Absolution | +18

Chapter 41

Silas

Everyone was standing around my apartment, laughing, throwing back drinks, filling the space with their loud energy. Hayden was making some ridiculous joke, Maddie was rolling her eyes while secretly trying not to laugh, and Lucas and Seb were tangled up on the couch like they couldn't get enough of each other. It was the kind of scene that should have been comforting. Easy. But all I could focus on was Val.

I leaned against the kitchen counter, arms crossed, pretending to listen as Hayden rambled on, but my attention was fixed elsewhere. On her.

Something had shifted back at the carnival. That moment we got separated in the maze—it was like watching her slip away in real-time. When we found her again, she'd tried to brush it off, saying it was nothing, just some disorienting mirrors and too much excitement. But she couldn't fool me. I saw it in her eyes, the way they'd widened, that flicker of fear she couldn't quite hide. It was the same look she had that night in the underground—the night everything changed.

She was good at hiding things, at pretending everything was fine when it wasn't. But there were cracks. And tonight, those cracks were showing.

Now, I watched as she threw back another drink, her third in less than an hour. Her smile was plastered on, bright and carefree, but I could see the strain behind it. Her hand shook just slightly as she set the glass down, and she reached for the next one too quickly, like she couldn't wait to have something to cling to. She was drinking fast, too fast for it to just be about having fun. It wasn't about the party anymore—she was trying to drown something out, something that had gotten under her skin back in that maze.

I couldn't shake the feeling that whatever it was, she wasn't telling me.

It was gnawing at me, this uncertainty. My chest tightened with a mix of frustration and worry. She'd told me everything was fine, but I knew it wasn't. The way her shoulders tensed, the way she glanced over her shoulder every few minutes like she was waiting for something, or someone. It was subtle, but it was there.

"Hey, Silas, you alright, man?" Hayden's voice cut through my thoughts. He was leaning on the counter next to me, grinning like an idiot, but there was a flicker of something behind his eyes. He might play dumb, but he wasn't. He was noticing things too, picking up on my tension.

I gave him a grunt in response, not in the mood to pretend I was as carefree as the rest of them. He raised an eyebrow, his gaze shifting briefly toward Val before he shook his head with a smirk, like he already knew what was going on in my head. "She's tough, you know," he added, his voice a little quieter now. "Whatever's eating at her, she'll handle it."

I wanted to believe that. Hell, Val was tough, but she didn't have to do this alone. And whatever had gotten to her back in that maze wasn't something she could just push aside.

I watched her from across the room, laughing at something Maddie said, though the sound of her laughter was a little too sharp, a little too forced. Her eyes met mine for a split second, and there it was again—that flicker of something dark. Something she wasn't telling me.

And it pissed me off.

Not at her, but at the situation. At the fact that I couldn't fix whatever was wrong because I didn't even know what it was. I wasn't the type to pry, but I wasn't blind either.

"She'll handle it," Hayden repeated, slapping me on the shoulder before walking off to join Maddie, who was now making fun of him for something. The rest of them were too wrapped up in their own drama to notice what I did.

Val downed the rest of her drink, grabbing another from the table as if she were trying to keep her hands busy. She laughed again, the sound echoing in my head like an alarm.