The Heroes We Break

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 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. 

I can’t remember the last time I saw them with that gleam they get when he smiles—when he really, truly smiles and it touches his eyes. He’s beautiful then, and it takes my breath away to see it. 

I’m reminded of Esmerelda, his mother, and I soften toward him because Silas Cruz is alone in the world. There’s a part of me that, no matter what has happened or what he’s done, hurts for him at the thought.

“Silas,” I start, wanting to tell him I’d heard about his mother’s passing, wanting to say something kind. But before I can get a word out and, without breaking eye contact, he reaches behind me and takes my hand in his. That fluttering in my belly, the sensation of anxiety or excitement that are interchangeable when it comes to Silas Cruz, is there again. Heat creeps up along my neck and settles in my cheeks as electricity charges through us. 

“I see you haven’t come to your senses yet,” he says, and both our gazes move to the rock on my hand. He turns the ring, touches the diamond. When I look up at him again, he’s watching me from beneath thick, black lashes. “You disappoint me, O.”

“Don’t you mean Barbie?” It’s his hate name for me, one of several. O was a pet name I haven’t heard in years. I try to pull my hand away, but he doesn’t let go. “And besides, everyone disappoints you in the end. Isn’t that right, Silas? No one is good enough for you, are they?”

He shrugs. “I wouldn’t say that exactly. But you? There was a time I expected better from you.” 

It’s quiet as his gaze searches my face, and I lose myself in the turquoise of his eyes. Is his heart beating as hard as mine? I doubt it. 

He’d have to have a heart for it to beat. 

Besides, Silas Cruz is a man in control. In the decade I’ve known him, this is the one thing I know to be a fact. He is always in control, and he’s proven that over and over every time I’ve run into him over the last few years. He’s proven that I am nothing but a pawn in his life that he can manipulate and maneuver however he wants for no reason other than his own entertainment. 

But despite it all, what I feel when I get around him never changes. 

He must see right through me because a string tugs at one corner of his mouth. It’s not quite a smile though. 

I remember the last time we saw each other. The morning after that night. 

My face burns. 

“I can read you like a book, little girl.”