I look away.
“Exactly my point,” he says softly.
“We know where he is,” Rowan mutters from the chair by the window, still staring at he floor and rubbing his leg.
He looks up at me with a strained look on his face. “And so does Agent Riley.”
My heart lurches into my chest as the color suddenly drains from my face.
No.
No-no-no…
I stand suddenly, stumbling, not knowing where I’m even going. I can feel the panic rising inside, clawing at my throat as the room starts to swim around me.
And then suddenly, my dad’s there - his large arms holding me, hugging me close before I fall completely.
“I’m sorry…”
“I’ve never been mad at you for following your heart, honey,” he says quietly, rocking me as I start to cry.
“I just never wanted to lose you because you did.”
My mom comes over and hugs me as well, and then the tears really start to fall.
“What can we do, honey?” Mom says, pulling me into her and stroking my back.
I shake my head. “I think I’m just ready to go home,” I say quietly.
“I think it’s time for me to leave.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Silas
“Here, take this.”
I look up from toying with the black ski mask in my hand to see Jerry, one of Declan’s “guys” looking at me blankly. I feel sluggish, my head still drowning slowly in my thoughts and my regrets - thinking of Ivy, and the way I just watched her run away from me.
Something horrible inside of me wonders if this time, it really will be the last time I watch her do that.
I blink at Jerry. “Huh?”
He frowns and gestures down with his eyes. I follow them, and something seizes up in my chest.
He’s holding a gun, handle towards me.
“What the fuck is this?” I growl, finally finding my voice as I shake my head and lean away from the offered gun.
Declan snorts from the front passenger seat. “It’s a nine millimeter, kid. The hell does it look like?”
I narrow my eyes at him. “You said no guns.”
“I lied.”
Jerry chuckles. “No guns? Who the fuck do you think we’re ripping off here, a pizza place?”
“You said no guns,” I say again, my voice cold and my pulse thudding in my veins.
“Look I know what I said,” Declan turns, pulling his sunglasses down to look at me. “Deal with it.” He nods at the gun. “Take the fucking gun, kid. You probably won’t have to use it anyways.”
Probably.
It’s heavy in my hand - cold metal pressed into the hot palm of my hand. I check the safety, notice that there’s a round chambered, and then double check the safety again as we pull out of Declan’s ritzy neighborhood.
What the fuck am I doing?
There’s something screaming inside of me, there in the back of that van with a gun in one hand and a mask in the other. Because here I am making the exact same mistake I made eight years ago. I can lie to myself and say I’m doing this to protect the ones I love, but I know it’s more than that. I know that deep down, I’m drawn to this. Deep down, underneath the man I’d like to say I’ve become, I know I’m still the same thing I’ve always been.
The wrong little boy, from the wrong side of town.
The troublemaker.
The rule breaker.
The thief.
Deep down, this comes naturally, and underneath the pain and the heartache and the regrets, I know there’s something else there.
Excitement.
It’s like a horrible little junky’s itch - the addiction of the steal creeping up inside like some sort of waking dragon.
And I hate it. I hate it because it means no matter what I’ve said and done and strived for over the last eight years, I’m still the same fucking dumb kid looking for trouble that I was before.
I think it was Einstein that said stupidity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. And here I am doing the same damn thing all over again. Here I am on the same path, making the same mistakes. I am exactly the same guy I was all those years ago, making the same mistakes, breaking the same girl’s heart all over again.
Except you’re not.
The voice growls inside of me, tearing up from the depths of me and making my head spin.
I’m fucking not the same dumb kid I was back then. I’ve grown up. I’ve bled, and made mistakes, and learned what it truly means to lose. Eight years ago I was an idiot doing some dumb shit with no conceivable idea of what the consequences would be. I was in love with a girl who I didn’t deserve in a million fucking years, and I thought I had something to prove to her.