His Best Kept Secret

Chapter Two

They kept her in the hospital an extra week before they released her. Ebony was grateful for Silas even if she didn't quite trust the handsome, sexy man. His loyalty to her didn't falter, not once. The man was there for her every single day. He came at different times, sometimes at night, but he never missed a day. He brought her flowers, silly little gifts to cheer her up like stuffed animals making funny faces with their tongues sticking out. She scoffed whenever he brought them telling him she wasn't a three year old child. Yet, when he left, she would hug them close and smile. They were cute after all.

They reminisced about her grandfather. She told him what he was like raising her. Silas seemed to enjoy her stories about the man he claimed was like his own father, but he wouldn't tell her much about his relationship with him. Silas was a very secret man. He wanted to know everything about her, but told her nothing about himself, except the basics. She felt as if she was being grilled by the police when he started asking questions about her life, her likes and dislikes, the kind of foods she liked to eat, clothes she liked to wear, and he brought a notebook to write it all down.

She had mixed feelings about Silas. There were two sides to him; the really sweet side that made her smile when she was about to burst into tears, who flirted with her and made her feel beautiful even though she knew she wasn't, and the mysterious, secretive side he kept tightly closed from her as if he was guarding something dangerous. And as much as she loved to be around him, she really did, he went out of his way to make her stay at the hospital comfortable and was there for her whenever she needed to cry on his shoulder, she felt the urgent, no desperate need to get the hell away from him as fast as she could once she was released because Silas was crazy, bat shit crazy and she did not want to get involved with a psycho.

Ebony watched Silas run around her room. He was doing it again, the crazy stuff... looking behind mirrors, under her bed, even the electrical sockets and he would never give her an explanation as to why he did it which annoyed her, extremely.

"You know they have a name for that," she said as he stared up at the ceiling light, examining it. She sat Indian style in her bed, holding one of the stuff animals. "It's called paranoid schizophrenia; you should read about it."

"What?" he mumbled distracted.

She held up the stuff animal with its crossed eyes and tongue sticking out comically. "This is you in a few years, Silas, right here..." she pointed at it. "You!"

"Sure, honey," he mumbled still distracted.

He began to unscrew the damn light bulb. "Silas!" she yelled at him.

He finally turned to her. "Are you in pain, sweetie? Do you need some medication?"

"Do you?!"

"What?"

"Will you please sit beside me, please?" she asked as sweetly as possible, anything to stop him from taking out the light bulb. It had only been a week and she already knew how to manipulate him. All she had to do was bat her eyes and he'd rush to her side.

He did exactly what she wanted, forgetting about the bulb. "What is it, honey? Are you all right? Is it your head again?"

"No, I'm fine. I just wanted to say thank you, for everything. You've been very good to me since I've been here and I want you to know I really do appreciate you being here for me."

He smiled at her tenderly. "You don't need to thank me, my lovely Ebony. I always take care of my possessions."

She gave him a closed lip smile to hide the way she was gritting her teeth. Only a crazy man would call another human being a possession in her face. Oh well, at least she'd been upgraded from a puppy, that was something...wasn't it? "Still I just wanted you to know how I felt."