Chapter 40

I catch up to Silas in the foyer, where it’s so dark that the tip of my nose brushes his shoulder blade before I orient myself enough to rear backward.

“You can’t go out there,” I say, and he turns so abruptly that his phone flashlight slices into my eyes. I wince.

“I can’t?” He turns back immediately, keeps walking. I scramble for my own phone and hit the flashlight to follow him. Ethan’s text is still there on the screen: Not sure if you’ll have service to see this, but my flight’s canceled.

“If the wind was strong enough to rip off the plywood, it’s strong enough to hurt you.”

The entryway is all marble floors, thunder reverberating from smooth surfaces. With the windows boarded up, it’s pitch-black.

“And if I don’t get the plywood nailed back in that corner, the window could break.”

“So it breaks,” I say, but he’s still moving away from me. Slipping his sneakers on, reaching for the hammer and a box of nails on the entryway table.

“Silas,” I say, and he doesn’t look at me. Just shoves the box into his back pants pocket, grabs the utility flashlight sitting next to it. When he reaches for the front door I take another step toward him. “Silas, stop—”

“You stop,” he says, finally looking at me. He wrenches open the door and rain gusts in, startling and cold on my face. “Go back to the office.”

He steps through the door, and when he yanks it shut behind him I promptly pull it open again.

“I’m serious!” I shout, the storm gobbling up my voice. It’s apocalyptic out here—I can barely see the black back of his shirt in the drive of the rain.

Silas whirls around, hair already soaked through and sticking to his forehead. “So am I!” He waves at my legs. “You don’t even have shoes on!”

I look down at my feet: pale in the grass, already dotted with dirt. I hadn’t even noticed—every single part of me is drenched. I look back up at him. “I don’t care.”

“Great,” he says loudly. “Now you don’t care about being barefoot outside.” He waves a hand through the rain. “Just go back.”

Silas turns and makes for the window. The plywood’s come loose in the bottom right corner, ripped right from the nail, and with each gust of wind it slams violently into the side of the house.

I follow him, yelling above the thunder. “Why are you so mad at me?” I’ve never been this wet in my life; when I breathe it feels like I’m drinking.

“I’m not mad at you.” He crouches in front of the window without looking at me. His jeans are soaked and stuck to him; he struggles to get the nails out of his pocket.

“Clearly, you are.” Rain pelts the top of my head. It’s so windy that I press myself against the side of the house to avoid getting whisked away. Standing like this, flat-backed against the brick, we’re facing each other.

“I’m confused,” Silas says, pulling a nail out of the box. He still isn’t looking at me; there’s so much water running down his face he looks like he’s crying. “You’ve been icing me out since Nashville.”

I swallow, try to blink the stormwater out of my eyes. He’s right, of course.

“You’re still not going to say anything?” He lines up two nails, one on either side of the original one, which is still bolted into the window frame but holding nothing now. “Why’d you even follow me out here?”

“Silas—”

“I mean, we have that whole conversation, we do the Broadway thing, we dance at the bar and I was trying to be there for you—”

“You were there for me.”

“Then what?” he asks. His eyes meet mine—dark, dark, dark. “Because I told you, multiple times, that I needed to talk to you. And you’ve just ignored me, like I’m nothing to you. I thought we were—”

He breaks off, holding my eyes for a moment before turning back to the window. He doesn’t finish his sentence, just starts whaling on the nail. The storm’s so loud I barely hear it driving into the side of the house.

“Thought we were friends?” I offer, wanting him to keep talking. He’s the opposite of nothing to me. I’m a coward and a fool.

“Is that what this is?” He looks back at me, the second nail curled in his hand. “We’re friends?”

Rain fills the space and the silence between us. I can feel my fingers pruning.

“I don’t know,” I whisper. Too quietly for him to hear, but he watches my lips move.

“Jesus, Audrey.” He starts on the second nail, and the plywood kisses close to the house—a snug seal against the window frame.

“I’m confused about my feelings—”

“Yeah, me too.” He stands, the job complete. Makes no move to go back inside. “And you just left me to work through that alone. We could have been talking about it.” He waves the hammer between us, like he’s completely forgotten it’s attached to his hand. “We could have been figuring it out together this whole time.”

“I’m sorry.” It comes out scratchy and uncontrolled. “I didn’t know what to say, I was so embarrassed, I—”

“Embarrassed about what?” His shirt’s sticking to every line of his shoulders, the hard knots of his collarbones, wet lanes of rain racing across his skin like that day on Lake Michigan.

“About what I did,” I say. “Are you serious? About how I broke down in front of you like some kind of—some—”

“Person?” Silas says. When he takes a step toward me, I don’t think he’s aware of it. “God, Audrey, can’t you tell I want to be close to you?” The hammer’s hanging at his side now, useless. “There was nothing embarrassing about that. If anything, it felt like the most honest you’ve been with me this whole summer. And then you just—” His eyes rake across mine, water dripping from his eyelashes. We’re suddenly very close to each other. “You just disappeared on me.”

He draws a breath and I look at his mouth and it’s so loud out here—thunder booming, trees groaning in the wind. Everything is a disaster, natural and human and otherwise. I think, Can we try something? And my body moves all on its own, until there isn’t room for the rain to fall between us and my chin is tilted in a mirror of his and my eyes are closing. To block this out, maybe, or to focus on it through the scream of the storm.

But I don’t kiss Silas, because something stops me. And it takes a few full, thudding heartbeats for me to realize that it’s his fingers, pressed to my lips. They’re held up like a shield, gentle but entirely halting.

I look at him, but his eyes are closed.

“What—” I step back, and his hand drops to his side. His eyes open, dark and steady and something else, too—something that sinks like a stone to the pit of my stomach. “You don’t want to?”

The breath he lets out sounds injured, like I punched him. When he speaks, it’s angry. “Are you kidding me?”

But he’s not looking for an answer, because he turns away from me and stalks across the grass back toward the house.