Page 76 of Yours on the Canvas

“Eli? Do you have him?” I yell over the engine.

“I found him,” Eli pants. “A nurse from the hospital said she saw a kid matching Hale’s description walking down toward the point hours ago, soaked to the bone. I drove out. He’s here, guys. At the spit.”

“Don’t let him move,” Silas commands, hitting the gas pedal harder as the truck fishtails slightly on the wet asphalt. “We’re two minutes out.”

When we pull up to the gravel turnout near the water, the wind is howling off the water, salt spray and rain stinging our faces like buckshot. Mack’s and Callan’s SUVs are already parked haphazardly off the road.

We jump out of the truck, the freezing rain soaking through my clothes in seconds.

Down on the rocky shoreline, past the jagged driftwood piles and the wind-beaten sea grass, sat a massive, weathered art installation; an old wooden cougar sculpture carved out of a hundreds of pieces of driftwood, its dark hollow eyes staring out toward the dark ocean.

That’s when I see him. Hale huddled directly beneath its wooden belly, soaked through to the bone, shivering so violently his teeth clicked like loose glass.

“Hale!” I scream, my voice cracking as I scramble down the slippery embankment, sliding the last few feet into the mud and gravel, my knees slamming into the mud beneath them.

Eli is already there, kneeling in the dirt beside the boy, trying to wrap a heavy wool blanket around his thin shoulders. Hale looks up, his face pale, still bruised along the jawline where Ray had left his mark, his eyes wide and hollow with a terrifying, adult-sized despair.

Eli moves aside, and Silas, careful on the slick rocks, crouches in front of Hale. His voice cracks around his words.

“Hale, what the hell are you doing? Are you insane?” Tears mix with the rain hitting his face as he leans closer to the boy. “Do you have any idea how worried we were?”

“You shouldn’t have come,” Hale whispered, his voice small and broken against the roar of the surf. “If I’m out of here… if I leave with them… they said they’d leave you alone, Jack.”

My breath caught. My knees hit the wet stones, and I drop right into the mud beside him, grabbing his freezing, trembling hands. “Hale… what are you talking about? Who talked to you?”

“Your uncle,” Hale sobbed, a single tear cutting a clean track through the grime on his cheek. “He saw me at school yesterday. He told me… he told me I was the reason you were always looking over your shoulder. He said if I walked away, if I went back with him and your dad, you and Silas would be safe. He promised.”

The blood drained entirely from my face. The absolute selflessness of it; a ten-year-old willing to throw himself back into the grinder just to buy me a few days of safety, shattered whatever was left of my heart.

Silas drops heavily to his knees beside us on the other side of Hale, his breathing ragged, his face dark as a thundercloud. He didn’t yell. He didn’t curse. He reached out with his one good arm, pulling Hale’s shaking, waterlogged frame into his side with a fierce, unyielding strength that defied his own injuries.

“Listen to me, Hale,” Silas said, his voice low, gravelly, and carrying an absolute, terrifying weight of authority that cut straight through the storm. “You are not going anywhere with them. You are not a sacrifice, and you are not a trade. You belong right here. With us.”

Hale looks up at Silas, his dark eyes shimmering with rain and tears, searching the hard lines of Silas’s face for any sign of hesitation or deceit.

“You mean that?” Hale whispered, his voice trembling. “Even though I’m just… I’m just a foster kid with nowhere to go? Even though I mess everything up?”

Silas’s jaw tightens, and for a split second, I see a raw, fierce vulnerability flash across his face; the terrifying realisation of just how much he had come to care for the boy who had wormed his way into our lives.

“I mean it more than anything I’ve ever said in my life,” Silas swore, his voice dropping to a fierce, solemn vow. “I’m keeping you, Hale. You’re mine now. Nobody takes you.”

Hale lets out a choked, ragged sob, burying his face into Silas’s wet jacket, his small arms wrapping around Silas’s waist and holding on for dear life.

Across the rocky clearing, Eli, Mack, and Callan stand guard in the rain, silent sentinels forming a ring of absolute protection around us against the dark, encroaching world.

Hale pulls back slightly… looking between Silas and me with a sudden, devastatingly clear expression that only a ten-year-old who has had to grow up too fast could muster.

“Do you guys… do you guys love each other?” Hale asks softly, his voice barely carrying over the wind.

The question hangs in the freezing air, heavy and absolute, stripping away every defense, every rule, every wall we had built to keep ourselves safe.

Silas looks down at me, the rain plastering his dark hair to his forehead, his eyes burning with an intensity that makes the cold around us vanish entirely.

“Yeah,” Silas answers, his voice steady, proud, and completely unashamed. He looks back at Hale, then back to me. “I love him. More than my own life. More than the air I breathe.”

I let out a shaky, watery laugh that turns into a sob, my hand reaching out to tangle my fingers into Silas’s jacket, anchoring myself to him as the truth settles deep into my bones.

“I love you too,” I whispered, looking straight into Silas’s eyes. “Always.”