"I swear!" Cecily jumped in surprise before glancing at the ground and tucking a lock of her red hair behind her ear the next morning.
Silas had been waiting in front of her bedroom door again.
He just grinned unrepentantly. Apparently he was feeling especially annoying today. "Well, don't you look lovely this morning," he remarked sarcastically.
"Shut up." Cecily glared half-heartedly up at him.
She hadn't put an ounce of effort into how she looked this morning, even coming very close to asking Elle to simply bring a tray up to her room, but that would've brought practically the whole house up to her room to check on her, which was the exact opposite of what she wanted to happen. Wanting to prolong any sort of human contact for as long as possible – a side effect of the previous night – she hadn't even let Elle into the bedroom to help her with her hair or makeup. This meant that she was wearing faded khaki capris and an almost too big, pale pink sweater, with her hair up in a sloppy ponytail and no more makeup then it took to cover the bags under her eyes that spoke to her essentially sleepless night.
Silas' smile fell into a concerned frown as he noticed that she wasn't her usual self. "Hey, Queen, are you alright?"
"Fine." She answered softly and far too unconvincingly, without even admonishing him over the nickname, and then looked back down at the carpeted floor. How was she supposed to sound convincing to him if she couldn't even convince herself this morning?
"Do you feel sick?" he asked, apparently feeling not so annoying after all.
Yes, she did, in ways that she couldn't possibly get the player that was Silas to understand. "No."
"Are you sure? Do you want me to have Elle bring you up a tray so that you can go back to bed?"
"I just want to go down to breakfast!" Her voice shouldn't have broken with that sentence, but it did.
Doing one of the most humiliating things that she could have ever imagined, she burst into tears right in front of the macho womanizer, Silas. The look that came into his eyes was one of panic, but he didn't run, like Cecily half wished that he would. Instead, he scooped her up and carried her back into her bedroom, cradling her like she had Bowen when her son was an infant. He shut the bedroom door with his foot and proceeded to lay her back on her bed. He knelt beside the bed while she cried the whole time. She closed her eyes tightly and burst into a fresh wave of tears when he tenderly brushed strands of her hair out of her eyes.
"Cecily? This isn't a cold. What's wrong, love?"
"Don't call me that!" she demanded harshly, tears turning to sobs when Silas unknowingly used Linden's pet name for her.
"I'm sorry," he said, although he couldn't possibly understand why there was a need for an apology to begin with.
He began to rub his thumb across the back of her hand, and she curled her fingers into a fist, her nails biting against her palm. The physical pain, however, went unnoticed beside all of the other types of pain swirling in the young widow.
"Cecily," he asked softly, "this isn't your wedding ring that you're wearing, is it?"
She shook her head and buried her head in her pillow, still unable to speak and giving up all pretenses of trying to pull herself back together.
"Oh." She flinched when he said that solitary word, because it sounded like he had come to an understanding of why she was such an emotional mess.
She had the presence of mind to stiffen a little, at least, when he shifted from the floor to sitting beside her on the bed. He pulled her into a sitting position, and, against all of her better judgment, she didn't hesitate when he pulled her into an embrace. They sat like this for a long while, until her sobs had quieted into soft crying.
"You know," Silas informed her carefully, "When I was about thirteen, there was this girl at the orphanage. Jessa. She was the same age as me, and we were convinced that we were in love. We almost had the woman who ran the orphanage talked into letting us get married."
Cecily stilled as her tears began to dry. She had never heard this before. Silas didn't notice the change in her. He only sighed heavily and kept telling her his story.
"But then one day, she was sent out to get some groceries. And she never came home." Cecily felt him shrug. "Gatherers, I guess." Against his chest, Cecily heard him swallow. "She would be dead by now."
Cecily flinched. "I'm sorry, Silas."
He shrugged again. "I've made my peace with it. Maybe she got married to some rich guy and lived happily ever after, at least for the next seven years. I hope so."
"Wait a second," Cecily sat up straight and looked at him curiously. "You actually like the idea that she married another man?"
Silas paused to consider his answer for a short moment before he, knowing full well what he was saying, answered, "Better she be married to another man than pining after me for the rest of her life, right?"
Cecily bit her lip and looked down at the comforter of the bed, nodding because that was the answer that he wanted her to give him.
"Anyway, my point is: it does get better. Easier."
"But it's been four years!" she protested.
"And it took me at least that long to quit looking out the window for Jessa, at least every once in awhile.
"Yeah, you're going to have bad days – and I know that that's all this is for you – but you're also going to have great days, Cecily. So here's the plan: today you can pine to your heart's content, but tomorrow, you and I and Bowen are going to have a picnic on the golf course."
Cecily answered flatly, "No."
"You don't feel like doing it now, I know that. But that's the point. You have to give yourself a time to get out of your mood. You have to, for Bowen if nothing else."
"Don't use my son against me," she demanded sourly.
"Would you rather I hog-tied you and dragged you to the golf course?" he asked with a dry smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Because I will. It's your choice. You can come on your own two feet, or slung across my shoulders like a sack of potatoes."
Cecily rolled her eyes in exasperation, but something told her that she would do well not to put "hog-tying" her past him. "My feet work just fine," she decided grudgingly.
Silas beamed. "Great. Now, what do you say we go get some breakfast before somebody comes up here hunting for us?"
Cecily nodded. They stood up and went to the door together, but the sight that met her eyes when she opened the door made her want to slam the door closed again and lock it for good measure. Rhine stood on the other side of the door, hand poised to knock, staring wide-eyed at Cecily and Silas with the fact that she had the wrong idea clearly shining in her eyes.
This is my first CGT story, so reviews would be beyond awesome! By the way, feel free to suggest a better title for the story if you think of one. Thanks, guys (although most of you reading this are probably girls)!:)