Page 49 of Top Shelf

The cold hits instantly. The night air is sharp and wet, rain misting across my cheeks as I step outside. The glow from the overhead light is weak, barely penetrating the thick press of night. I squint across the parking lot until I spot him, dressed in jeans and a hoodie, with the hood pulled up as he approaches his car.

“Hey!” I call.

He pauses but doesn’t turn to face me. Doesn’t appear to move a muscle at all as I jog a few steps forward, heart racing as I close the space between us.

“What are you doing here?”

My question is met with silence, my eyes roaming over his shadowed form. His shoulders rise and fall with each breath, but otherwise, he’s a statue in the drizzle.

“Are you the one who left the coffee on my desk in class?”

More silence.

“I told Ronan that I want you all to leave me alone. Lucian’s texts. Ronan’s emails. Your…attempt to be nice or whatever it is. It’s futile. I’m not interested in whatever sick game you’re playing.”

He turns then, his face cast half in shadow beneath his hood. He’s not as broad as Lucian or Ronan, but his height is no less intimidating as it towers over me. I peer up into the darkness beneath his hood until I spot two pools of ice-blue staring backat me. My next breath sticks in my throat. He still doesn’t speak. Why?

Swallowing roughly, my next words come out low, almost unbidden, and yet, I’m curious to see his reaction. See if what I have to say evokes a verbal response.

“I saw you. That night.”

For a beat after my confession, there’s nothing. Then, like the pull of a tide, he lifts his head just slightly. Enough that his hood falls back. Hair so pale it borders on white peaks out from under it, the strands falling messily across his forehead. His skin is sharp, appearing almost translucent under the yellow wash of the streetlamp, which makes his eyes stand out like twin shards of frost. I’ve seen them from across rooms. In flashes. In dreams.

But not like this.

Not this close, without the chaos of a crowded locker room or team members around us.

They pin me in place. His gaze flicks lower, trailing a slow path down my body and back up again. Measured and deliberate. It shouldn’t make my breath hitch. Not after everything. Not withhim. But it does.

And when his eyes find mine again, it’s not indifference I see.

It’s intensity. A quiet kind of want. A question he won’t ask out loud.

The air between us tightens.

I should say something else. Reiterate again that I don’t want anything to do with them.

Perhaps if I tell them I won’t tell anyone, they’ll finally leave me in peace, and yet, I can’t bring myself to utter those words. To make that promise. Although it’s like I told Ronan. No one would believe me, even if I did talk.

Instead, when I finally do find my voice, I double down. “Youweretherethat night.”

Of that I am certain.

I’m pinned in place by ice and storm. Silas’s eyes are the kind of blue that doesn’t belong in reality—pale and glassy like winter sunlight on a frozen lake. The kind of blue that sees too much and feels too little. Or maybe he just hides it better than most.

They’re the eyes from my nightmares.

From the pieces of memory I can’t unlive.

But also from something else—something I don’t understand.

Something colder… Quieter… Almost protective?

“Your eyes,” I admit, breath catching on the words. “I haven’t been able to forget them.”

He goes still, watching me with the astuteness of someone used to assessing danger, of someone who knows how to react in a split second.

“But now I don’t know what I know anymore,” I admit, almost reluctantly, the lull of his stare pulling words from deep in my soul that I wouldn’t otherwise voice aloud. My brows furrow, voice catching. “Ronan says there’s more to the story. That what I think happened…might not be the whole truth.”