AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But do-overs don’t happen in real life.
“Suck it up, Phee,” I tell myself because I’m not the one who will be spending the next decade of his life behind bars. I’m not the one who lost everything.
I stand up and go into my old bedroom. The moon is bright in the bay window. I spent hours here reading when I was a kid.
From the little hiding spot beneath the seat, I lift out my binoculars and train them on the Fox house. Well, not the Fox house. The Cruz cottage. Although I guess it’s technically the Fox cottage, and no Cruz has lived there for a long time.
A hopelessness, a sense of utter loss, twists my belly. I recall Silas’s words to me that first day I’d met him. He was seventeen, gruff and angry. He’s been much the same every time I’ve run into him since that day.
Well, most times, at least.
A light goes on in the cottage and I jump, remembering how he’d caught me watching them that first day when they all moved in. What he’d said to me, his cryptic message to a twelve-year-old girl:
Some things are better left unknown.
Thinking back on it now, it’s like he was reading my future.
Someone moves around inside. I guess it’s the new staff who live on site. Esmerelda Cruz was staff, and often, Silas was treated as staff. I’m not sure how Mira could stand having them on their property, actually.
I turn to go, not wanting to be here any longer. It’s all too much. I set the binoculars on top of one of the boxes, deciding I don’t want them after all. I take the photo with me and walk out of my house and into my car. I put the things inside, grab my dress out from the back and walk across to the Fox house.
There, I climb the stairs to the imposing front door. When I look at the sculpture beside it, I remember how Dad had lifted the heavy thing out of the arms of the women who were struggling with it when the Foxes were moving in.
I miss my dad. I miss the way we were. Now, I’mtorn between the Foxes and my father because they are very firmly enemies, and I am stuck dead center.
Shaking my head to clear it, I unlock and open the door. They’ve long since told me to treat it like it’s my home, and I am used to slipping in and out. I even have my own key and a room here, for when I stay over.
I walk inside. The house is silent. Mr. and Mrs. Fox are already in town and will meet Ethan and I at the restaurant.
The light over the stove is on in the kitchen, but other than that and the moonlight glinting off the pool, it’s dark. The sliding door is open a crack, letting in cool air. Someone must have forgotten to close it.
I drape my dress over the back of a chair and cross the hall into the living room. It’s cooler for the breeze blowing in. An owl hoots in the dense grove of trees beyond the cottage. I don’t hear that sound much in the city, and I pause to listen before pulling the door closed.
“Been a while,” comes a deep voice from the corner.
I jump, spinning to face the man sitting in Mr. Fox’s armchair, watching me.
My stomach flutters, heart racing.
He holds up his glass in a sort of toast. Ice clanks against crystal as he brings it to his mouth, never taking his eyes off me, his gaze sending shivers down my spine.
I steel myself. Those eyes are cruel now. I used to think they were so very beautiful once upon a time.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I ask when I can speak again. The moon illuminates Silas Cruz’s face. He’s twenty-seven now. He looks older though, his dark hair cut shorter so it doesn’t flop into his eyes like it used to when he was a boy. Although he was never a boy, not really.
He sets his drink down and stands up. “That’s no way to greet your soon-to-be brother-in-law, is it,Phee?” He crosses the room in that way he has, like he’s eating space, devouring it.
I press my back against the door, my hands still wrapped around the handle at my back. “Are you still sore about that?” I ask, hoping he can’t hear the hurt in my voice because it’s still there. However much I want to hate him, that hurt is still right there.
Silas comes to stand a foot from me. I look up at him. He’s right. It has been a while. The last time I saw him was almost a year ago. The last words he spoke to me were to insult me.
He’s wearing a black suit with a black shirt. It fits. The devil wears black, doesn’t he? His turquoise eyes search my face before settling on my eyes, and there it is again. The same feeling I had ten years ago when I first met him, when I’d stood at the swimming pool holding that stupid tin of cookies. That fluttering in my stomach, the hitching of my heart.
That feeling like I can’t breathe.
There’s something between Silas and I that I don’t understand, that I can’t name. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t want to name it because it is so utterly wrong that I should feel the things I feel for this man of all men.
“I guess I’m sore at being taken for a fool. But that’s on me, isn’t it? The company you keep rubbed off on you in the end, didn’t it, Barbie?” Silas’s eyes narrow infinitesimally.
