Page 64 of True Honey
You’ve got to do better.
Smash.
You wanted this.
Smash.
Can’t you just be happy?
“Drew?” Silas’s voice was calmer than before as he came around to stand in front of me. He lowered his six-foot frame to come eye to eye with me. “Take control of the sound, remove the emotional trigger from it.”
“How do you know all this?” I asked him.
“Years and years of therapy,” Silas smiled. “You didn’t think a man this regulated did it on his own, did you?”
I took in all the features of his face, the hardened ridges of his jaw and the soft swells of his cheeks when he smiled at me. The tiny flecks of dark blue danced along the light gray color that swallowed his pupil. Long lashes and tiny gray hairs poking out from his beard and around his ears.
“Shocking.” I grinned at him, forcing the smile to my face in a pathetic attempt to hide how terrified I was.
“Just have fun.”
“You go first,” I suggested.
Silas shook his head at me, “you have to go first,” he said, reaching out to push back a piece of my hair that fell loose. “If I go and it scares you, we’re right back where we started.”
“Okay,” I huffed nervously.
“Hold the bat…” he mumbled quietly, shifting my hands around on the handle, “yeah that’s better, and swing as hard as you can. Don’t hold back.”
Silas stepped out of my way, moving to the back wall as I counted myself down. I stared at the plate, more ready than I had been before.I could do this, I could break a plate. Nothing will happen if I do. It’s why we’re here.
I lifted the bat over my head and brought it down on the plate, shattering it into a bunch of pieces without remorse. I froze, waiting for the screaming, waiting for the panic, taking in all the fractured pieces. It had exploded across the table much like the laughter that exploded from me. “Holy shit,” I turned to Silas, my heart racing out of my chest. “That was…”
“Fun?” He was standing with his arms crossed over his chest, the hammer hanging down at his side and a smug smile on his face.
“Can I do it again?” I asked, the adrenaline pumping through my veins.
“Have at it, killer.” He shrugged and I turned back to the room, taking in all the things that weremeantto be broken. Like someone had turned on a switch I just went at it all, swinging the bat around and releasing all the negative energy that I had been holding on to.
Silas watched on as I moved to the T.V. In the corner of the room, looking back at him to ask permission only for him to nod. I couldn’t begin to imagine how Silas had stumbled upon something as ridiculous as this. It felt so out of how he typically carried himself in the public eye.
I swung through and smashed out the screen with a satisfying pop of glass and fibers. Silas strode across the room and, tapping me so gently on the hip with his sledgehammer to get me to move. I smiled, stepping to the side and leaning on the bat out of his way as he brought the hammer up and over his head. The muscles in his back rippled beneath his tight shirt as the hammer collided with the top and caved in on itself.
“Wow, you’re strong,” I said sarcastically with a smirk on my face.
“Don’t patronize me,” he huffed, no real heat in it, just light dancing in his eyes.
“It's not about the size of the dog.”
“Sorry, sorry. Please continue,” I stifled a giggle and put my hand over my mouth as he glared at me playfully.
Silas was anything but a small dog, his arms were wide with strength and his shoulders broad. The veins in his neck popped as he ripped through the side of the already dismantled television and sent it flying across the room.
It was clear that he hadn’t just brought me down here to work through my own emotions, he was carrying heavy pains of his own. His face tightened with the next swing and I could see the stress building and releasing in his body with each hit. I was going to ask him earlier why he wasn’t back at the hospital but the thing was, usually he would have just told me and it was like he was avoiding the conversation of what happened all together.
I could respect his space, even if I didn’t want to.
“I can’t smash all this stuff alone,” Silas turned to me with an infectious smile, pushing back the doubts that maybe he wasn’t enjoying himself. And even if he was masking the way he was really feeling, so was I, so I couldn’t necessarily fault him for it. “We aren’t leaving until you’ve destroyed everything so…”
