Page 83 of All Our Secrets

His words were beautiful, touching me so intimately that I swore I felt him inside me, embedded in my bone marrow, in every pore. But as quickly as the magic came, it was chased away by the festering guilt I harbored. I leaked like a broken faucet. My pain spilled from my eyes.

The angry lines on his forehead disappeared as he wiped my tears. “Baby, please. We can’t move forward if we don’t look back first.”

I tore away from him as I hiccupped, rubbing my face quickly with my arm. “Don’t you say that. Don’t you ever say that again. I’m not yours. Not back then. Not ever.”

“Even if you can’t admit it today, know that I’m yours.” He raised his arm out for me, letting it linger between us before dropping it to his side. His shoulders sagged. “Always been, Peyton.”

I covered my face to block him from my view. At that moment, T.J. started crying in his bassinet. The mom guilt swallowed me up as well. My yelling had likely woken him. As I turned away, I finished our conversation with, “I made a mistake and I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”

“We are not a mistake.”

I didn’t bother arguing with him. Escaping was the best option.

∞∞∞

“You good?” Sarah asked as we walked through the amusement park. “King keeps eyeballing the back of your skull.”

I hadn’t spoken a word to Silas since our argument that morning. Thankfully, he was giving me space.

“I’m fine,” I replied, pushing T.J. in his stroller.

“Want to talk about it?”

I shook my head.

“Talk about what?” Becky popped up beside me.

As soon as we looked at her, a noise behind us caught our attention. I watched Becky turn first, then did the same. Devin laughed at something, likely his own joke, as he walked alongside Silas. Silas could cut glass with his surliness. He didn’t seem to care that Devin kept nudging his shoulder as he cackled.

Becky inhaled deeply. I waited for her to return her interest to us. The trouble in that was she was so focused on Silas she seemed to forget she’d jumped into our conversation.

Sarah made a sound in her throat. “Oh, hey Becky,” she said when I failed to do anything more than fight the urge to look at Silas as freely as Becky was doing. My grip tightened on the stroller.

I’m jealous of her freedom.To stop and stare and devour him so openly.

I rubbed my neck as Becky faced us once more. The heat of the sun had nothing on the burning inside my chest when I thought of Becky and her complete and utter focus on Silas. She seemed like the sort who would truly,deeplylove him if given the chance. My stomach twisted. My heart couldn’t seem to catch up. It didn’t care about right or wrong. It shriveled up at the thought of someone else touching, holding, andlovingSilas King.

“Hey.” Becky smiled. “Mind if I walk with you guys?”

I’d never been close with her, so it was strange that she’d come to us when she normally hung around with her cousin’s wife. Her head snapped back around, looking behind me, and that twisted ugliness kept attacking my chest. Ah, I understood. We were the perfect excuse for her to be near Silas since he had done nothing but follow behind me despite my not talking to him.

“What are you looking at?” The words poured from my lips.

Becky laughed. “King, of course. He’s avoiding me.”

He’s not avoiding you.He didn’t want anything to do with her.

All these nasty thoughts kept bubbling to the surface, but I couldn’t speak aloud about the things I had done in the night that would make the poor woman stop her hopeless pursuit.

Stop.Becky wasn’t a bad person. I was the one who shouldn’t be having these thoughts. These wicked ones of erasing the smile from her lips when she looked at Silas by telling the truth. But that would mean betraying Theodore even more deeply in the process…

“Have you tried dating since you and King broke up, hon?” Sarah tilted her head at Becky.

“No. There’s only Silas for me.”

I tightened my hold on the stroller and swallowed the anger lodged in my throat. When did she start calling him Silas? No one did butme.But that wasn’t true. I had no idea what she called him when they were alone, but in public, she always called him King.

Stop it, Peyton!

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