questions, the energy in the room shifted. I felt he approved of my answers. But when he leaned forward and pressed his elbow to his knee, I felt like I was then put under a magnifying glass.

“Who was Wesley?” he asked.

Hearing that name come out of Silas’s mouth brought on a feeling I couldn’t quite place.

While it wasn’t pain or sadness, it certainly was some type of ache that left me with a tightness in my chest. There was a sting at the inquiry that had me wondering how I would go about telling him everything when I hadn’t even shared all those intimate details with my friends. Not even Luca.

“Lotus?” Silas whispered .

I brushed the loose strands of my hair out of my face and looked Silas directly in his eyes before offering a gentle smile.

“Wesley was my first love.”