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“Silas!” I called out.
The eleven-year-old boy didn’t appear to hear me. He gripped his handlebars, but made no move to actually climb onto his bike and pedal away.
Colt caught my eye and I nodded my chin in Silas’s direction. Colt looked over, a frown covering his forehead.
I jogged over to Silas, my low black heels getting stuck in the grass.
“Silas?” I hesitantly placed my hand on his shoulder.
He stiffened, but made no move to get away.
“Did you ride your bike here?” I asked even though it was rhetorical.
He nodded.
“Where’s your Mom? Your Dad?”
“Mom left. After she heard about Chester. Dad is where he always is.”
On the couch.Bottle in hand.
I’d been encased in a fortress of grief—but Silas’s words were a hammer of anger, cracking through my exterior, finding their way into my heart. My cheeks heated with rage.
When Silas threw his leg over his bike seat, I placed a hand on the bars to stop him. “Come with me.”
He looked up at me with tears in his eyes. “Why?”
I reached out and threaded my fingers through his silky brown hair. “Because I’m going to make it better.”
He swallowed. “You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.”
The boy had lost the only family that had ever given a damn about him. A brother who could no longer look out for him, protect him from the cruel world he had grown up in. Like hell I was going to let Silas go home to an alcoholic father and a now absent mother.
Abandonment and death would not be this boy’s life. Cheese had been doing everything possible to ensure that Silas knew he had someone who cared about him, and I would not allow that love to die with Cheese.
Silas wheeled his bike along side of me as we walked to Colt and Zip. Colt’s face was pale and I knew he was dying for some serious painkillers, but he adamantly refused. My first thought was to roll my eyes, but I quickly realized that it wasn’t Colt trying to show off his manly bravado. It was because he didn’t like anything clouding his judgment. It was about control, so all he allowed himself to have was over the counter anti-inflammatories.
“Hey, Silas,” Zip said.
“Colt? Can I talk to you a second?” I asked.
He looked down at me and nodded. Zip stayed with Silas while Colt and I slowly made our way to the crop of trees about fifteen feet away so we could have some privacy.
“He can’t go home,” I told Colt without preamble. “I mean, it’s not really a home. His mother left when she heard about Cheese. And his dad—”
“Yeah.” Colt sighed. “Cheese told me about his old man once. Useless piece of shit.”
“Silas needs a real home. Some place secure. Where he knows he’s got people who won’t leave him. Who won’t bail when shit gets hard.” I took a deep breath. “I think—I think Silas and I might need each other, Colt.”
Colt stared at me for a long moment and then he reached up and cradled my head in his hands, his thumbs skimming across the apples of my cheeks. “You’ve finally got some color in your face. Is this you coming back to me?”
I blinked. “Coming back to you?”
He swallowed. “You shut down. I didn’t know if you’d snap out of it.” He looked away from me to stare at Silas. “I’ll give you whatever you want, babe. Whatever you need.”
“I want Silas,” I said, surprising myself.
“You, who didn’t want kids yet?” His smile was teasing, his eyes creasing at the corners.
