Page 112 of Where Your Scars Meet Mine
I can feel it in the room, that awful subtle tightening, the way everyone suddenly becomes too aware of where they are sitting and who is in the room with them. It’s ridiculous, really. A movie marathon in my bedroom shouldn’t feel like a hostage situation. And yet here we are.
Silas finally looks away from the television.
Not at Kadin first.
At me.
The glance is brief, but it carries too much. There’s something there that makes heat creep up my neck even now, even after the text, even after the sick churn in my stomach. Because the second his eyes catch mine, I’m aware all over again that I know the shape of his body in ways no one else in this room does. That when he says words like pleading, blood and worse, I know what his mouth feels like when it isn’t saying ugly things just to survive the room.
He looks away before the moment can turn into something visible.
“That depends,” he says at last, his voice lower now. “Is ignorance your thing, or just tact?”
Kadin gives a dry laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “You always this pleasant?”
Silas leans back farther in the chair, the posture loose enough to be insulting. “Only when people ask stupid questions.”
Cheyenne groans under her breath. “Great. We’re doing this.”
Maria tosses a piece of popcorn at her. “Shh. This is better than the movie.”
“Maria,” I warn.
She lifts both hands in surrender, but she’s smiling.
Kadin shifts again beside me. This time I move before I can think too hard about it, enough that his shoulder no longer rests against mine. The movement is small, but I feel Silas notice it anyway.
The text message flashes through my head again so suddenly it almost makes me flinch.
Do you think death erases debt?
My phone is face down on the bedspread beside me now, screen dark, but the words are still there in my mind like they’ve been etched into it. The room feels a little too warm. The shadows from the movie feel a little too close.
Silas catches something in my face.
I know he does because his attention changes. The edge he’d been using on Kadin dulls just slightly, not enough for anyone else to notice, but enough for me. His eyes stay on me a fraction longer than they should, and for one impossible second I get the sense that if we were alone, he’d ask.
But we aren’t alone.
We are trapped here with Kadin’s questions, my friends’ curiosity, and a fake killer on screen while something very real keeps scratching at the inside of my thoughts.
Kadin follows my gaze downward, probably thinking I’m looking at the movie. “You sure you’re okay?” he asks again, quieter this time.
The concern should feel nice.
Instead it lands wrong.
Because the only person in the room I want noticing that I’m not okay is the exact person I should least want involved.
“I’m fine,” I say.
Even I hear the lie in it.
Silas’s expression hardens again, not because of Kadin, not entirely. Because he hears the lie too.
On screen, the killer catches the girl in the woods, driving something into her side. Blood blooms unrealistically dark across her shirt. Cheyenne mutters, “Finally,” as Maria snorts.
No one laughs after.
