Page 94 of Even After Sunset

And eventually I go back to bed. It takes me another full hour before I finally fall back to sleep.

Sometime in the early hours of the morning, I’m woken up by the sound of the door slamming. Then cursing.

“Shit…stupid door.”

I glance at my phone. 3:23am.

Silas stumbles up the two steps, swaying then faltering across the floor onto the couch, which he never set up into his bed this evening.

“Jax,” he slurs when he notices me shuffling out of the bedroom. “Sorry… Dint meanto wake you.”

“Where were you?” I ask, keeping my voice level… reminding myself he had a horrible nightmare just a few hours ago, and I can’t go flipping out on him just because he wanted to be alone.

“Juss… outforra smoke.”

“Oh… Where did you go?”

I want to know how he managed to score liquor at two in the morning. Enough liquor to get him thoroughly wasted.

He lifts his head and his bloodshot eyes meet mine, barely focusing. Barely even conscious. I hate seeing him like this almost as much as I hated seeing him suffering through that nightmare earlier.

“Shit, you’re beautiful,” he says, managing toalmostsound sober.

I can’t help rolling my eyes: I’m wearing one of his ratty T-shirts and am rocking some serious bedhead.

He stretches out, rolling onto his side and resting his head against his folded arm.

“So tired…” he mumbles, his heavy lids falling closed.

“Where were you this whole time?” I try again. But he doesn’t answer. He’s already fallen asleep.

It takes me another half hour before I finally do the same.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Silas

“The beer tent was short a case this morning,”

Steve straightens a kinked cable, then rips a piece of tape off with his teeth. We’re both crouched down, taping wires and cables to the stage. Sometimes they get a little ripped up and stuff after a show, and if it’s a two-day festival or longer, we just check them all and re-tape any cables that need it.

“It went missing after closing,” he says. And my breathing stutters. He must know it’s me, otherwise why would he be telling me this?

I keep taping.

“Oh, yeah?”

“You know anything about that?”

I raise my head and meet his eyes. “You accusing me of stealing from the beer tent?”

“Never said that… Jus’ givin’ you an opportunity to come forward if there’s somethin’ you wanted to say to me, kid. That’s all.”

After almost a month, he still only calls me ‘kid’. It’s possible he doesn’t actually know my name.

I shake my head, still keeping eye contact.

“I didn’t steal beer.”

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