Page 15 of Love By Design

The answer tasted like sand, but sand was better than sweat.

“Just this,” I told him. “I just need this a little while longer.”

CHAPTER 6

MARSHALL

Walking in on an assault was something I never wanted to experience again. Walking in on an assault against Stanley Ayres’ kid? Another. Though, Silas was hardly a kid, was he? The same age as Smith and probably twice as accomplished—if he could get out from beneath his father’s heel. It took all my strength to not put the pretend Dom through a wall when I saw the way he ignored Silas, but as soon as we were out of the playroom, his posturing turned into a slew of apologies. He was new. He didn’t understand. He hadn’t been taught. Any of them could have been legitimate reasons, but none of them were a valid excuse.

“Find a mentor,” I’d told him before throwing him off to security and heading back in search of Silas.

The only thing that tamped down my anger was the warm press of Silas’s body against mine. The way he made himself so small to tuck in against my side, empty water bottle clutched tightly in his fists. Slowly, I pried his fingers off the plastic, hoping he could relax further.

“I’ll stay as long as you need,” I said, and I meant it.

Of their own volition, my fingers stroked short, calm linesup and down the length of Silas’s arm. I lost track of time, the two of us there quiet in each other’s arms until, at some point, he said, “You’re not going to tell my dad, are you?”

The idea was preposterous. “Why would I tell your dad?”

He shrugged, shifting against me.

“You’re a grown man, Silas. Whatever you do in bed isn’t your father’s concern.” I paused, tracing my tongue across the front of my teeth, debating if the next part warranted saying. In the end, it did. “I am concerned, though.”

“Why?”

Silas moved his head against my shoulder, messy curls dragging across my jaw and bottom lip. I flattened his hair and rested my chin against the top of his head.

“It shouldn’t fall on you, but from what I saw, you weren’t going to fight him. You were just going to?—”

“I would have fought harder. If it got to…if I ended up needing to. I just…panicked,” he interrupted, pushing up and out of my arms, and I immediately knew I’d said the wrong thing.

“I know, I’m sorry. That’s not how I meant it…” I snapped my mouth closed because how could I tell him that I would be forever worried about him now. That I was the oldest of four and I was a caretaker by nature, and now I knew this about him, that I would always wonder if he was safe. If he was making good decisions.

“I know,” he said gruffly, sinking down into the couch beside me instead of against me.

“If I hadn’t walked in, Silas.”

“Iknow,” he said again, far more petulant than the first. “But don’t you dare come at me with some misguided sense of judgment that I shouldn’t be out here doing what I’m doing or doing it with strangers. Everyone starts as a stranger.”

I raised my hands in surrender, brows up in my hairline. “I’d never judge,” I assured him. “I wasn’t judging.”

Silas blinked at me, swallowed hard, shoulders sinking, and it looked like he was trying to bury himself in the couch again. I held my hand out for him, and he stared at it a beat before slowly settling his palm against mine. With a gentle tug, I pulled him up from the depths of the leather cushions and back against me.

“Is this okay?” I asked.

“Yes,” he muttered, like he hated the truth of it.

“This is what you wanted, right? Just a little more of this?”

He nodded into my armpit.

“I’ll shut up then.”

Another quiet minute, maybe two, maybe five.

Silas’s friend hadn’t come looking for him and Justin, Keith, and Micah were nowhere to be seen. That probably meant they were all fucking in the bathroom—not each other—and that was the best possible outcome for all parties involved.

“Did you really read my article?” Silas sounded meeker than he had since I’d walked into the room in the first place.