Page 29 of Where Your Scars Meet Mine
The word is softer than anything she’s said tonight.
“I’m done.”
She reaches for the bowl of potatoes again, pulling it closer to her plate as if the moment never happened. Her shoulders remain rigid, her eyes locked firmly on the table.
For a moment, confusion pulls at the edge of my thoughts.
She should have reacted differently.
Most people would have. A sharp accusation. A chair shoved back. Something loud enough to drag her parents’ attention under the table where my hand had been resting against her thigh.
Instead, Octavia lifts her gaze, looking directly at me.
There is nothing soft about the way she studies me. Her eyes are steady, sharp enough to make it feel like the roles in the room have quietly shifted. The anger she carried a moment ago has cooled into something more controlled.
“You like games, Silas?” she asks.
The question is simple on the surface, but the tone carries weight. For the first time tonight I’m the one who has to pause before answering. There’s no embarrassment in her expression, no flustered panic like I expected.
Just focus.
“Depends on the type,” I answer quietly.
Under the table my fingers tighten slightly against her leg before I even realize I’m doing it. The contact is firm enough to remind her the moment hasn’t disappeared just because the conversation above the table continued.
Her reaction is not what I expect.
Instead of recoiling, her hand moves.
Slowly, her fingers brush across the back of mine. The touch is light at first, almost curious, the faintest glide of skin over skin. The sensation is enough to send a sharp warmth up my arm, settling somewhere in my chest in a way that’s difficult to ignore.
She doesn’t look down. She doesn’t acknowledge the movement.
“Well,” she says softly, still focused on the table as if this conversation exists only in the air above it, “in this family we love games.”
Her hand shifts fully over mine then, her fingers closing around my wrist with surprising steadiness, not frantic or desperate but controlled. With a firm, quiet pressure she lifts my hand away from her leg, guiding it back toward my side.
“And I rarely lose.”
The words are quiet enough that only I hear them.
A moment later she releases me completely, returning her attention to the meal, lifting her fork like nothing unusual happened. The movement is so smooth that her parents barely notice the pause in her earlier frustration.
Steph and Jacob exchange a small look across the table, sensing tension but unable to place its source.
Octavia thinks I did it to provoke her.
Maybe part of me did.
But that wasn’t the only reason.
I wanted to see what she would do. Whether she would shrink away or expose me.
Instead, she met it directly.
The question presses again against the back of my mind again.
Does she remember?
