Brightly Burning Bridges: A Bully Romance (Kings of Capital)

by Ivy Wild

  “I look forward to it, Miss Skyler.” He left, leaving me alone in the hallway amidst the hushed whispers and intense stares of my classmates. I wanted to melt into the floor right then and just disappear. Why did my entire existence seem to be wrapped up in Silas? Even when someone was asking me out, they first inquired about him. It irritated me. I’m pretty sure that’s what I was feeling.

  When I’d finally gathered my wits, I continued my way outside to catch the bus home. We were halfway through the Spring semester and according to my calculations, the papers currently stashed in my bag marked the last homework assignment I needed to do for Silas to pay off the vase. Our teachers had gone a little paper crazy at the end of Fall semester and as a result, I’d managed to finish the highly illegal arrangement I had with Silas early.

  I tried to put Vartan out of my mind. I didn’t want anything ruining this. I’d prepared a lovely “Screw You” note to attach to this last homework assignment along with a copy of my tally sheet and was just about giddy about putting it under the doormat on my way home.

  The bus didn’t turn into our neighborhood, so even when I caught it, I still had a solid ten minute walk to the Touper house, which was toward the back of the community. I thought about what Vartan had said. He was right, I hadn’t seen Silas in quite a few days. I tried to remember if it had been a full week, but we didn’t have as many classes together this semester.

  That wasn’t a bad thing. The tension between us had increased to the point where it felt uncomfortable being in the same room with one another. Of course I’d finally admitted all this to mom. She’d looked at me with knowing eyes and said “The fiercer the hate, the deeper the love.”

  I didn’t know what that meant and I didn’t want to find out. Silas’ house finally came into view. It was a weekday, so it was as quiet and dead as ever. I made my daily trip up the grandiose front steps and peeled back the doormat to deposit what I thought would finally free me from him. Even if he was home and even when King barked at me, he never approached the door.

  Of course this time he was there. Almost as if he’d been waiting for me. The door swung open as I was about to let go of the pages. I looked up instinctively.

  And my heart sank.

  He looked emaciated. The luster in his golden locks was gone. His cheeks were sunken and stained slightly red to match his eyes. I’d never seen Silas in sweatpants and a tee before, and to make matters worse, these were wrinkled and looked like they hadn’t been washed in a week.

  I stood back up, dropping the homework and my backpack down and ran toward him. I don’t know why I did it. He didn’t deserve it. But I knew he needed it. Something had happened and him opening the door was his cry for help.

  I wrapped my arms around him and he all but collapsed into me. Whatever thin dam he’d managed to construct broke and he started to sob into my shoulder.

  There was only one thing that could make Silas cry and my heart broke.

  “I’m so sorry, Si,” I said softly as he continued to break into me.

  I didn’t know how long we stood there, with me holding him. It could have been ten minutes. It could have been an hour. But finally, his tears subsided and he separated from me just the smallest amount so we could look at one another.

  “Please don’t go,” he whispered and I nodded my head.

  “I’m staying right here,” I said, breaking every single rule I’d made for myself regarding Silas.

  He seemed so numb to the world and everything that was happening. I grabbed my bag, stuffing the homework pages into it, trying to crumble the note that seemed incredibly heartless of me to write now, before reaching out for his hand and pulling him inside the house.

  It felt like a lifetime since I’d been inside Silas’ mansion and being back was oddly reminiscent. It reminded me that there was a time before him and I were enemies. A time that maybe I might even have considered us friends.

  I dropped my bag at the door and decided the easiest thing to do would be to just hang out downstairs. Going to his mother’s library would probably not have been healthy for Silas at the moment. We made our way through the house, Silas quiet and somber the entire time, until we reached the main TV den.

  He crashed into the sofa and just stared at the blank television. I grabbed the remote, opened up the Netflix app and proceeded to watch almost an entire season of the Great British Baking Show curled up on the couch next to him. Silas fell asleep around the episode where Deborah stole Howard’s custard and I let him rest for a bit as I paused the show.

  My thoughts drifted in the silence. The mansion was eerily quiet and it was clear that his father was once again, not home. King was curled up on one of the many plush dog beds strategically placed throughout the house and had remained quiet the entire time. King was one hundred percent Silas’ dog and it was clear he was picking up on Silas’ depressed mood.

  I noticed that there were no flowers, cards or Edible Arrangements in the house on our walk through the kitchen to get to the den. It seemed entirely odd and contrary to everything I’d seen during times when families lost loved ones.

  Death and funerals were decisive points in my and mom’s timeline, so even at seventeen, I’d seen more than my fair share of grief. But usually, these times were accompanied with family rallying around, and sending flowers and food if they couldn’t be there themselves.

  No one was here for Silas.

  Not even his own father.

  I didn’t need him to tell me his mother had passed to know. But that didn’t mean at the right time I didn’t want him to tell me. I knew he needed to admit his new reality to himself, but I also understood that right now, he likely couldn’t bring himself to process it.

  I’d seen grief take this sort of form before. Between this and the sort where you broke down and sobbed and let the emotions burst out of you, this was much worse. Sometimes people didn’t get over the numbness that crept into their souls after the loss of someone entirely dear to them. It was as if their world ended the day they died and they refused to move on from that moment.

  I didn’t want that for Silas.

  Despite everything him and I had been through, for better and most certainly for worse, I didn’t want to see him get stuck. From what he’d told me about his mother, I knew she wouldn’t want that for him, either.

  I worried about how many days it had already been since she’d passed. Had there already been a ceremony? My heart twisted in my chest at the thought that I wasn’t here for him during this time. If we hadn’t started this stupid Cold War, I would have known. I could have been here.

  Silas stirred on my shoulder, waking up slowly. I unpaused the show and acted like I hadn’t noticed he’d fallen asleep. He blinked his eyes at me, as if he was surprised he’d drifted off and I turned and frowned at him.

  “When’s the last time you’ve eaten something?” His cheeks looked so sunken in and I didn’t know if it was from a lack of sleep, lack of water or lack of food. Most likely, all three.

  He gave me the smallest of shrugs. “Dunno,” he replied, his voice hoarse, like he hadn’t used it in a while.

  “Think you could stomach something?” I asked. “I’m starving,” I added to provide an extra layer of encouragement.

  “I’ll try,” he said softly, closing his eyes and laying his head back against the sofa cushion.

  I let him rest again and made my way into the sprawling kitchen. King padded behind me and I took a moment to refill his water and food bowls. If Silas wasn’t taking care of himself, the obvious truth was that he likely wasn’t taking care of King, either. I made a mental note to take King for a walk before I began to concentrate on our own food.

  I searched through the cupboards and located ingredients sufficient to make two very sad peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I brought them back into the den along with two glasses of filtered water and placed them on the coffee table in front of us.

  Silas cracked an eye open at me as I sat down next to
him before pushing himself up to sit a little straighter. It was a good sign.

  “Thanks,” he mumbled as he reached first for the water and then the sandwich. We ate our rather plebian meal to the background of exorbitant baking. Silas ate slowly, but finished everything and when the episode ended, he grabbed the remote and flipped off the television.

  “Why are you helping me?” he asked. I could hear the uncertainty in his voice and it broke my heart.

  “Do I need a reason?”

  He was silent for another beat before he wrapped an arm around me. “I’ve been wretched to you.”

  “We’ve been wretched to each other.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “But I started it.”

  If this were any other time, I would have said “true” and tried to rub it in. But now was not the time for such things.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.

  He took a deep breath and I felt his shoulders move up and down slightly. Another shrug.

  “Can you tell me how long it’s been?”

  “Monday,” was all he responded. My heart sank. It was Friday. He’d likely been here in this empty mansion for the entire week, grieving the loss of his mother by himself.

  “Was there a service?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “And your father?”

  “Disappeared Tuesday.”

  I pulled Silas into another embrace and felt him break into my shoulder again. I knew just the mere act of talking about the loss of his mother was difficult and his whole body shuddered against mine as he processed the emotions he’d pushed down the entire week.

  When he finally pulled back, I gave him a small smile. “I’m going to let King outside, but I think you should get some rest, Si,” I said in a gentle voice.

  He shook his head. “Please don’t leave me alone here.” His voice was so soft and he looked down as he said it. My heart broke for him again, shattering into finer and finer bits like a crystal vase hitting porcelain tile.

  * * *

  Past

  Here’s the thing about being rich. It sucks. No one tells you that because it’s only something you learn by experience. But the money comes with strings and by the time you’ve acquired enough to put yourself into the one percent, you’ve been sworn to secrecy.

  That’s why rich kids are such brats. They aren’t self-made, so the blood oath doesn’t apply to them. If money was so great, they wouldn’t be such tools. Makes sense, right?

  Yeah, being rich sucks, but you can’t tell anyone because when you don’t have something, you assume whatever you’re missing is the answer to all your problems. And for 99% of people in this world, that’s money.

  Which means, in their eyes, you’re not allowed to have problems. You’re rich, right? And if money is the answer to all problems, how could you possibly have any? And then there’s that whole secrecy bullshit so it’s not like we at the top ever deny it. We just carry on like we’re more perfect than Kim Kardashian’s Instagram account because making people want what we have gives us power.

  So when the only person in your life that you ever really loved dies, people don’t really seem to care. I’ve got money, right? So, at least there’s that. Little bits of torn green paper should be able to fill the void that her loss left in my chest. Pretty sure that’s what they all think.

  Just because you’re rich doesn’t mean you don’t feel pain. But no one acknowledges your feelings because you have money.

  Except for Skyler.

  As always, she was different.

  So fucking different.

  From the way she looked, to the way she acted to the way she cared, she was different.

  She never judged me for my money. Never once. And despite all the nasty shit I’d done to her over the last year, she was here.

  I’d caused her pain and she was trying to take mine away.

  Fuck.

  How do you even process something like that? At eighteen, I’m entirely convinced I don’t have the requisite faculties to do it.

  She took King for a walk while I laid on the couch, trying to sort all this out in my head. I knew I shouldn’t be so selfish to ask her to stay, but I was mostly numb to the world at this point. My entire body felt like it had been frozen in ice when I’d gotten the call from the hospital. For the first time in a week, I’d managed to feel something because of Skyler.

  Of course it had to be guilt.

  She’d come back from her walk and she’d asked to use my phone so she could call her mother. Yeah, learned she didn’t own a cell phone. Don’t I feel like an extra big douche for leaving her alone in the school parking lot months ago.

  I’d come to the conclusion that guilt was worse than pain. Pain was temporal. You felt it, you dealt with it, you moved on. Guilt fucking lingers. It tugs at your insides, ripping you open from the inside out so you can see everything you’re made of, all displayed in front of you. And for me, the sight was horrific.

  “I respect your concerns, mom. But, I’m not asking permission on this one. I’m telling you so you don’t worry. Please understand that I can’t tell you any more because it’s not my place to tell. And please just trust me.”

  If I had a heart, it would have clenched at her words. She was putting her relationship with her mother at risk to stay with me, all while respecting my privacy not to blab that my—fuck, I still couldn’t say it.

  I knew my heart was gone the moment they’d handed me her ashes. Yeah, you heard that right. My father was nowhere to be found on Tuesday. So I had to drive myself to the crematory alone to receive her remains. I’d always told my mother that my heart belonged only to her. Turns out she’d kept it and taken it in the fire when she died. All that was left now was a hole in my chest the size of her and an urn I’d placed by the window in her library before locking the door from the inside out.

  “Hey,” Skyler said softly, handing me back my phone. I took it and looked at her with a question in my eye. “Everything’s fine,” she reassured me. I nodded, opting not to say anything and the silence stretched between us. “Do you want to watch another episode?” she asked uncertainly.

  I shook my head. “I haven’t gotten a full night’s sleep the whole week.” I don’t know why that was my response to her question. But the admission just spilled out of my mouth.

  She gave me a sad look, but it wasn’t pitiful. It was more concerned.

  She tugged at my hand gently. “Come on. Let’s go upstairs.”

  I let her pull me up off the couch, mindlessly following her direction as we climbed the steps. At the top of the hallway she paused. She’d never been to my room before and it was obvious she didn’t know which way to go.

  I cocked my head to the right and we started walking down the hallway of the East Wing. We passed my mother’s library and my body stiffened but she didn’t make the slightest movement toward the door. Not that it would have done much good. I didn’t think I was ever going to unlock that room again.

  We reached the end of the hall and I opened the terminal door in the wing to enter my room. My room had zero personality. It was all minimalist black leather and chrome and not a single picture or poster on the wall. Not even a picture of me and my mother could be found anywhere. I didn’t need photographs to remember people I loved so fiercely.

  I pulled off my shirt and stepped out of my sweatpants. I could see Skyler blush and try and turn away but I reached out for her. “Stay with me?”

  “Silas,” she said softly, turning around to meet my gaze. Her eyes were so bright. In the black of my soul surrounded by the darkness of my room, their light lavender color was almost blinding.

  “Please.” I was doing a lot of begging tonight. Good thing I was numb to feeling embarrassed.

  She swallowed but nodded her head.

  I walked over to a drawer and pulled out a fresh t-shirt and handed it to her. She thanked me and slipped into the connected bathroom to change. I climbed into bed and waited for her.
It felt odd. I hadn’t slept in my own bed for the entire week. I hadn’t been able to walk past my mother’s library to make it down the hall. I’d mostly ended up crashing on the couch in the den with King curled up at my feet.

  I looked to the side and of course, my faithful companion was already on his own bed in the corner of my room. He caught my eyes and padded over to me, putting his head on the edge of the bed. He knew he wasn’t allowed up on the furniture, but that didn’t stop him from giving everyone puppy dog eyes about it.

  Skyler made her way out of the bathroom, tugging the shirt down as she walked, which was totally unnecessary because it landed mid-thigh. Her bright white hair was braided simply down her back and secured with a hair tie. Her pale skin glowed against the darkness in my room, almost as if she were some sort of beacon, trying to guide me away from a rocky cliffside so I wouldn’t crash.

  Too late. I was already sinking and fast.

  She hesitated at the edge of the bed and I reached out for her. She took my hand and I felt the hole in my chest acutely as she climbed into my bed. She slipped under the covers and I instantly tangled my legs against hers as I pulled her body into mine. She gasped and I knew it was sudden but I couldn’t help it.

  I didn’t have a heart.

  There was nothing to pump blood through me anymore.

  I’d gone cold from the center out and her warmth was too enticing not to steal.

  My hand reached around the back of her neck, my thumb tracing gentle circles against her cheek. I tried pulling her in. I wanted to kiss her. I wanted her to respond to me and erase the feelings of guilt I was carrying towards her. If she would just let me in, maybe I’d be okay. I might not be able to live without a heart, but with her warmth, at least I might not die.

  “Silas,” she said softly. She’d turned her head so that my lips grazed her cheek. But I didn’t want her cheek. I wanted her lips on mine. I wanted to tangle my tongue against hers and press into her body.

  I silently begged her not to deny me.

  “You need to rest,” she said. Her words were kind but their message was clear.