Page 57 of Ex- Factor
The rest of the session was a blur. We talked about boundaries. Dr. Bailey called what my father did a “profound violation.” I called it “some typical Rutherford bullshit.” We were both right.
We left the office, and I laced my fingers through Eshe’s. Her hand was warm and solid in mine. The sun was too bright. The world felt too normal after the bomb she’d just dropped.
“So,” she said, squeezing my hand. “What now?”
“Now,” I said, pulling her closer, “we go about our day.”
I wasn’t wasting a Saturday with her thinking about my father.
And we did. We got lunch at some expensive Thai place Eshe had wanted to try. We picked up Ekon and went to the parkand watched him try to feed his entire peanut butter sandwich to a pigeon. I even managed to answer a few emails. I was fine. I was handling it. The rage was a low simmer, a pilot light in my chest, but it was under control. I was a new man. A therapized man.
But the whole day, in the back of my head, was a single, persistent thought:
He contacted her. He was in the same room as her. He could have hurt her.
I never thought Eshe would actually take him up on his offer, but still... the violation of it itched under my skin.
As we were getting ready to figure out dinner, something in me snapped. The image of him sitting across from her, sliding that envelope like she was a problem to be solved, flashed behind my eyes. The pilot light flared.
“I gotta run out for a second,” I said, my voice casual. “Forgot I had to... check on something for Ekon. His birthday coming up...”
She looked up, a slight frown on her face. “Right now? Dinner’s almost ready.”
“I’ll be back before it’s done.” I kissed her, quick. “Promise.”
I jumped in the car and hurried out of the driveway. Donte was driving into his house next door when I left. That annoyed me—his presence a reminder of the normal, domestic life I was supposedly heading toward, while I was actively driving away from it.
My hands were steady on the wheel, though. The GPS said it would take forty-five minutes to get to my parents’ vacation house on the water. I made it in thirty.
The house was a monster of glass and steel, looming over the dark water like a spaceship that had landed and decided to stay. Every light was on. Of course.
I killed the engine and just sat there for a minute, watching. The pilot light in my chest was a bonfire now. All the calm from the day was gone, burned away by the drive.
This was who I was. This was the old Silas, the one who burned bridges just to feel the heat. This is who I was trying to get rid of. And yet—my father wanted this version of me. If he didn’t, why would he have contacted her?
This was the feeling I had the night I saw Solomon enter the house that Ekon lived in, looking like he was ready to murder someone. A primal, possessive fury.
I got out of the car. The air smelled like salt. My footsteps crunched on the crushed-shell driveway. I didn’t have a plan. I was just going to walk up to that giant glass door and—
“What the fuck are you doing here?” a voice drawled from the shadows.
I froze.
Cassius stepped out from behind a giant live oak, arms crossed, looking disappointed.
A second later, Jonas materialized on my other side, leaning against the car like he’d been there the whole time.
“What the hell are you two doing here?” I snarled, my fists clenching.
“Preventing you from getting a murder charge,” Jonas said, pushing off the car. “And saving you from yourself. Again.”
“Eshe called,” Cassius said, walking toward me. “The second you left. Said you had that look in your eye—the one that says you’re about to do something stupid and irreparable.”
He stopped in front of me. “We broke every speeding law known to man to get here before you did.”
“Maybe you should’ve married Angel,” Cassius joked, a grim smile on his face. “She said you’d end up right here before the night was over. We’ve been waiting all day for Eshe to call and say you snapped.”
I stared at them, the fight draining out of me all at once, leaving me hollow and tired.
