Silas

by V. J. Chambers

  Her voice lowered. “You know what, Gary? I think I can do that for you. But do me a favor?”

  “Anything for you, Megan.”

  She laughed again. “Don’t go spreading it around that I gave you the info?”

  “You got it,” I said. “Thanks so much. You really are aces.”

  * * *

  Leigh sat down at a table with Sloane and me. “Oh my god, you guys, this wedding is going to kill me.”

  We were in a restaurant downtown. The back room had been reserved for Griffin and Leigh’s wedding party. This wasn’t the official rehearsal dinner. It was just so that everyone in the wedding could meet each other.

  “You’re fine,” said Sloane, reaching out to pat Leigh’s hand. “Don’t worry. It’s going to be fine.”

  “No,” said Leigh. “You don’t understand. Everything’s a mess. I called this morning to check on the flower arrangement and get this. They lost our order.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Sloane, her jaw dropping open.

  “Sure as hell wish I was, but I’m not,” said Leigh. “So, I was like asking them if they would be able to make bouquets for us in time, and they were like saying they didn’t know. And I was like, ‘You guys have our money, and you need to do something, because we had a deal.’ And they were all apologizing or whatever, but…”

  Leigh kept talking, but I stopped listening.

  Because Christa had walked into the restaurant. She looked just as hot as she had the night before. She was wearing a low cut green top, and I could see the swell of her cleavage. I remembered the way her boobs had looked when she’d been naked in my bedroom.

  God. I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about how much I would like it if she was sitting in my lap right now, and I was pulling that shirt over her head. I’d cup her tits, rub her nipples until they were stiff, and then I’d put my mouth—

  “Silas?”

  I looked at Sloane, who’d spoken. “What?”

  “The flower people are unreasonable, don’t you think?” said Sloane.

  “Oh,” I said. “Yeah.”

  “Of course they are,” said Leigh.

  Sloane glared at me. She was annoyed with me because I’d slept with Griffin’s sister.

  Hell, I was annoyed with me for sleeping with Griffin’s sister. But I’d had no idea that was who she was when I did it. If I had, I might not have.

  Might not.

  She was really fucking hot.

  I turned to look at her again. She was standing with an older woman, who was probably her mother. Christa’s gaze darted around the room. She saw me.

  Her eyes widened.

  Sloane slapped my arm. “What the hell are you looking at?”

  “Ouch,” I said, turning to her. “You know, you hit me all the time. And it’s not very nice.”

  “You’re the size of the Incredible Hulk,” she said. “Like it hurts you.”

  “It hurts,” I said. “I feel pain, you know.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Stop staring. I mean it.”

  Leigh turned around. “Staring at what?”

  “Nothing,” said Sloane.

  “Oh, Christa’s here.” Leigh waved at her.

  Christa waved back. She was still looking at me.

  “Christa, Griffin’s sister?” I said. “You know, maybe I should go introduce myself.” Why couldn’t I remember fucking her? I couldn’t believe I would forget that body.

  “No way,” said Sloane, grabbing me. “You’re staying right here.”

  Leigh laughed. She winked at me. “You think she’s hot, don’t you?”

  “Uh…”

  “Well, no Silas charm on her.” Leigh pointed at me. “Griffin would kill you.”

  I sank back in my chair. Right. I bet he would.

  “She’s only nineteen, anyway,” said Leigh. “She’s practically a child.”

  “No, she’s not,” I said. “You know, Sloane and I are only twenty-two. You and Griffin are just… ancient.”

  “Not that Silas would dream of messing around with Griffin’s sister,” said Sloane pointedly. “Right?”

  “Right,” I muttered. Fuck that, though. I was going to have sex with her again. I was going to find a way. I couldn’t stand the thought that I hadn’t performed up to snuff when I was blacked out and that she thought of me as a so-so lay.

  * * *

  “You’re Griffin’s best man.” Christa was standing outside the women’s restroom in the restaurant. “How could you not tell me that?”

  I’d followed her back here after she’d made not-so-subtle head motions at me when she was walking away.

  “I didn’t know who you were,” I said.

  “You knew I was from Texas. You knew I had a brother. You knew I was here for a wedding. How hard is it to put all that together?” She was livid.

  “I didn’t know the thing about the wedding until the morning,” I said. “Besides, I don’t see why it’s such a big deal.”

  She rubbed her hand over her face. “I didn’t think I would ever see you again.”

  “Well, then this is a very pleasant surprise for you.”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Don’t act like that.” She let out a huff of breath. “Well, I guess you can’t really help it.”

  “Help what?”

  “You’re an arrogant douche bag,” she said.

  “I’m not a douche bag,” I said.

  She sighed. “I can’t believe this. Look, don’t talk to me, okay? We’ll get through this wedding without even associating with each other, and then I’ll go home, and you’ll disappear from my life.”

  “Hold on,” I said. “You’re being a little harsh.”

  “Harsh? How do you figure?”

  “Well, I admit that things are a little more complicated than they might have first appeared last night or even this morning,” I said. “But I’m not upset about the fact that I’m going to see more of you. I’m actually kind of glad of that, in fact. I still think that you owe me a rematch.”

  “What?” She made a disbelieving face. “I don’t owe you anything. We had sweaty, sloppy, drunk sex—”

  “Sloppy? I am not sloppy.”

  “You were sloppy,” she said. “I mean, you’re nice to look at and everything, but you cancel all that out with your lack of finesse.”

  “See, now you’re just being insulting.” I reached for her. “So maybe I had too much to drink last night. But I’m not usually sloppy.”

  She slapped my hand away. “Okay, I’m sorry that I’m making you feel insecure about your manhood or whatever—”

  “I’m not insecure.” She couldn’t say something like that about me.

  She sighed. “Whatever. Just stay away from me.” She pushed past me.

  I caught her arm. “Hold it. What if I don’t want to stay away from you?”

  “Too bad.” She tried to pull her arm away.

  I wouldn’t let go of her. I tugged her closer to me. I could smell her perfume—something understated and flowery. “Last night, you were into it. You were into me. And now, you hate me all of the sudden? There’s no way the sex was that bad. Even drunk, I have skills.”

  “Let go of me,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “Explain this to me. Because I can’t stop thinking about you, Christa.”

  “Oh, that’s original. You say that to all the girls?”

  “It’s not a line. It’s true.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Let. Go. Of. Me.”

  “Say you’ll see me again.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t see guys more than once. It’s the way I do things. Now let go.”

  “Make an exception.”

  “I’m going to scream.”

  “So scream,” I said.

  She threw her head back and let out the loudest shriek I’d ever heard.

  I let go of her. “Jesus.”

  Within two seconds, Griffin skidded into vie
w. His face was panicked. “Christa? What’s wrong?”

  I backed into the wall. Great.

  * * *

  “No, Griffin, it’s not that big a deal,” said Christa.

  “What’d you do to her?” Griffin was in my face.

  I was backed into the wall next to the restroom. “Griffin, look, I didn’t know who she was.”

  “What do you mean?” he said, his nostrils flaring.

  “Hey,” said a loud voice.

  Griffin turned.

  “Whatever you’re doing, you take it outside,” called the voice.

  Griffin grabbed the front of my shirt and yanked me away from the wall. “Okay, let’s talk about this outside.”

  I grimaced. “Griffin, just—”

  He pushed me, and I stumbled backwards. The words died in my throat. What was I going to say anyway?

  There was a door to the outdoors further past the bathrooms.

  Griffin shoved me again. “Outside.”

  I held up my hands, palms up. “Okay, okay. Just calm down.”

  Once outside in the parking lot behind the restaurant, Griffin slammed me up into the brick building. “What did you do to my sister?”

  “Griffin, stop it.” Christa had followed us out. She was standing there with both of her hands thrust into her hair. “Don’t hit him or anything.”

  He turned to her. “You screamed.”

  “I wanted him to let go of me,” she said.

  He thrust his elbow against my neck. “Why’d you have your hands on her?”

  “Uh…” How should I explain that?

  “It’s none of your business, okay?” said Christa. “I don’t need you to do this.”

  “Look, man, I’m really sorry. I swear to God, if I had any idea who she was last night—”

  “Last night?”

  I flinched. Oh, maybe I shouldn’t have told him that, should I? Fuck. “I didn’t know she was your sister.”

  Griffin let go of me, shaking his head. “No, Silas. No.”

  I looked down at my feet.

  He looked at Christa. “What happened last night?”

  “None of your business.”

  He clenched his teeth. “Silas, tell me you did not sleep with my baby sister.”

  I swallowed. I didn’t say anything.

  Griffin rubbed the top of his head. “You motherfucker.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know who she was. Besides, she’s fine.”

  “Fine?” He slammed me into the wall again.

  I grunted. “You think you could stop doing that?”

  He let up. “You treat girls worse than toilet paper, and you’re telling me that she’s fine? How dare you?”

  “She is,” I said. “Ask her. I’m not even a blip on her radar.”

  He clenched his fists. “She’s only nineteen.”

  “I’m only twenty-two,” I said. “What’s that, like three years? How is that a big deal?”

  Griffin punched me.

  His fist crunched into my cheekbone, and it was like my face exploded in pain.

  I moved forward, raising my fist to punch back.

  It was instinctual. I knew how to fight. Griffin did too. If the two of us got into it for real, we could fuck each other up bad.

  I stopped myself, forcing my fist down. It took all my self-control. I glared at him. “Okay. You hit me? You feel better?”

  He drove his fist into my stomach.

  I doubled over at the force of it.

  He hit my face again with his other hand.

  I gritted my teeth, starting for him again.

  Somehow, I managed to keep it back. Griffin was my friend. I didn’t want to hurt him. And I got it. I knew why he was doing it. If I thought someone had hurt Sloane, I’d be pissed. I’d killed for my sister before, and I’d do it again if I had to. So, I took it, and I didn’t fight back.

  He put his finger in my face. “You stay the fuck away from her, you hear me?”

  I shut my eyes.

  Griffin stalked back inside.

  Christa was wincing. “Oh, my god, he hit you. A lot.”

  I spit. There was blood in my mouth. “I heal fast,” I muttered.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “You guys have to work this out,” said Leigh. She was in the living room at my house, twisting her hands together as she paced.

  I was sitting on a couch. It was later that night. The dinner had kind of fizzled after I got punched. Griffin had told me that he didn’t want me to be his best man anymore, and that he didn’t want to look at me anymore, and, well, it had been ugly.

  Leigh was still pacing. “You’re the best man. He can’t kick you out of the wedding.”

  “He did,” I said.

  “Well, the wedding doesn’t work without you,” she said. “There need to be two groomsmen to balance out the two bridesmaids. And if you’re not there, then there’s no balance. It’s completely screwed.”

  “I feel for you, Leigh,” I said. “I really do, but I don’t see why you’re talking to me about it. Griffin’s the one who made this decision.”

  She threw herself down on a couch. “Well, I can’t talk to him about it. He’s only reacting the way he is because he’s stressed out about the wedding. I mean, I’m stressed out, and that makes him stressed out, and then with this happening... It’s not cool.”

  I sighed. “This is why I don’t see the point of relationships. You guys are constantly fighting.”

  “We are not,” she said.

  “Well, you complain about him all the time.”

  “I do not.” She glared at me. “I’m not complaining about him now.”

  “You are, though,” I said. “You want him to not be mad at me so that it will fix your wedding. What he’s doing is making your life harder. And that’s what relationships do eventually. They make your life needlessly complicated and difficult.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, whatever, Silas. I can see that I’m not going to have any luck with you, anyway.”

  “Luck?”

  “I thought maybe if you convinced Griffin that you weren’t just using Christa, then maybe he wouldn’t be so pissed.”

  “So, you think it would make him happier if I wanted to date her?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “He likes you. You like his sister. That’s a good thing. And I think you’d be a good boyfriend. I mean, as long as you didn’t cheat on her.”

  I furrowed my brow. “First of all, I don’t see how it would even be possible to have anything serious with Christa, because she lives in Texas. Second of all, I don’t think I’d make a good boyfriend in any way. I’m a freaking ex-assassin. I’m violent and unstable, and I don’t really function under a moral code. Third of all, there’s nothing about me and Christa together that would make Griffin less pissed.”

  She got up off the couch and resumed pacing. “So, you were an assassin? So what? Griffin’s an ex-assassin. He’s a great boyfriend.”

  “Sure he is,” I said. “I mean, who wouldn’t want a guy who gets you shot at all time and teaches you how to torture people and—”

  “Stop it,” she said. “How can you just bring that up like that when you know how it affected me?”

  Leigh’d had some kind of psychotic break after she and Griffin tortured and killed Griffin’s rapist. She hadn’t been okay for months, and she’d been utterly freaked about it. But Leigh tended to take things like that way too seriously. I’d tried to explain to her before that she didn’t have to torment herself, but it didn’t seem to have stuck.

  “Because the more we tiptoe around that crap, the more power it has over you,” I said, sitting up straight on the couch. “You need to face your fears, not hide from them. You’re afraid that you’re some sort of awful person, but you need to stare that fear square in the face and decide that you can handle it.”

  “You know, Silas, maybe you don’t worry enough about whether or not you’re a bad person,” said Leigh. “I mean, Griffin’s
not wrong about the way you usually treat girls. You’re not very nice to them.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “I’m not very nice. And I’m okay with it. I don’t worry about it. That’s what I tried to tell you before. Do you remember?”

  “I remember. I was worried about the abortion. And you did help me with that.” She folded her arms over her chest. “But I don’t see how this is helping me with my current problem, which is that my wedding is ruined.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe it’s a sign. You shouldn’t get married. Making a commitment like that to one person? It’s craziness. Get out while you still can.”

  She shook her head at me, looking thoughtful. “Why is it that you’re so against relationships?”

  “I told you. They’re stupid.” I leaned back into the couch. “People get hurt. People get jealous. One person lets the other person down. In the end, it’s just not worth it.”

  She sat down next to me. “Were you badly hurt in a previous relationship or something? You used to have girlfriends, right? You told me about the girlfriend you had in high school who had an abortion.”

  “Sure, I had my share of bad relationships,” I said. “High school girlfriends included. And, sure, that’s part of the reason why I swore off them entirely.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Who was she, and what did she do to you?”

  I smirked. “Nah, there was nothing like that, Leigh. I wasn’t in love with some chick who screwed my best friend behind my back or something.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “I don’t know if I believe you.”

  “Look, the thing is, I’m not sure that human beings are biologically monogamous. For instance, we seem to have evolved with much larger penises that other primates.”

  She started to get up. “Eww, I don’t want to talk about your dick.”

  I caught her by the sleeve and tugged her down. “No, just listen, okay? I’m talking about all human dicks. Proportionately, they’re bigger than chimps, which are really close cousins to us.”

  She made a face. “Chimp penises? Seriously? What does this have to do with anything?”

  “They theorize that we evolved bigger penises to push the semen of competitive males out of the way.”

  “What?” She looked confused.

  “Back in the cavemen days, when we were becoming humans, it seems like it was probable that one woman had sex with a lot of different guys, and that’s why we have big dicks.”