Page 18 of True Honey (The Hornets Nest #4)

COURTNEY

D inner was an absolute shitshow.

Seymour spent the majority of it talking and ranting about business issues no one at the table truly understood and my mind was stuck on how sad Silas had looked talking about his birthday.

Birthdays are irrelevant , that’s what he’d said.

I didn’t believe it. Birthday’s should be celebrated, enjoyed.

It’s about surviving the year behind you and opening up the possibilities for the next year of life.

Parties and presents were symbolic of wealth and happiness to come.

Silas looked devastated, sitting at the end of the table with a solemn look on his face and when dessert was nothing more than a banana pudding I couldn’t stop the feeling of sympathy that bubbled up.

During the brief moments where Seymour wasn’t talking, Sylwia filled the space with questions about my life.

How we met, how long we’d known each other, did I like baseball, where I’d been born?

Each question got more personal than the last. She was digging, trying to catch me in a lie but it was buried so deep in my chest that she would never find it.

In the car on the ride home Silas turned to me, “tonight went terribly,” he laughed, losing the tie around his neck.

“If anything, it tells me that we need to have an actual conversation,” I said to him and his brows scrunched. “I don’t know anything personal about you. The binder had everything except that. What if she’d asked your favorite color?” I said.

“Red,” he answered quickly. “But don’t tell anyone because they all think it’s Harbor blue,” he said, with a laugh. “Also what binder? ”

“I’m serious,” I said as he pulled the mustang into the garage, completely avoiding telling him that Ella and Arlo had given me a treasure chest of cheat codes. Cael was asleep on the couch when we wandered into the house and Ella was sitting at the island with a book.

“Hey you two, how did the night go?” she asked and Silas grimaced as he chucked his jacket on the island. “Well, we took Auggie for dinner and then to the stadium and he wore Cael out, both of them fell asleep a little while ago on the couch but we got Auggie to bed.”

“You carried him down those stairs?” I said in surprise. I hadn’t been able to carry August in years and he hadn’t slept deep enough to even try. I smiled, picturing him happy.

“That would have been me.” An enormous man with a shaggy brunet mullet that may or may have not been cut in the dark wandered through the kitchen. “Van Mitchell.”

He held out his hand for me and I almost gave him my left before tucking it behind my back. I felt Silas slip the ring from my finger, shoving it in his pants pocket as I shook Van’s hand.

“Is that short for anything?” I asked him.

“No,” he chuckled, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge. “Pretty sure my dad just named us by playing name association games. My sisters are Cosy and Guthrie, who my Dad lovingly calls Gut .”

I giggled at the names, one being very girly and the other being very strange and Van shrugged, “I can’t say anything, my son's name is Auggie.”

“Weird names are cooler anyways,” Van said. “He slept like a rock, I don’t think I’ve seen Cael run that much in his entire career…”

“Trust me it’s as much of a surprise that Auggie was participating in any type of exercise, he’s more of a ‘stars and music’ kid,” I said, it was nice to engage in a conversation that didn’t feel like there were stakes involved. They were just genuinely curious about everything.

“He’s cool,” Van said, leaning over to kiss Ella on the head before excusing himself.

“I should get Cael upstairs, if we leave him on the couch, Jensen will have his hand in a bowl of hot water and we just got the pee smell out of the fabric from the last time that happened…” Ella said and at first I thought she was joking but Silas offered to help and I realized that it was an actual worry.

I kicked off my shoes as they left the kitchen and made my way downstairs and into my room to change.

My mind was still processing everything that had gone on that evening, from the easy dismissal of his birthday to his family being less of family and more of a company.

It felt cold and wrong. I tugged my hair out of the rigid bun it was wrapped into and let it fall over my shoulders before slipping into a tank top and pajama pants.

I cleaned my face off, lingering on how sad Silas had looked and had a brilliant idea.

In the kitchen I found everything I needed to make pancakes and started to quietly put them together when Silas appeared in the doorway.

“What are you doing?” he asked me.

“Showing you how birthdays are done in our family,” I said, whisking the batter.

He eyed me for a second before disappearing through the apartment to his room, when he returned twenty minutes later his hair was damp and he was wearing a t-shirt and shorts looking more casual then I’d seen him before.

“Can I help?” He asked, standing on the other side of the island.

“Pour us a drink?” I asked, it had been a while since I had one with an actual adult and I was so nervous at dinner that it wasn’t even on my mind.

“Whiskey okay?” Silas asked, and sauntered over to the cabinet, unlocking it and grabbing a bottle.

“Perfect,” I said. I set the plate of pancakes on the island between us and he poured two glasses.

“Does whiskey go with pancakes?” he asked me, sliding onto his elbow as he lifted the cup to his lips.

“Whiskey goes with everything,” I argued gently.

“Hold on,” I said, leaving the kitchen to get something from my room.

The pack of candles that had been in my purse for years was still going strong and I pulled one out before bringing it back to the kitchen.

“Red,” I said, shoving the candle into the stack of pancakes.

He stared at the candle as I lit it, his expression softening as his lips formed a tight line.

“Happy birthday, Silas,” I said to him, raising my glass to him but his eyes were fixated on the flame. “Blow it out, make a wish.”

I could see the gears turning in the back of his mind as the wax started to melt, he had too much on his mind and for once we were on the same page. Eventually he blew it out and gave me a soft smile.

“What did you wish for?” I asked him.

“If I tell you, it won’t come true,” he said, grabbing a fork from the island.

“I didn’t think you were actually superstitious,” I said, following his movements and taking a piece of pancake. They were perfect, fluffy and warm.

“A man has to believe in something.” He chased his pancake with whiskey. “You know… it kind of works,” he said, surprised, then laughed.

“Told you,” I said.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone that celebrates with pancakes,” he said to me, eating more. His gray eyes watched me as I sank lower onto the island across from him and sighed.

“Wherever we were, there was always a shitty diner about a mile away and over time, pancakes became our birthday cake…” I said, remembering all the birthdays we’d spent in different colored booths on the side of the highway laughing and singing together.

It was the fondest memory I had of our relationship. It was the one time I never felt like I wasn’t doing enough, because as long as August had a song and pancakes, he felt loved.

“I think the last time we celebrated my birthday I was eleven and Dad took all of us to a baseball game…” Silas said, clearly remembering details about the day that weren’t as fond as the ones I’d recalled.

“It was a Lorette game,” he scoffed, his jaw tightening.

“He disappeared half way through and never came back. The Longhorns won that game.”

“How young was Josh?” I asked him and he flinched.

“Can I see the notes that Ella gave you?” he asked me instead of answering. I pushed away from the islands to grab them for him. “This isn’t notes, this is a textbook!” He took the binder and squinted at it for a second before cursing under his breath.

“Do not laugh at me,” he warned, reaching for something in his backpack on the floor. When he returned he was wearing a slim pair of dark reading glasses that highlighted the blue in his gray eyes and made his face look sharper.

I choked back a laugh, and he narrowed his eyes.

“Sorry,” I said, raising my hands in surrender. “I know why they call you Grandpa now,” I teased and he shook his head at me.

“None of them know about these,” he said. “It would only be worse if they did.”

“You look cute,” I offered him the compliment, “very… studious.”

“Cute?” Silas scoffed, “great now I’m blind and cute. Oh how the mighty have fallen.”

“You’re a year older too. Blind, cute, and officially old,” I whispered and he dropped the paper completely baffled by my teasing.

“Kick a man while he’s down, why don’t you?” He joked, reading the paper over, his expression turned sour, “she gave you the polite SparkNotes, which I appreciate but—”

“But?” I waited.

“First of all, Arlo wrote these. The part about Josh is correct but he left out most of the details,” Silas said. “Our father is in jail for a handful of pretty shitty crimes.”

“Same Dad?” I asked. It would explain how uncomfortable his Mother had been at dinner, sitting next to her husband's love child couldn’t have been the easiest thing to do in the world. But they all seemed friendly enough, so it must have been a work in progress.

“Josh’s mom passed in the spring, but my dad kept them a secret until recently.I had no idea I had a brother living half an hour from me my entire life,” Silas explained and the room went cold.

“I’m sorry,” I said instinctually, reaching across the island to touch his hand.

“I gained a brother,” he said like it was the only fact that mattered in the moment. And maybe he was right to feel that way. From the sounds of it their father was at home in jail and for the better of everyone.

“You’re very much a glass half full person, aren’t you?” I asked him.