Silent Boy [ENGLISH]

20.

Scarlett was not aware of how fast she flew out of the apartment and started the car when she received a call from the Grand Valley Sanatorium. One of the receptionists who wasn't Marsha called her. She was extremely kind, wanted to inform her that Sebastian was stable, and could visit him when she could. Of course, that meant for Scarlett that from that moment on, everything was deleted from the planner.

When she parked in, now, her regular parking spot, she took another quick look in the mirror to see if her makeup and hairstyle was neat and that she didn't look like she had reached for the first thing she came across.

The thump of her shoes made her arrival official as the regular procedure of putting things at the reception and leaving her signature on the list of visitors. The girl with a short haircut and an extremely beautiful face smiled when she took a sheet and a ballpoint pen from Scarlett, and the tension that had accumulated in Scarlett's body was slowly subsiding. Once again, she smiled weakly at the receptionist and headed for Sebastian's dungeon. This was the first time since she had visited him that she had no idea what she wanted to ask him. A thousand thoughts swarmed in her head, but she couldn't separate a single one and focus only on it. And that annoyed her terribly. She was usually a very calm person with an exceptional focus, but since she started working on this case, and especially since she tackled with Sebastian, her behavior has started to change and fall out of the rut.

It seems Thomas wasn't the only one who started behaving differently since working on this case.

She found herself in front of a glass window that separated two pawns in this damn cat and mouse game. Scarlett saw Sebastian walking restlessly around the cell and realized she was freezing. Her heart pounded in her chest, and a lump in her throat blocked the air supply. She felt restlessness in her stomach and tingling in her feet, but she tried to stay calm. She exhaled silently and licked her pink lips like a rose bud.

When he saw her, Sebastian's full lips parted slightly, and his eyes twinkled for a moment. He licked and ran his teeth lightly over his lower lip.

"Oh, well, it's you," he said, trying to sound cold and disinterested, the complete opposite of what it was the last time she looked into his blue eyes and felt his lips on hers. He crossed his arms over his chest and watched her silently as Scarlett's ears tickled his melodious voice.

"You have to stop welcoming me so enthusiastically," she said sarcastically. "I'll think you can't wait to see me."

"Can you blame me? I didn't really want to see you," he stepped towards her. "Better said, I was hoping I wouldn't see you."

''Why?''

"Because if you come again, it's a sign that you didn't listen to me. And that you kept sniffing where I strictly told you not to. Along with your police puppy, of course."

He found himself in front of her, so close, and yet so distant. If they weren't separated by glass, they would be at a dangerously close distance, and Scarlett didn't know how that would end. Sebastian's gaze was angry, his arms still crossed over his slightly muscular chest. He watched her closely.

''I want to save you, Sebastian. We both want that," she whispered pleadingly against the glass. "You have to stop blaming yourself for things you had no control over. You have to teach yourself to forgive. "

He grinned, blurring the glass in front of his face. "Unfortunately, forgiveness is something no one has taught me to do."

Suffering flashed in his eyes again. It was an illusion of that intoxicating suffering; the suffering the poets wrote about, idealized and romanticized. The illusion of suffering that was the greatest inspiration for every artist, but Scarlett did not see anything that would inspire her in any way. The only thing she felt was a huge gap in her chest where her heart should be beating.

"You can't say that," she unconsciously placed her palm on the glass, which was dead cold to the touch. "Remember the speech you gave me to give my brother a chance? Now I want you to do it for yourself. Listen to me and do it. "

"No matter what I do, I will still be here. On some things I just ... I have no influence. He's a very dangerous man, Scarlett. "

"He?"

Realizing that his tongue was starting to loosen and he was starting to say things he shouldn't, he bit the inside of his cheek. "Who is he, Sebastian?" She asked. "Is he your adoptive parent?"

Sebastian was silent and shook his head.

"You have to tell me," Scarlett insisted. "Don't hide it, Sebastian. The killer is at large, and then he will kill another innocent girl. Then that blood will be on your hands. "

"You don't understand, Scarlett," whispering that, he sank down defeated and sat on the floor, his back against the cold wall. Scarlett synchronized his movements and sat down on the floor across from him. She felt the cold over her thin blouse. ''I have no one. In a weird, sadistic way, he's the only family I have. "

"No, it's not," she muttered. ''You have me. I believe you. I'm here for you too."

Sebastian looked at her gently under the long lashes that were like a frame on his blue eyes.

''I know that. That's why I don't want to tell you anything. I'm trying to protect you, Scarlett. "

"I don't want you to protect me."

"And I don't want you to end up dead."

Scarlet was speechless at those words. Sebastian tried to get even closer to the glass, almost as if he wanted to go through it to be closer to her. ''You don't know him the way I do, Scarlett. He is very, very dangerous. And he knows how to cover up what he is. "

"But we can catch him. Together.''

''We can't. He's too smart. You don't think it suits him that I'm here? No one can connect him to me, and especially not to the murders. He is a free man. The only thing that didn't suit him was that he couldn't ruin someone else's life for a while. "

They stared at each other in silence for a while. Scarlett couldn't say the right words. Everything that came to her mind to make excuses wasn't good enough or appropriate. She felt like she was in the middle of the ocean and her lungs were filling with water, her head was bursting with pain along with her lungs until she felt sudden relief, and then she fell into eternal darkness forever.

For the first time since the beginning of all this, she wondered if it might be best to obey Sebastian and do as he had begged her all along. However, her moral principles would not allow her to do that.

"I'm sorry," she said helplessly. She wasn't sure if she was apologizing to Sebastian, to herself or to both of them.

After talking to Sebastian, she got in her car and started crying like a small child. She felt helpless. The whole case devoured her like a black hole from which there was no way out. After crying, after which she felt dull and without any emotion, she pulled the phone out of her purse and dialed a number that she had not called for a while.

She called George Wilson.