All That Really Matters

by Nicole Deese

  I nodded, recalling the entire sequence of actions before I let the dart fly.

  It stuck in the outer ring.

  “Oh my gosh! It stuck! It actually stuck!” Unconcerned by the close proximity of other patrons, I window-washed my arms back and forth and shrugged my shoulders to the beat of whatever top-forties song belted through the bar speakers. With the help of my slick sandal bottoms, I slid into an impromptu moonwalk, all while Silas continued to smile at me in a way that could have convinced me to add a backflip to my routine. And I didn’t even know how to do a backflip. “You want to join in, right? A little moonwalk is good for the soul.”

  “That may be, but I’m actually thinking that if you dance like that after you score a twenty, then I definitely want to see your bull’s-eye dance.”

  “Does that mean my lesson isn’t over?”

  “Not unless you have somewhere else to be.”

  I eyed him as I reached for my drink. “You don’t think I’d give up before I hit the bull’s-eye, do you?”

  “You’re a lot more like me than I realized.”

  “Yeah, how’s that?” I asked, my cheeks heating at the comparison.

  “When I first learned how to play, I was determined to figure out the secret to throwing a perfect game.”

  “And did you?” I leaned my back against the bar table, taking another long sip of my drink, content to listen to whatever story Silas wanted to share with me.

  “Yep. I already told you.”

  I sighed. “Not the whole twenty years of practice thing again?”

  He laughed. “Afraid so.”

  I groaned, but Silas was undeterred. “You know, all that practice time on the board ended up being the best thing for me. A quick win wouldn’t have taught me the lessons I needed to learn most.”

  I studied him as he sailed another dart straight into the bull’s-eye. “What lessons?”

  He turned those brilliant brown eyes on me. “Self-control. Patience. Perseverance.”

  “Sounds like you’re halfway to preaching a sermon on the fruits of the Spirit.”

  Silas chuckled, hiking an eyebrow at me. “I suppose that’s exactly what my father was trying to teach me when I first came to live with them. I didn’t want his help or his advice; I just wanted the quiet space his tool shop provided—a place away from all the noise inside the house and inside my own head.” Silas held the dart in his palm, drawing my eyes to his open hand and then up to the thick, corded scar on his right forearm. “I hated meeting with my social worker and the trauma counselor in those early weeks and months. I was so angry, I’d refuse to say a single word for the duration of the visit. That’s when my dad figured out a way to reward me. My cooperation equaled time in his shop, with his dart board. He’d always come with me, of course. But he’d be content to sit in the background, keeping one eye on me and the other on whatever project he had going on his workbench, only speaking to me if I initiated the conversation first.”

  “So that’s why the dart board in your house is such a treasure . . . it’s symbolic of the connection between you and your father.”

  “Yes.” Silas continued to stare into his palm. “We still have our most important discussions around a game of darts.”

  “I love that.”

  He dipped his chin and looked to me. “Your turn.”

  My breath hitched as he placed the dart inside my open palm with an intimacy that surpassed both our location and our entertainment of choice. Not trusting myself to speak, I rotated toward the board, rehearsing Silas’s instructions in my head several times.

  “Don’t overthink it, Molly.” His breath heated the top of my left ear. “There are plenty of darts, plenty of chances for do-overs.”

  The now-familiar phrase caused the tension in my chest to relax. Before The Bridge I hadn’t really believed in second chances, and I’d certainly never been the recipient of them. I’d been too caught up in my own goals, in my own overachieving perfectionism to ever allow failure to be an option. I was either on or off, hot or cold, running hard or hardly moving at all. The in-between was too uncomfortable, too unsettling with all its unknowns and possible outcomes. And yet here I was, completely out of my element in nearly every regard: volunteering at a youth home, mentoring young women on topics I likely needed to be mentored in myself, and playing a game of darts with a man I admired most for the way he invested in people who could never repay him.

  I let the dart fly, and it hit the triple bar on the middle ring. It wasn’t the bull’s-eye, but it also wasn’t the floor. It was progress. For what might be the first time in my life, I was okay with that.

  I beamed back at Silas. “Progress.”

  “Yes,” he said, his gaze skimming my face. “Excellent progress. Want to throw another?”

  I shook my head. “Actually, I think I’d like to sit for a bit and eat some bad-for-me nachos. You good with that?”

  “Sounds like a winning plan to me.”

  As we reached the table, I squirted my hands with sanitizer and then reached for his palm to give him some too. He rubbed his hands together as he sat down across from me, our knees bumping under the table and sending a quiet tremble through my body. I pushed the platter of nachos in his direction and set one of the small plates in front of him.

  “This is my brother’s favorite meal. He is a nacho connoisseur. Only, if these were his, he’d have every kind of ridiculously hot pepper sprinkled on top.”

  “You’re close. You and Miles.” A statement, not a question.

  My immediate response wanted to be Absolutely, we’re the closest. We’re twins! That’s how it’s supposed to be. But my actual response was much closer to the truth. “We’re as close as we choose to be. Or, rather . . .” I contemplated my words. “As close as I let us be.”

  “How’s that?” Silas pulled a cheesy chip off the tower of nachos.

  “Hmm. How do I explain it? It’s like there’s this giant ocean just beyond the safe-for-swimming area where we now tread water, but for so many years he used to beg me to venture farther out, to take a risk with him in the big water so I could learn to love it the way he does. Sometimes I think I’ve said no to his invitations so many times that he doesn’t know how to ask me anymore.” I’d never articulated this thought before now and wasn’t even sure my metaphor made any sense to someone not in my head. I picked at a piece of chip I’d dropped on my napkin.

  “So what’s the ocean?”

  “Faith. The kind he has, anyway.”

  He nodded. “And what kind is that?”

  I looked up into Silas’s eyes, besotted by the earnestness I found there. “The kind that requires me to take off my life jacket, but I’m not sure I’m ready to do that yet.” Or if I ever would be.

  Silas didn’t try and tell me I was. And he didn’t try and tell me I wasn’t. He simply listened, which, as it turned out, was the exact response I needed from him.

  Without an invitation and without permission, I reached across the table and slid my palm up Silas’s forearm, running my fingers over the bumpy length of his scar. “Can I ask what this is from?”

  “Carlos.” There wasn’t an ounce of hostility in his voice as he spoke his brother’s name. His tone was resignation more than accusation.

  “How?”

  This answer took a bit longer for him to articulate. “After he was released from prison the first time, my parents offered to take him in, as a favor to me. They had a basement apartment with a separate entrance. The deal was that he had to stay clean and sober, attend meetings, and hold down a job. That only lasted about two weeks. And then one night my mom called to say Carlos hadn’t come home after work and that she’d noticed a few things missing from the garage. Within twenty-four hours, his parole officer was asking questions my folks couldn’t answer. Nobody could find him for almost three days until I finally tracked him down.”

  “Where was he?”

  “In an old condemned apartment complex downtown, out-of-
his-mind high. I hadn’t thought much past what I’d do after I found him, and I certainly hadn’t anticipated the six men inside, counting cash and prepping bags of substances I could only guess at.” He touched his glass, spun it on his napkin. “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I didn’t have a chance. It was over before it even began.”

  I was barely breathing as I tried to imagine the scene. “What did they do to you?”

  “Charged me, beat me with whatever they had on hand. It’s a wonder I wasn’t shot at. After a few blows to my head, they threw me down a flight of concrete steps at the back of the complex.” Silas paused, and every cell of my body seemed to pause along with him. “All while Carlos looked on.” Silas stared at his arm and flexed his fingers into a fist. “Nobody really knows how long I was out there, unconscious, or how I didn’t bleed out. But the police found me the next day after they were tipped off by a jogger. By the time I got to the hospital, the surgeon was concerned I’d lose all function in my right arm. My bone had been shattered in sixteen places. It took four surgeries, but I have just over eighty-five percent functionality back.”

  “Oh, Silas . . .”

  “Turned out, I’d walked straight into a drug ring. Once the DEA found them all, I testified against them, my brother included. Carlos served three years as an accomplice with a prior, getting a break for his testimony against the others involved.”

  It was so much worse than I believed possible. Horrifying. “Is that when you started getting the migraines?”

  “Yes. The doctor believes they’re from the concussion I had.”

  I traced the path of his scar one more time, trying to imagine the surgeries he’d endured. “And he’s out on parole again now?”

  “He’s in Bellingham, or so he says.”

  The revelation raised the hair on the back of my neck. “Did you stay in contact with him while he was in prison?”

  “No. He sent a few letters to my parents’ house at first, but I told my mom to toss them. I couldn’t . . .” He shook his head. “I just couldn’t do it again. I can’t keep reopening the same wound, believing things will be different. No matter what he claims now.”

  “You mean, that day he called you at the manor—while you were in my office. He was asking something of you?”

  “He wants me to meet up with him. He claims some pastor he met in prison has been mentoring him and that he’s a changed man.”

  My expression lifted, along with my hope. Miles had done prison ministry in years past. If that pastor was anything like my brother, then—

  Silas shook his head, something desperate in his eyes as he spoke to me. “I can’t let him into my life again, Molly. I know I lead a ministry to save the kids who can still be saved, but my brother isn’t a seventeen-year-old drop-out anymore. He’s a thirty-seven-year-old convict who’s caused massive destruction at every turn and to every relationship he’s ever had.”

  I had no words to offer him. No condolences that could touch the kind of pain I saw in his eyes. But I got it now. I understood why Silas had given up everything to serve the kids in our community. Because I’d be willing to bet that he saw his brother in the eyes of every single one of them.

  He looked down at my hand, smoothed his thumb over my knuckles, and contemplated something I wished I could hear. But even though he didn’t speak, he also didn’t let go. Not at the table while we stayed and talked for another two hours. Not as we walked through the parking lot to my car. Not even as we drove back to his place so I could drive myself home.

  He’d simply held on to my hand, and I held back.

  As we parked in his driveway, ready for me to switch from passenger to driver once again and end this perfectly imperfect day, I slipped my hand from his, not wanting to manipulate him in any way. Because if Silas wanted to hold my hand as a friend he’d come to care for, one he’d entrusted an intimate piece of his story to, then I needed to be okay with that.

  I would make myself okay with that.

  But if there was something more, even at the smallest of levels, then my heart needed to know it. I needed to know it.

  “Today has been one of the best days I’ve had in a really long time. Thank you, Silas. For offering to drive around town and for teaching me how to play darts and for telling me about your family and . . . for all your patience with my indecision about the place setting. You’ve been a perfect gentleman.”

  He turned to me, his dark eyes steady on mine. “I would have driven you a thousand miles for the right place setting. I’m glad you found one that made you happy.”

  Heat flamed in my chest at the risky admission that rolled over my tongue. “Turns out, it wasn’t the place setting that made me happy today. It was the company I was with. Somehow, every time I’m with him, he helps me see things more clearly.”

  “Turns out, she helps him see things more clearly, too.” My throat constricted as his gaze dipped to my mouth. “This will complicate things, Molly.”

  “I’m not afraid of complicated.”

  He smiled and brought his hand to my cheek. “I’m not, either.”

  And then Silas’s lips were on mine and his hand was at the back of my head and all the fantasies I’d ever had about a first kiss were forced to bow to my present reality, because this man kissed the same way he drove. The same way he threw a dart. The same way he passed a bar exam while working full-time with the forgotten youth in his community.

  Like a perfectionist with something to prove.

  26

  Silas

  I arrived at Fir Crest Manor early to run the trailhead only a half mile away from the house. It gave me a chance to clear my head, meditate, pray. To focus not on the things I couldn’t control but on the one thing I could: my immediate next step and then the next after that.

  My feet pounded the dusty trail as the early morning sun beat against my neck and cut through the dense branches of the fir trees lining either side of me. In only a few more strides, I’d see the roof of the guys’ Bunkhouse, and then not long after that I’d see the back of the estate, where Molly had envisioned an entire black-tie affair to take place at the end of the summer.

  My cadence picked up at the thought of her—at the way she’d looked at me last night when I told her about Carlos. At the way she’d traced my scar with her delicate fingers. At the way she’d pressed her cheek into my palm and told me I made her happy.

  I’d kissed her.

  And not a single part of me regretted it. Not even the part that hadn’t a clue how we’d coexist in the same work space, under the same roof, separated by a hallway, when all I wanted was to be near her. I didn’t understand how it had happened, and I certainly hadn’t planned for it to happen, but falling for Molly had been as quick as it had been all-consuming.

  I’d never experienced anything like it.

  As I rounded the wild rose bushes that lined the trail up to the street, I spotted the blue SUV I’d been expecting. My mom had texted early this morning to say she’d be running errands out this way and would stop in. I jogged to where she’d parked, grabbing my towel and water bottle on the way to her car.

  She unlocked her door and stepped out of the vehicle in her typical cycling attire—dry-fit tank, workout pants, tennis shoes, and a bright smile. “Hey, sweetheart. Perfect timing.”

  As I wiped my forehead and face, she reached for me. “I’m pretty sweaty, Mom.”

  “Do you think a little sweat bothers me after all my years raising kids? Especially after raising Jacob?”

  I laughed. “True, he still smells like gym socks and chlorine.”

  She put her arms around my middle and squeezed. I kissed the top of her head, and when she pulled back, she planted both her hands on my cheeks, her gaze nearly eye level with mine. Jake’s height and athleticism had come from our mom’s gene pool, not our father’s. And while Jake had been their only biological child, the youngest of five, with four adopted children, our father’s genes had rubbed off on me the most, de
spite our lack of shared DNA. Daniel Whittaker was a studious man, never without a book, and serious about his hobbies, darts ranking near the top.

  Mom assessed me in the way she had since I was a young boy, with a probing but gentle gaze. “Jake was right. You look good, Silas. Happy.” She patted my face, her dark, short curls bouncing as she did.

  My mother may be in her early sixties, but age would never be what slowed her down. She cycled with a group of friends in the mornings, and she was as healthy as most of the early twenty-somethings we had in our program. “Did you want to come inside? I’m sure Glo would warm up some breakfast for you while I rinse off. I’ll only be a minute.”

  “No, I wish I could, but I’m babysitting for Emily in less than an hour, so I probably shouldn’t.”

  It wasn’t exactly rare that my mom stopped by the house, but it was rare that she’d stop by and decline to come inside to say hello to Glo. The two had been friends for decades. Her eyes drifted from mine, as if to search the parking lot beyond me. “Unless . . . unless there’s a chance your adorable new friend might be inside?”

  I blinked to clear my focus, certain I’d heard her wrong. “My . . . my what?”

  Her laugh was half nervous energy, half meddling mother. “I googled her, Silas. We all did. When you missed family dinner last night, well . . .” She shrugged. “Clara and Jake were just raving about her and all she’s doing for the house, and then you know how your sisters are. They asked to see her picture, and one thing led to another, and the next thing we knew, everybody was crowding around Dad’s laptop until Emily suggested we just put her channel up on the TV with that special cord your dad has. We ended up skipping a movie to watch Makeup Matters with Molly.”

  The clock had barely chimed the twelve-hour mark on my relationship status change with Molly, and already my family had stalked her online over dinner? Though I could hardly pass judgment on the addicting quality of Molly’s videos, the idea of the entire Whittaker family watching her as entertainment felt all sorts of wrong.