Screaming in the Silence (12 page)

Don't worry about me,
I signed, blinking back tears of compassion I felt for Marshal.

He stared at me blankly, not understanding what I had told him. Slowly, a smile replaced his frown.

"But I think Kaden feels differently than my brother. He doesn't seem to mind that you're still here."

I nodded my head, agreeing with him.

"Kaden's always been able to talk sense into Ray. He never listens to me."

Why?

"A few years ago, when my mom was dying…" Marshal's eyes left mine and he glanced up the stairs.

"Shit," he swore and grabbed the wrapper from my hands, shoving it back inside his pocket. I leaned across the bed and saw Kaden's shoes walking slowly down the stairs. Marshal stood up and took a few steps away from the mattress, waiting for Kaden to reach the bottom stair before saying anything.

"Kaden," he started, acting as if he were surprised to see him. "I was just…"

Kaden wasn't facing me but I could see the muscles of his neck clench in anger. He pointed to the door. Marshal nodded and walked up the stairs, not chancing a second look behind him. Kaden waited until the door had closed before turning around and looking at me.

"What was that about?"

He brought me food.

Kaden snickered and rolled his eyes.

He feels like a prisoner, too. Ray won't let him leave until I'm gone.

"He's not my problem."

He's just a kid. He shouldn't have to be stuck in the middle of this.

"He can leave whenever he wants."

He's scared of his brother. He's not going to…

"Again, it's not my problem, and it certainly isn't yours."

I frowned, turning away from him and crossing my arms. Marshal understood me, at least on some level, and had shown me kindness without expecting or taking anything in return. It was more than I could say for Kaden.

Kaden dropped to his knees and crawled over to me. His strong arms wrapped around my shoulders and guided my head back to the mattress. He started to pull the sheet up to my chin but stopped when he recognized it as his own.

"I was wondering where this went." He smiled at me and I couldn't help but smile back.

"Don't be upset with me, Raleigh. They'll go to work and I'll make it up to you tomorrow."

I sighed and looked into his emerald eyes. They looked remorseful and tired, dark circles starting to form under them. His lips, on the other hand looked almost as good as the chocolate bar I had just finished.

"You want to kiss me right now, don't you?" Kaden's smile widened and my eyes returned from his lips to his eyes.

I shook my head, pointlessly trying to hide my grin.

"Yes, you do," he said, his face moving closer to mine.

"No," I whispered, completely forgetting why I was upset with him.

"And what if I want to kiss you?"

I blinked. "I wouldn't object."

"And what if I don't want to kiss you?"

"I wouldn't cry," I smiled playfully.

Kaden's face became serious. "Just give me time, and I'll make sure you never want to cry again."

He kissed me before I could stop him to ask what that meant. It felt as if he would never pull away, like he would never let me go. I wasn't scared by his possessiveness. I had grown accustomed to it over the past couple of days. I expected it and almost needed it.

I felt him moan against my lips before he pulled away. "What did he give you? Chocolate?"

I nodded, closing my lips, afraid I had some stuck in my teeth.

"You taste amazing." Kaden smiled at me and bent down to kiss me again.

I giggled under his lips and allowed him to kiss me until we were both out of breath. I fell asleep wrapped in his arms that night, my face buried in his chest.

I woke up the next morning and Kaden was gone. It wasn't surprising, just slightly disappointing. Waking up in his arms, even if it had only happened once, had been the best feeling I could imagine. I dressed slowly and didn't have to wait long for the door to open and for Kaden to come running down the stairs. He picked me up and squeezed me tight. I closed my eyes and hugged him back.

He set me down, eventually, and ran his fingers though my hair.

"What should we do today?"

The question caught me off guard. I could think of a number of things we could do, most involved him letting me leave, but I knew very few were actually plausible. "Can we go outside?"

"It's raining," Kaden frowned and touched my lips with his fingers. I could guess what he wanted to do.

"I don't mind," I pushed the idea.

"All right," Kaden smiled and led me upstairs to the front door. He hadn't been joking. The rain was pouring outside and the sky was dark with low clouds. I stepped onto the stoop and could feel the mist on my face.

"It's one of the sounds I miss the most, you know? The rain. I remember thinking how calming the sound of it was pattering on my window. I could listen to it for hours." I closed my eyes, not wanting to see if he had a response. I stood there for a minute, trying to remember the exact sound the rain had made, but was interrupted by Kaden putting strong arms around me. He picked me off the ground and carried me into the driveway like a child in the arms of her father. The cold rain hit my face and arms, running down my skin in tiny rivers. The droplets fell randomly but softly. Kaden started to spin us in a circle. He spun me faster and faster.

We were both laughing as he set me down, my feet barely able to keep my dizzy body steady. I looked up at his wet face, his hair hanging into his wild eyes.

"Thanks," I said softly. "But I think I'm ready to go inside now." Random gusts of wind chilled me.

I started walking for the house. Halfway there, I turned around to see if he had followed.

"It could be like this always, Raleigh," he said to me through the rain. The wind was blowing his damp hair and his perfectly shaped almond eyes sparkled brilliantly.

"Like what?" I called, not knowing if the wind was loud enough to carry my voice away.

"You and me, together."

I stared at him. I could see clearly what he said, I just didn't believe my eyes.

"Raleigh, say something," he pleaded with me.

I shook my head. "Kaden, can we talk about this inside?"

"Tell me, Raleigh. Tell me if you want it to be like this."

"Come inside," I said before turning around and walking back to the house. His words were pure lunacy. Things couldn't stay like they were. They just couldn't.

I opened the door and was nearly inside when Kaden caught up to me and spun me around to face him. "Think about it," he pleaded. "I thought about it all last night and realized what we needed to do."

"And what's that?" He tugged at the bottom of my wet shirt and pulled it over my head.

"We can leave," he said. "Don't you want to leave this place?"

"Of course I want to leave."

"So, let's go." He was working at the button of my jeans when I backed away from him.

"Kaden, you're not making any sense. You know I don't want to stay here. You know that you are keeping me here for a reason."

"That money doesn't matter anymore. It hasn't mattered for a long time." He pulled his soaking shirt off and threw it on the floor.

"Then why am I still here?" The tears started welling in my eyes.

"Isn't it obvious?"

"No. No, it's not obvious."

"You're here because I want you with me. You're here because I needed to find a way to make you see that you wanted to be with me as well."

I shook my head and took a few more steps back, raising my hands defensively as he reached for me.

Kaden looked hurt by my gesture but that didn't stop him. "Isn't that what you want? To be with me? You said it yourself, you're scared, you are feeling something that isn't real. But it is real, Raleigh, because I feel it too."

Tears fell freely from my eyes. I had said that. It was true. I didn't understand my feelings for Kaden but I knew there was a strong possibility they were merely situational.

"Last night was torture for me. I didn't realize how much you had affected me until they came home and I couldn't be with you any longer. What I'm feeling isn't just infatuation. It goes beyond that…"

"What we feel for each other," I began slowly, "may be real while we're here. Taking me from this house to another against my will isn't going to…"

"It wouldn't be against your will," Kaden said, taking a few steps toward me.

"You think I would go willingly?"

"Wouldn't you?"

I shook my head and brought my hands to my heart. "Kaden, you need to understand something. Our time here together has saved my life. You have literally brought me back from the dead, given me a reason to hold on, given me hope. I needed you and the allusion of strength you gave me. But look at the circumstances. I had no other choice."

"You don't think you have a choice?" His arms crossed in front of his chest.

"I could have tried to fight you off. But I knew that was a hopeless effort."

"You could have kept your emotions out of it."

I swallowed the lump in my throat. "I tried." Hadn't I tried? I hadn't wanted to fall for Kaden, I knew it was wrong, but that hadn't stopped me.

"Look, I don't want to manipulate this situation. You think you don't have a choice but I say you do. I say you want me just as much as you need me."

"Prove it."

"That's what I'm trying to do," he said, closing the space between us. "Come away with me. I'll show you how great we can be together."

"No, Kaden. How could it work? What would happen when the day came you didn't want me anymore? When I didn't want you? We would be living with this terrible secret. I can't just pretend the past six weeks never happened."

"The day when I don't want you anymore will never come."

"Don't say that! You don't know that!" I screamed at him, pushing his hands away.

"Yes I do." He glared at me, clearly upset that I was challenging him. His naked chest heaved with every breath he took and his muscles looked tense. His square jaw was tight, his high cheekbones cast shadows in the hollows of his face under the lights of the living room.

"Kaden," I said, trying to speak softly. "It would never work."

"You're just scared to give us a chance."

"I'm scared. Period."

"Raleigh," his face softened and he put his hand on my shoulders. I didn't stop him. "Please don't be scared of me. Don't be scared of us."

At that moment, I couldn't think of a valid reason, other than the voice screaming inside my head that I was insane to even consider his offer, not to agree with him. But then I remembered what brought me into this house. "You're forgetting one thing. If I leave with you, Ray gets away with murder. You and Marshal get away with murder. Julie deserves more than that."

His hands ran up and down my arms. "I knew you weren't going to let that go. You can stay here with me, against your will and with a false sense of happiness, hoping that someone finds you and your feelings for me were merely an illusion. Or we can leave and you can learn to live with the small bit of guilt that comes with it."

"It wouldn't be small. It would consume me."

"You don't know that. I will make you so happy, you won't have time to think about her."

"I've accepted the fact that she is dead, Kaden. What I wouldn't be able to live with is the knowledge that Ray is still out there."

"It's a package deal, Blondie. If he is caught, we all go down. If you walk out of here with me, he walks out too."

"Why do you protect him?" I asked. He released my arms and put one hand behind his neck.

"Why does it matter?"

"I want to know. If I understood why, then I might be able to give you an answer."

Kaden's green eyes saw right through my lie. "Bullshit."

"Fine. Tell me because you want to make me happy. Tell me because you trust me and want me to trust you."

Kaden took a deep breath and started pacing in front of the couch. "Fine," he said, sitting down and motioning for me to join him. "I'll tell you but then you need to promise me something."

"Okay," I said, joining him on the couch.

He took my hands and kissed each of them. "Promise me that you'll think about us. Promise me that you'll give the idea of us a chance."

I had already done that. I didn't need to promise it because it was already happening. But I smiled and nodded.

"Ray and I grew up together. I told you we spent summers with his family, but he would also come visit us in Paris. His parents couldn't control him so he was sent to live with us for months at a time. He wasn't really a bad kid, he just had too much energy. But when his mom found out she had cancer, he changed. He repressed everything he was feeling and stayed by her side for an entire year. He dropped out of school so he could take care of her and he wouldn't speak to anyone but me and Marshal. He blamed his dad because he insisted on smoking inside the house.

"The day of the funeral, I found him in his room. He was sitting on his bed, a bottle of rat poison in one hand, a bottle of prescription pain pills in the other. He told me, with a completely straight face, he intended to kill his father and then himself. It took me hours to talk him out of it. Marshal was so young then that he didn't understand what was going on.

"Since then, Ray has been dependant on me. He came with me to Charleston and worked while I went to school. I could tell that he was still suppressing so much. He started drinking heavily and getting into fights. Marshal and I were the only ones who could calm him down so when Marshal finished high school, we talked and decided it was best if we took Ray away from a big city and moved him up here. He was like a brother to me. I couldn't just leave him to fend for himself. He'd either get killed or thrown in prison."

I stared at Kaden. His green eyes looked strained and saddened. His story, while clarifying the bizarre relationship between the three men, didn't make me feel any sympathy for Ray.

"I know that you hate him and I don't blame you. You should hate me, too," Kaden gave me a weak smile. "But I would be done with him if you agreed to leave with me. We could start over again, leave everything behind."