Page 5 of Silent Verity

Yet every time she fucking called, he answered the goddamn phone as if he owed her something. I didn’t understand it. Even my own parents had tried to talk him into cutting ties with her so that he might finally heal from all the trauma she’d inflicted upon him—hell, that she still continued to inflict—but he stood his ground. Said he couldn’t just abandon her. Said she needed him.

But what he had needed was for her to be a fucking mother.

It wasn’t his job as her son to take care of her. It was her job as his fucking mother to take care of him. But no, instead he paid the taxes on her home and paid her electric bill. He made sure the only thing she ever needed to take care of was her phone bill and her fucking addiction, and half the time, she couldn’t even do that little bit.

I loved Jesse to fucking pieces, but on days like today, I wanted to fucking throttle him. Maybe shaking him would rattle some sense into his fucking head. Make him see he didn’t owe that vile woman shit.

Salem appeared in the kitchen, and he arched a brow at me. “You hold that soda can any tighter, and it’s going to explode,” he warned me.

I glanced down, not even realizing I’d picked the soda back up. The can was already dented from my tight grip. Sighing, I set it down, then leaned back against the counter and scrubbed my hand down my face. Salem moved past me to the fridge, grabbing a pudding cup. After getting a spoon from the drawer, he leaned against the bar across from me and crossed his legs at the ankles.

“What’s got you looking like you want to start a war?” he asked, peeling back the lid to the pudding cup. I looked away when he began licking it because that was just weird. I could never bring myself to lick the pudding lid. I usually handed it off to Jesse. And it was never a hardship to watch Jesse use his tongue to clean it because fuck, that man knew how to move that tongue of his.

But I definitely didn’t want to watch one of my best friends violate the poor thing.

“Jesse’s mom called,” I grumbled.

Salem paused, and when he lifted his eyes to meet mine, he looked as pissed as I felt. “I guess he fucking answered it like a dumbass?”

“Ding, ding, ding,” I muttered. “We’ve got a fucking winner.”

Salem grunted at my smart-ass retort. “I wish he’d cut her the fuck off. He’s going to be miserable the rest of the day.”

“I know.” And I hated that’d he put me at arm’s length as soon as we moved into this damn place because I no longer knew if he’d let me comfort him. If he’d let me hold him while he worked on piecing himself back together. I felt untethered and fucking lost. How the fuck was I supposed to help him?

Salem spooned pudding into his mouth. “What the fuck is going on between you two?” he asked. “You used to be up each other’s asses, and now, you avoid each other like the plague.”

I grimaced. If Salem felt things between me and Jesse had gotten bad enough that he felt a need to speak up, I knew it was extremely noticeable to everyone else. Salem wasn’t the type to butt into anyone else’s business. He liked to keep to himself, even if it meant everyone else was falling apart around him.

“We moved in here,” I said because that was the fucking truth. “The moment we moved in, he shut me out.”

Salem frowned. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

I shrugged because he was right. It didn’t make sense. “Well, that’s what fucking happened, Salem. He just shut me the fuck out. And I can’t think of a single fucking thing I did to push him away. I’m just as confused as you are. I feel like I’m walking on eggshells around him.”

Salem sighed. “Maybe you should—” He abruptly cut himself off when Jesse passed by the kitchen. But I wasn’t even sure he was aware of our presence. He had a blunt between his lips, and he was flicking his lighter anxiously. I tracked him as he beelined for the back door to the pool and patio. When he was out of ear shot, Salem pushed off the counter, his pudding cup empty. “Maybe you should just fucking confront him, Dalton. Sometimes giving space isn’t what’s needed. Look how bad shit got for me and Tor, all because we weren’t willing to open our mouths and deal with the shit between us.”

With that, he tossed his spoon into the sink, his pudding cup into the trashcan, and then left the kitchen. I knew he was right. He and Tor had gone from the best of friends to enemies overnight quite literally, and shit between them only got more and more toxic the more time went on because neither of them would talk about what happened.

It got so bad, they even threw fists at each other. Tor spiraled, losing himself in the bottom of alcohol and pill bottles.

Deciding to take Salem’s advice since he had been speaking from first-hand experience, I left my soda on the counter to come get later and headed for the back door to go after Jesse. When I stepped outside, he was already in the pool, the end of his blunt cherry red, and he was on a pool float, one leg in the water, the other resting on the float.

He didn’t even acknowledge me, which meant he was more than likely so lost in his head, he was no longer aware of his surroundings.

This had to end today. We couldn’t keep doing this, and to be honest, he couldn’t keep doing this to himself. His mom had to go.

I shucked my jeans and tore my shirt over my head, then eased down into the water, not bothering to walk around to the steps. Once I was in, I made my way over to him. He jerked when I gripped his calf, and he lifted his head, blinking at me like he’d been in another world.

“Dalton?” he rasped.

A small smile tilted my lips. “Hey,” I murmured, gently squeezing his leg. He swallowed thickly, and his eyes glistened, though no tears spilled over onto his cheeks. I tugged him a little closer, my chest aching. I wished I could take his pain and make it my own just so he would no longer have to suffer. “I’m here, Jesse.”

He blew out a ragged breath and laid his head back down, closing his eyes against the sun. “The sun is so mocking,” he muttered.

I hummed. “It is,” I agreed. “It’s a right son of a bitch.”

His lips twitched with an aborted smile. Then, he heaved a sigh that felt as heavy as an impending storm. “She called.”

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