He wasn’t. Not in the least bit, but that was just where his head was at. Rae deserved to be treated well; he’d had to accept that whatever romantic feelings he had towards the woman weren’t going away, so the safest way to express that he cared was to just be there for her. “I’m really not,” he disagreed half-heartedly. Maybe it wasn’t fair to keep treating her well without being honest about how he felt, but he couldn’t go out on that limb and risk being shut out of Rae’s life entirely. Even the kiss didn’t change that in his mind. There was a million different reasons why Rae had done that, he wasn’t going to stupidly believe it was because she cared for him as anything more than a friend.
It was situations like the one Rae was in that made Silas glad sometimes that the only thing he had that looked remotely like family was Brandon and his sisters. “Not really,” he replied, wishing for a second that she wasn’t watching the concrete. “Sounds human. And they’re kids, so it’s like trying to protect them.” Maybe it wasn’t, but that’s how he saw it. Luke and his sister, they were twenty maybe? That was still young, even in the apocalypse. Yeah, Rae wasn’t that much older than they were, but still, he got where she was coming from.
Great. He’d somehow made it seem like he didn’t want her in his space or something. “Nah, rec room’s further than my place,” he said. “And probably teeming with people.” And she probably wanted to be alone, or as alone as she could be. Not have to put on some happy face for people; act like things were better than they were.
It felt weird to laugh, but he let out a small chuckle anyways. “No monsters, I promise,” he assured her, holding his hand up in the universal sign for scout’s honor. Most of his clothing was contained, and the only thing he could think of that could potentially get a raised brow were some Playboy’s he had laying around, and he wasn’t going to make any apologies for those if she happened to notice one.
Shit. He’d been hoping to avoid questions like that. “Dunno,” he hedged with a shrug. “Maybe.” But Eric had been shot, it wasn’t that hard to believe that David and Rebecca had also, even if they hadn’t found the bodies. “He could be. David was a smart guy, resourceful.”
He held the outer door to the cell block open for Rae and let her pass through before him. “Not sure we’ll know for sure, unless he comes wandering back in here one day.” Even if in his gut he had the sinking feeling that David wouldn’t be walking back into Sing Sing any time soon. If ever.
Sliding his gaze sideways, he tried to gauge Rae by the expression on her face. She just looked so upset, it was hard to take. Had he looked like that through all the sadness and anger over Mike’s death and the subsequent argument with Brandon? And she had still stuck around for him.
On impulse he reached down and closed a hand around hers. “Guys like David are always the ones underestimated. He might’ve gotten away because of that.” Not all that comforting, but it was something. The guys that weren’t ever suspected could sometimes be the sneakiest and most resilient bastards out there. For Ellie and Rae’s sake he hoped that he was wrong about the feeling he had.