Page 306 of Forged in the Fire
The stars were beginning to fade as night slowly gave up its hold.
Silas stopped under a canopy of verdant trees, planted his boots on the ground as he killed the engine, then he shuffled me around. He wrapped my legs around his waist and pulled my chest to his.
His arms unrelenting as he held me against his rigid, perfect frame.
“Brinley.”
I never would have thought my name could hold such meaning.
Relief.
Love.
Redemption.
But it was all there, surrounding me like I had earned any one of them.
I crushed myself against him. My own relief. My own redemption.
A love so big and heavy that I feared maybe I’d succumbed from it.
Maybe I’d died back in that room and this meeting was otherworldly.
Because how could Silas shower this kind of mercy on me after what I’d done?
“I’m sorry.” It was a muddled, disjointed cry. “I’m so sorry.”
Silas’s arms only tightened, and his head shook, his stubble brushing over my cheek. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
“I almost got you killed. All of you.”
His head shook again. “No, baby. We found out he already knew we were coming for him. Your actions actually confirmed it. We would have been walking into a full ambush if all of this hadn’t happened.”
There was a low, searing pride in his voice before it cracked with dread. “Not that I ever want you to put yourself in that kind of danger. I was so fucking scared.”
Tears kept spilling, and I had my face pressed into his neck, his warmth heating me through. “I should have come to you.”
“Yeah, you should have. But I was keeping secrets from you, and how is a person supposed to fully trust when they’re in the dark?”
I sniffled. “But I should have. You’ve proven it to me time and again, and I…I panicked. Those letters…”
I trailed off. Still not knowing how to make sense of them. Of what they meant.
A ripple of aggression rolled through Silas. “Wasn’t me.”
My spine stiffened. I could feel that something was coming.
Something big.
That energy thrashed and thrummed.
“It was Phoenix.”
Anger burst in my blood, and Silas pulled back, palms coming to my cheeks as he stared down at me through the faint light that began to suffuse the air.
“I know you’re mad, baby. I was fucking furious. Thought I was gonna have to put a bullet in one of my best friends. But?—”
He clipped off, hesitating before he rushed, “He truly believed Dereck was setting us up. That this whole thing was somehow a ploy at infiltrating our crew.”
