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But Rafe just shook his head. And when I reached for him, he pulled away even further.
I wanted to comfort him, but he wouldn’t let me. It wasn’t like last time. Even if he needed me, he wasn’t going to let himself have me.
“I’m going to take a shower,” he said brusquely.
I tried one last time, blinking at him coyly. Because the spiders weren’t that distant a memory. Didn’t he see that? I still needed him, too. He could still save me. I tried to put that in my eyes too. I tried to beg him to understand.
“I could come with you,” I suggested. I begged with my eyes.
But he stayed cold. “No, I’ll be fine on my own.” And he turned for the bathroom without another look back. The door closed behind him with a solid thud.
And I was left behind, bereft and alone as always.
He could leave me so easily.
He could turn it off. Just like that.
He didn’t see me. Maybe he never had. He didn’t see what I needed. Maybe it was his own demons, or maybe I’d just never been that important to him.
I wasn’t worth chasing, and I wasn’t worth staying for.
My jaw clenched, a familiar pain slicing through my chest.
I climbed out of bed and stomped across the room to my easel and my paints. They were stacking up now after more than two months cramped up in this stupid place. Painted canvases all but covered one side of the room, some drying, others stacked up already dry.
I kicked the painting Rafe and I had started to the side. I’d been treasuring the mostly blank canvas with our messy globs of paint, stupidly preserving it out of ridiculous sentimentality.
I grabbed it off the floor and grabbed a small roller, covering it with a base gray to start a completely new picture. Erasing our painting. Erasing the moment we’d connected, erasing what I’d thought it meant, because I was obviously a stupid, stupid girl. Reaching for things that weren’t there and pretending Rafe was the one to come save me when he was just a broken prince too lost with his own ghosts to ever be able to love me.
15
Rafe
I remember the sound of silence from when I was a kid. We all sat at the dinner table together as a family… if that is what you would call us. We had our assigned chair—Dad at the head of the table, and Mom on the other end.
Timothy and I sat across from each other on each side of my father and we always used nice china, expensive flatware, and always fresh flowers as the centerpiece. It was the picture of perfection. Every single night it was expected we’d have dinner as a family.
All normal on the surface.
Except what no one would know from looking in from the outside… we ate in silence. Always silence. No questions about how our day was, how school went, or how work was going. Nothing. We ate in our own worlds even though we all sat together as a family.
Our silent family. Our mute family.
And as I ate breakfast at the head of the long table, with Fallon on the end of the other side, we sat in silence.
Our silent friendship.
Our mute past and present.
It dawned on me that I was slowly morphing into my father. He had made me all I had become. He had taught me the business that I was about to take over. He had taught me how to manage my money and make it grow even as I slept at night.
And he had also taught me how to be mute with the ones I loved.
And yes… Fallon fell into the category as someone I loved. Not that I would ever be able to tell her that. My father had taught me many things, but being loving, speaking from my heart… all skills I lacked thanks to my upbringing and my role models. I lived in my own world, and when I was hurt, angry, sad, or was afraid… I just went deeper in.
The sound of forks hitting plates had a very distinct sound. And as normal as it is for me, I did hate that it was our melody today for breakfast.
And it remained like that until Mrs. H walked in.
“Good morning,” she said with a cheery disposition. When she saw that we were not matching her in mood, she asked, “How are things going? You guys are getting closer to the finish line. That has to be good.”
We both looked up from our food and nodded.
“How are the Trials going?” she asked, not letting us brush her off as we were doing to each other.
“Fine,” Fallon said.
“Fine,” I repeated.
Her eyebrow raised. “Fine? From what I know of the Trials, I wouldn’t exactly use that word to describe them. Care to elaborate?”
