Page 104 of The Hitman’s Final Job

THIRTY-TWO

VAUGHN

He looks terrible.

That’s my first impression in this restaurant garden with the lights strung above us and the warm smell of cooking coming through the kitchen door as Silas sits motionless, an expression on his face I’ve never seen before.

I’m not at my best, because between my son being shot and Silas leaving without so much as a goodbye, sleep seems to be a lost privilege.

But Silas? He looks like he’s lost a lot more than sleep.

And I know what he looks like when he sleeps. I have nights of it filed away in my brain. Those memories are bookmarked for easy access in my weakest moments, when it’s just me and the cold space beside me in my bed.

The person standing in front of me has not been sleeping. There are shadows under his eyes and a dullness that wasn’t there in Pine Ridge.

Rowan told me very little about what happened when Silas visited him in the hospital. He said Silas had explained everything and said he was retired from his job as a—and I still can’t wrap my head around it—hit man.

I was too confused to ask for more.

Too confused and too hurt and too full of knowledge I didn’t know what to do with: the revelation in the waiting room, the almost detached quality in his voice when he said I was hired to kill you, the way he said everything that happened between us was real, and the way I wanted to believe it and didn’t know if I could.

I came home to the farm, walked through the house, and found not a single trace Silas had ever been there. It was as if the past four weeks had been a dream, but only if I didn’t still have the taste of his lips lingering on mine and my son in a hospital bed to prove he had been here. That for a moment everything felt real.

And now Silas is sitting across a table from me in a restaurant garden in Atlanta, looking like he hasn’t slept in a month, and Rowan has just walked out with the satisfied energy of someone whose plan has come together.

The garden is way too quiet. Too early for diners to start flooding the small space, but it won’t be long until we’re no longer alone.

Neither of us says anything until Silas takes in a breath of air and expels, “What are you doing here?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“I don’t know. Is it?”

I look at the table. At the lights above us and the waiter lingering in the background, his presence reflected in the glass of the hanging lanterns.

“Rowan said he was going out of his mind in Pine Ridge. That he wanted to come to Atlanta for some exhibition of historical weaponry.” My voice turns dry. “Which I’m now fairly convinced isn’t an actual thing.”

Silas says nothing.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know he was going to do this. I made him promise we wouldn’t see you.”

Silas stands up. “Don’t break promises on my account.”

“Silas,” I say. “Sit down.”

He levels his brown eyes on me, and my heart breaks at the misery in their depths.

“Please.”

He sits.

I open my mouth, but I’m not sure what to say, other than I want to keep staring at your beautiful eyes, and I hope if I do it long enough, they’ll stop looking so tired and sad. Which is my fault, but I don’t know how to express everything I’m feeling without maybe making it worse.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts out.

I close my mouth.

What?