average human’s Reviews > Control My Night > Status Update

“You guys are gross,” his sister, Layla, declared from the table as Silas greeted me with an unselfconscious kiss. A harsh assessment, given he’d at least kept his tongue to himself.
I’d stayed with Katherine and the banshees until two weeks ago, making the move to Dublin to resume my business degree. While I’d offered for Zeina to come with me, she’d opted to remain with Katherine. Their swiftly built but powerful romance was comforting and had me missing Silas more than was healthy.
We’d seen each other twice in the last two months while he and his family relocated to England, and it had never been long enough. Today, they’d traveled to Dublin, planning to stay for several weeks while Silas awaited the outcome of his job applications. He’d decided to go back to being a chef. I hoped he’d be placed near me.
His mother rose once Silas and I broke apart to issue a hug and a kiss to my cheek. Her carefree smile and relaxed posture lightened my soul.
“How are you settling into school?” she asked. I spent several minutes filling them in on my classes.
Sharing such details felt like a dagger to my heart, another reminder of the things I could no longer tell my father. My chest had ached constantly since his death, since his funeral, since the PR cover-up of his ‘tragic, accidental death.’ Every day, I woke to the inevitable, slamming realization he was gone. Every day, I worked to disassociate the man who’d died in the clearing from the one I’d believed him to be. The one I wanted to remember him as. Comfort or denial, I pretended they were different people. I’d lost more than just my father that day.
Silas’s family had settled into their new house on the outskirts of London. They’d been destitute upon their capture because of debt, and Silas had feared life would be difficult as they started over, but Arwood had delivered payment for Silas’s service, giving them enough to relocate very comfortably and very far away from the Camardos. Otherwise, we hadn’t heard a peep from Arwood. Rumors had circulated for weeks that he’d scaled back his involvement in Prague to be with his daughter. Lissandra maintained operations, but it hadn’t been a clean transition. Between this and the dissolution of the Kohnstamms, plenty of holes existed for someone to fill.
Silas’s mother shared their plans for the holiday season, wine coloring her cheeks as she finished a glass, gesturing enthusiastically for another.
“You’ll join us, then?” Layla asked, her tone casual and a degree kinder than I’d expected. She’d had the hardest time reconciling my involvement with Gabriel’s death—understandably so—making this admission a promising development in our relationship. “We can watch a crappy Christmas movie and eat ice cream or something.”
I wanted nothing more, and I told her so as Silas pulled me close. The weeks without my father hadn’t lessened the pain, but I embraced the warmth of their love and acceptance with an abandon I wouldn’t have thought possible six months before. With Katherine a pillar of strength to the south, and Silas beside me, I felt grounded, secure, my compass pointing in the right direction.
I was home.
The End … for now