Chapter 22 #2
"I'll start clearing debris from around the porch.
" Harper stood, brushing crumbs from his jeans with rough efficiency.
"Saw some branches come down last night.
Don't want them blocking the door when the water goes down.
" He paused, his warm brown stare finding mine with an intensity that made my stomach flip.
"You be careful out there." He said, his voice low and rough with something that sounded like barely contained fear.
"Always am." I rose on my toes to press a kiss to his stubbled cheek, feeling him lean into the contact like a plant toward sunlight. "We'll be back in an hour. Two at most." I promised, pulling back to meet his eyes.
The flood was eerie from water level.
Silas and I paddled through what had been my yard, past the submerged dock, out onto the flooded road that had become an extension of the bayou itself.
The water was brown and still, littered with debris—branches, leaves, a child's plastic toy that must have washed down from somewhere upstream.
The world was quiet in that heavy, post-storm way, like nature was holding its breath.
"You handle this well." Silas said from his position at the back of the pirogue, his attention scanning the flooded landscape with tactical precision. "The flood. The chaos. Most people would be panicking." He observed, his paddle cutting through the water in smooth, efficient strokes.
"Marguerite raised me to respect the bayou." I guided us around a partially submerged mailbox, noting the high-water mark on its wooden post. "Respect means preparation. Means not panicking when things go sideways." I explained, my own paddle dipping into the murky water with practiced ease.
"She taught you well." Silas was quiet for a moment, the only sound the soft splash of paddles and the distant call of a bird. "The way you move through this. Like you belong to it." He added, something like admiration coloring his usually flat voice.
"I do belong to it." I glanced back at him, catching the way the gray morning light caught the silver of his irises, made them almost luminous.
"This place is in my blood. Good and bad.
Storm and calm." I turned back to face forward, guiding us around a fallen branch that blocked half the road.
"It's part of who I am." I said quietly.
"I understand that." Silas said, and something in his voice made me believe he truly did.
We paddled in comfortable silence for a while, cataloging the damage as we went.
A few downed trees—nothing major, nothing blocking the road once the water drained.
Power lines intact, at least as far as we could see.
The main road was flooded even worse than my property, the water stretching as far as the eye could see in either direction.
"Two days minimum." Silas assessed, his focus taking in the scope of the flooding with grim calculation. "Maybe three, if there's more rain." He added, his expression going tight.
"Could be worse." I turned the pirogue back toward home, my arms starting to ache from the paddling. "Could be stuck with people I don't like." I teased, glancing back at him with a small smile.
The corner of Silas's mouth twitched—the closest thing to a real smile I'd seen from him. "Could be worse." He agreed, his storm-gray stare warm despite his neutral expression.
When we got back to the cabin, Harper had cleared a small mountain of debris from around the porch and was now attempting to help Remy with lunch—though "help" seemed to be a generous term, given the way Remy kept swatting his hands away from the pots.
"You cannot just add more salt because you think it needs more salt." Remy's exasperated voice carried across the water as we paddled closer. "There's a recipe, Harper. A system. You can't just—stop that!" He yelped, lunging for the salt shaker Harper had somehow gotten hold of again.
"It needed salt." Harper rumbled, not remotely apologetic as he held the shaker out of Remy's reach, using his considerable height advantage with what might have been a smirk.
"I'll tell you what it needs—" Remy started, then caught sight of us approaching and abandoned the argument entirely. "You're back! How bad is it?" He called out, moving to the edge of the porch, his honey-colored gaze bright with worry as he watched us tie off the pirogue.
"Two days. Maybe three." I climbed onto the porch, accepting Silas's hand when he offered it to help me up the last step.
"Roads are completely underwater. No downed trees blocking the way, though, so once it drains, we should be able to get out.
" I reported, wringing water from the hem of my shirt.
"Three days." Remy repeated, something complicated crossing his features—worry, maybe, but also something that looked almost like hope. "Three days, all of us, stuck here together." He said slowly, like he was tasting the words.
"That a problem?" I asked, echoing Harper's question from earlier, watching his face carefully.
"No, chere." Remy's smile bloomed slowly, genuine in a way that made my heart squeeze. "That's not a problem at all." He reached out to tuck a wet strand of hair behind my ear, his touch gentle despite the calluses on his fingers. "That might just be exactly what we all need." He said softly.
The day passed slowly, the way time does when you're waiting for the world to right itself.
We played cards—Harper losing spectacularly, Silas winning with that infuriatingly blank expression, Remy cheating so obviously it became a game in itself to catch him.
We talked, really talked, in ways we hadn't before.
Remy told stories about his music gigs, about the rowdy crowds and the quiet nights when someone in the audience really listened.
Harper shared pieces of his childhood, his grandparents' farm, the way his grandmother's hands had smelled like flour and lavender.
Even Silas offered fragments—a memory of his mother's garden, the first animal he'd ever rescued, a deer with a broken leg that he'd nursed back to health when he was twelve.
"That's why you do it." I said softly, understanding clicking into place as I watched him speak about that hawk, watched the way his gaze went distant with memory. "The rehabilitation work. It started with that deer." I realized, leaning forward with interest.
"Started before that." Silas shrugged, but something in his expression had opened, just slightly.
"But the deer was when I knew. When I understood that I could help.
That helping was..." He paused, searching for the right word, his scarred fingers drumming against his knee.
"Necessary. For them and for me." He finished quietly.
"You needed to save something." Harper said, and it wasn't a question.
His deep brown gaze held an understanding that surprised me, a recognition of shared experience.
Silas met his stare, and something passed between them—two men who had seen too much, done too much, and were still trying to find their way back to something that felt like whole.
"Yeah." Silas said simply, his voice rough with emotion he was clearly trying to contain. "I did."
Dinner was Marguerite's gumbo.
I hadn't planned to make it. Hadn't thought about it, really, until I found myself standing in the kitchen surrounded by the ingredients Remy had brought, my hands moving through the motions Marguerite had taught me years ago.
"What are you making?" Remy appeared at my elbow, his attention curious as he watched me chop vegetables with practiced efficiency.
"Gumbo." I didn't look up, focused on the rhythm of the knife, the familiar weight of it in my hand. "Marguerite's recipe. She taught me when I was sixteen, made me practice until I could do it in my sleep." I explained, my voice catching slightly on her name.
"Can I help?" Remy asked softly, his hand finding the small of my back in that way that had become familiar, grounding.
"You can make the roux." I finally looked up, meeting his whiskey-warm stare with a small smile. "If you think you can handle it. Marguerite always said the roux was the soul of the gumbo. Get it wrong, and the whole thing falls apart." I warned, raising an eyebrow in challenge.
Remy's expression turned serious, almost reverent. "Tell me what to do." He said, rolling up his sleeves and moving to stand beside me at the stove.
We worked together in comfortable silence, broken only by my quiet instructions and the sizzle of oil in the pan.
Harper and Silas drifted in at some point, drawn by the smell of cooking food, and took up positions around the kitchen—Harper leaning against the counter, Silas perched on a stool near the window.
Even Gumbo had dragged himself closer to the kitchen doorway, his nose twitching at the scent of simmering spices.
"She'd be proud of you." Remy said softly, stirring the roux with careful attention, watching it darken from blonde to amber to the deep brown of milk chocolate. "Marguerite. The way you've kept this place. The way you've kept going." He added, glancing at me with those warm golden eyes.
"Some days I'm not sure about that." I admitted, stirring the vegetables into the pot, watching them soften in the fragrant oil.
"Some days I feel like I'm just... existing.
Going through the motions of being alive without actually living.
" I confessed, the words coming easier in the warmth of the kitchen, surrounded by the smell of home.