2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Silas

There is zero chance this will work, not even by a longshot. The second I saw Ella Marshal sitting in the study room assigned to me, I had to swallow my heart and my pride. It isn't news to anyone that I have issues with school, and Ella is one of the smartest people in Coldstone Creek. Still, my pride is already bruised enough without having her reminding me every ten seconds that I have always been an idiot. As for my heart, I'm pretty sure she has things to say I won't want to hear, but they will slip out of her mouth like venom just the same.

I enter the study space anyway and say, "Oh, it's you," like the world's biggest moron. What I should have said includes a lot of apologizing, copious begging, and something about how beautiful she still is, but I never claimed to be quick-witted.

"Silas," she whispers, almost as if her whole world hangs on whether or not I am actually her student for this tutoring thing my brother set up for me. He practically beat into me how important it would be. Lev isn't wrong, but he also doesn't understand. He was blessed with the personality and the brains, while I have…nothing. My antics were what made me popular back in high school, and without them, I'm a dumb guy with nothing going for him.

"Hi, Ella," I say and pull out the chair across from her. "Uh, it looks like you're my tutor."

"Looks that way," she says, her lips pulled into a frown that is hard to miss. Her eyes focus on me like they see right through me, but they are still so beautiful—a dark honey color that matches her hair exactly. She doesn't wear glasses anymore, at least not right now, and it makes her look so grown up. We are grown up. She's so different yet the same somehow.

"Listen, we should try to arrange for you to have another tutor. This probably won't work out well." She chews her lip and blushes.

Well, her outright rejection took fifteen seconds longer than I had expected, but it doesn't hurt any less when she says it and starts looking for the librarian who scheduled the sessions. I sigh and stand, ready to scrap the whole thing. There is little chance a few hours of tutoring will solve my epic problem—that I am about to fail out of college and my father will kill me—so there is no sense in wasting anyone's time.

"It's all right. I'll figure something else out." I slip my bag over my shoulder and push the chair back in.

"I can refund your money tomorrow once I—"

"It's fine. Keep it," I say, then leave the room and head toward the library exit. I'll never get to apologize to her, explain why I left town without telling her, and that's on me. I deserve anything she throws at me, especially her disdain if I read her first glance correctly. Breaking her heart was never part of the plan. Actually, she was never part of the plan, but she kind of appeared and took all of my focus, leaving me scrambling for what to do by the end of summer. The summer she almost made me forget what it was like to be a screw up.

Halfway back to my car, I remember I left my hat on the table so I turn around to grab it, only to run into someone.

"Ow," Ella squeaks when she bounces off of me. She presses her hand to her forehead and shakes her head a little. "Your head is so hard."

"Sorry, I didn't see you there." I have to fight the instinct to tug her hand from her face to check for wounds. It's so intense, my palms itch.

"It's okay," Ella says and hands me my hat. "You, um, forgot this on the table."

"That's what I was coming back for, so thanks." I yank it over my head, nod at her, then turn back toward the lot. I have no idea what to do. I want to explain everything to her, but it's probably a waste of my time to try.

"Really? Is that all you have to say to me? Is this how this is going to be? Forever?" she asks from behind, forcing me to freeze in place.

Instinct tells me to run to my car and never look back, then I won't have to hear her listing off all of the reasons I'm a horrible person, but the tone in her voice hooks me right in the gut. If I were Lev or really any of my brothers, I'd know what to do, but I'm not. I'm me, the resident screw up, and that leaves me with little to say that doesn't sound like me being a jerk.

"Silas, I…I don't know what to do here. I'm shocked and confused, but mostly I'm sad," she says, forcing me to turn around. I can't say what my expression looks like, but her eyes get a little wider the second her gaze lands on my face. I shift my weight and wait, beating my brain trying to think of what to say to her.

"Aren't you going to say anything?" she asks, her voice cracking.

My mouth opens but words don't come out because I'm unsure which ones to use. I'd loved her, probably still do, and there is no real way to explain why that had almost ruined me. Why I hated it. Why she should run away and not give me a second thought. But she waits, giving me one last chance to make things right in some way, but I have nothing. It's too long of a story, too riddled with things that won't make sense to her, and nothing I say will wipe the sad look off of her face anyway.

She sighs and nods. "Okay, well, good luck with everything." Her hair swishes above her waist as she turns around, giving me a good view at what she looks like walking away this time. I'd done it to her, walked away with her behind me, thinking we had a whole lifetime of moments ahead of us. Then I got on a plane and never said another word to her. I have no idea what I looked like walking away, but my heart kicks my brain in the rear and I realize how much I hate watching her do it.

"Ella," I say, taking one step forward. She freezes with her hand on the door handle and waits for a lame excuse. "I don't want it to be this way. I'm not good with words, but I don't want to…" I sigh, already out of all the words I'd come up with.

Her jaw is so tight I spy it clenching from a distance, but she says nothing. She closes her eyes and turns to face me before taking a breath and looking at me again. Like this, I can picture her the way she was that summer. Happy, carefree, open. She handed her heart over to me without a blink, no question, no hesitation. It was probably the stupidest thing she'd ever done.

"I didn't expect to see you again. I got over you. I believed I had, but it turns out I only buried the anger, and all I want to do right now is smack you. I also want to kiss you, and smack myself for thinking that." Her face reddens like a tomato, but she throws her hands in the air and shakes her head. "You probably have a girlfriend, and the whole high school summer fling probably didn't mean anything to you, but…I don't know. It still bothers me. It meant something to me."

What? I mean, what? Either I have a horrible ear infection and I'm hearing things all wrong, or Ella Mitchell is standing in front of me saying she still has some kind of feelings for me. Granted, those feelings are somewhere between hate and love, or like, but if there is even a sliver of hope, I want it. How did this happen? How did I go from over her to completely under her spell again in less than five minutes? Well, I was probably never really over her.

"Can I talk to you?" I ask, a bit more desperate than I like.

Ella bites her lip again, runs her hand through her hair, and laughs, but it's the most sarcastic thing I've ever heard. "I don't know why but I'm interested in hearing what you have to say, so yes, we can talk."

She pulls the library door open and enters, leaving me standing on the sidewalk. I assume that is my invitation to follow her and try to make the biggest case for why she should hear me out. We head back toward the vestibule where we met, and she shuts the door behind us. It's a lot like being locked in a jail cell about to be interrogated, but if that's what she needs, then so be it.

She sits and crosses her arms—fair enough—and waits for me to sit across from her. Whether she will hear what I have to say or not remains to be seen, but she seems ready to listen to whatever excuse I can cook up. The truth is probably wilder than anything I can come up with, and I don't want to lie to her, so I dive in.

"I want to start by saying I almost called you a hundred times. I didn't know how to explain anything to you, so rather than try, I did the cowardly thing and left." I swallow the lump in my throat and keep going. "I had a blast that summer, but I had something I had to do. I had to, Ella, and everything with you that summer…" I lick my lips and groan in near-physical pain under her stare. "Everything that happened almost made me back out of a serious commitment I had made, and I couldn't. I had to do what I'd planned to do."

She narrows her eyes. "Are you kidding me? You could have said that, and I would have understood."

"I was eighteen, Ella!" I say, not intending to raise my voice. "I was a kid, and I was scared, okay?"

"Scared of what, Silas? That I'd try to stop you from doing whatever you did? I don't even know where you disappeared to. I texted you and called and nothing went through. You had your phone disconnected and emails bounced back."

"I know," I say, raising my hands. She's yelling now. I glance out the small window in the vestibule and find the librarian has that look on her face, the one that says we're three words away from getting kicked out. "You don't understand. I can't explain it to you in a short conversation in the middle of a library."

She huffs, still angry. "Well, that's fine. I'll refund your money and you can find another tutor, like I said. I'm sorry that what we had three years ago was so torturous for you, but now that I know you had better plans, I get it. It's fine." Ella slams her bag on the table and shoves her things inside, her eyes red and watery.

No. Please, no. Don't cry.

"Ella, let me tell you what happened, then I can explain why—"

"It's fine, really. You didn't want to tell me back then for a reason, so I can't see any reason why you'd want to tell me now, three years later when we're practically strangers again. And you don't have to. It's your business."

I watch her shove her things around and zip her bag, praying that the right words will come. Words that don't make her feel worse, because that is the last thing I want to do. That summer, I'd signed up for something I was too young to understand, both in regard to Ella and to the trip I took the following fall. My family had been mad enough about my plan, but they at least understood. Where I had been and the work I'd done had been more important in the long run, but I broke Ella in the process.

"I want to tell you, but I'm not sure you'll believe me." I shrug and fidget with the strap of my bag.

She sighs and rubs her hands over her face, hiding the fact that her tears are about to fall. "Fine," she mumbles. "Tell me."

I shift and lean forward, staring at scribbled crayon on the table some kid left behind. It's better than looking at her, knowing I have no right to wipe her tears or hold her like I want so desperately to, because make no mistake, Ella still has me wrapped around her finger. Even tighter than I remember.

"I went to Romania on a mission trip and worked at an orphanage for five months. While I was there I didn't even talk to my family. I needed the time to evaluate my life, to try to figure out where my place was in the world." I huff and shake my head. "Even that didn't help me though. I still don't know what I'm supposed to be doing."

"You were in Romania?" Ella asks, her voice barely a whisper. "Why didn't you tell me that? I would have understood. I would have supported you and—"

"I never intended to come back, Ella," I admit for the first time to anyone. I love my family, absolutely adore having such a big one, but I always feel like the bump they can't smooth over, the wild horse they can never tame.

Her stare cuts right through me. "Why did you come back then?" Hurt laces her voice.

"My mother asked me to. I came back because the one time I took her call, she cried the whole time. I couldn't stand it. And now here I am, failing college, unsure of my future, without a single person who understands I'm so far out of my element I can't even figure out which way is up most days. So, if you don't mind, I could really use a tutor so I don't disappoint my family any more than I already have."