Page 81 of Yours on the Canvas

My fingers dig into my hair as I try to make sense of it. He isn’t answering his calls. He isn’t answering his texts. His room looks like he ran. Or was taken.

Where are you, my dove?

“Silas!” CJ’s voice snaps through the apartment. “Get in here. Now.”

I move on instinct, my body responding to the urgency in his tone. When I step into the bedroom, CJ is standing there holding a notepad. His eyes meet mine, full of sadness.

He shakes his head.

His words hit like a bullet.

“I’m so sorry, Silas.” He holds a note pad out to me.

My boots feel like they’re forged from lead as I force my legs to move. I take the paper from CJ’s hand. My fingers trembling so hard the edges rattle.

My eyes burn. My chest caves in. Every part of me fractures as I read Jack’s handwriting.

Silas,

Don’t come after me. If you try, they’ll take Hale, and I couldn’t survive in a world where you both pay for my past. I have to go back so they can’t touch him.

I tried so hard to fight it, but you gave me the sky, Silas. You loved every broken, ugly piece of me until I couldn’t imagine existing anywhere else.

You are my whole world. You are the only good thing that has ever happened to me, and carrying your love is the only reason I can walk back into that nightmare.

This is my mother’s ring. She told me to give it to the man I love. I want you to have it, Sol, because I love you. God, I love you so much it terrifies me.

Please don’t look for me. Keep Hale safe.

Forgive me, Silas.

I’m yours, always.

Your dove.

CJ steps into my blurred vision and gently places something in my hand. “He left this.”

Jack’s ring, but it’s a woman’s ring. Small and delicate.

My fingers curl around it instinctively, and the sound that tears out of me is raw, broken, and ripped straight from the deepest part of my chest. I sink to the floor, clutching the ring like it’s the last piece of him I’ll ever have.

“Dove.”

The word shatters in my throat.

* * *

My fingers close over the heavy metal, my thumb automatically catching the familiar edges of the ring. It shouldn’t feel different, but it does. When I slide it onto my pinkie finger, the gold and steel absorb the fever-pitch heat of my pulse, burning against my skin like a brand.

Hot. Too hot.

It bites into the base of my finger, a searing reminder that Jack’s skin was just there. My fingers can’t stop touching it. They brush over the metal frantically, turning it, rubbing the smooth surface, searching for a phantom warmth he left behind, even as my mind screams that Jack is gone.

Gone back to the wolves. Gone back to the men who thought they owned him.

“Silas…” CJ’s voice sounds miles away, muffled through the rushing blood in my ears. Deck stands in the doorway, his usual smart-ass bravado stripped away, looking at me like he’s staring at a ghost.

I don’t answer. I can’t. If I open my mouth, the jagged pieces of my shattered ribs will spill out onto the floor.