Page 183 of Silver Sweet

“Can you see?” he asks.

“You have a nose. A mouth. Two eyes with central heterochromia. Brown-blue eyes. Really pretty eyes.”

“That tells me nothing since you’ve memorized what I look like, nepo baby.” He blows out a tight, worried breath. “Just answer my question.”

“Yes, I can see. I think I’m going to have a black eye though.”

“Your second one, right?”

He remembered.

Phoenix scans me again like he’s X-raying me for broken bones. I like that way too much. Being hurt around him has its perks.

Security takes ten minutes to clear the rest of the guests. All my brothers are caught up on what happened in my room. Ben finally stops apologizing for ending the party early, which has to be a good sign, right?

Still, remembering how he kept sayingsorry,over and over, for destroying my painting is a stab to the chest. Fear rampages my insides when I consider that the birthday brawl might be the reason he bolts to Alaska again.

This was the exact opposite of how I wanted tonight to go. I am the chaos maker. A lover of mayhem. So I loved everything about tonight. Loved it so much. How many times do I need to tell him this for him to believe me?

I’m vacuumingthe last of the glass, alone in my bedroom, until Phoenix returns with an ice pack. “I was going to go for a bag of frozen peas,” he says. “But you have a scary amount of these.”

“They’re Beckett’s,” I explain.

Phoenix presses the soft ice pack against my eye, and his lack of hesitation to touch me, even with an ice pack, does something to my soul. Comforts it. Embraces it. Makes love to it.

I can’t get glassy-eyed right now. Not with athrobbingeye.

“How’s your hand?” I ask.

He switches hands on the ice pack, then opens and closes his knuckle-busted right one. “Fully functioning.”

“You have a nasty right hook.”

Phoenix doesn’t look proud of this, so I add, “It was hot.”

“The punch or me coming to your defense?”

“The latter, and dude, that was more than one punch.”

He laughs. “You could see that with one eye?”

I glare. Thankfully Beckett and Eliot come into my bedroom so I don’t have to think of an S-tier comeback.

Beckett glances warily between Phoenix and me.

My drummer still doesn’t know anything about Ben’s OCD.

I’m guessing Phoenix just thinks our hyper-concern for Ben is wrapped up in him being our youngest brother and more tenderhearted than us.

“Ben’s still sleeping on the couch tonight,” Beckett says.

The update shocks me. “He’s not running?”

Beckett gives me a tougher look. “He’s fine.”

He’s fine—like he doesn’t have bad thoughts anymore?He’s fine—like he’s still thinking of packing his bags but just not right now?

The vagueness suddenly spikes my pulse.