Chapter 4
four
Silas
It’s slow season, and for the first time in my life, I’m glad I don’t have any other clients.
She's not a client the way clients are. Clients are strangers you spend a morning with, who tip and send a review and that's the last of them.
She shows up at six every morning and she knows where the waders are and she's started tying her own flies, badly but with total focus.
We've moved entirely to my private water without me deciding to do it.
I brought her one morning, walked upstream instead of down, and she followed, and we've been there since.
I tell myself it's because the private water is better water. She's advancing fast and the current is more interesting upstream.
I know it's not only that.
Today we're working the tricky section just past the bend where the current splits around a submerged boulder. You have to wade out further than feels comfortable to get the right casting angle and she keeps hugging the near bank.
"Wade out," I tell her.
She wades out, picking her way carefully along the bottom, reading it the way I've shown her. The current is stronger in the split. She gets to depth and tries the cast and the line drifts wide.
"Too much slack on the drift. Come up a step." I’m getting better at talking to her, but not better at noticing how beautiful she is. How her eyes glimmer in the sun, how her full lips purse when she’s concentrating, how her curves make me want to rip those ugly waders off and do things that I have not thought about in a long time.
Peyton moves, and the current pushes harder and she loses her footing. In a flash, I get my hands on her waist before she's even fully off balance. She steadies in a second. We're standing mid-river and my hands are on her hips and the current is pushing around us both.
Neither of us moves.
I know what this is. I've known for several days what this is and I've been keeping a careful distance from it because I know the shape of this story: she drove up from Vancouver three weeks out of a broken engagement and she's booked through the end of the month and she is going back to her life.
I know I should step back.
I don't step back.
The river goes around us. She has both hands on my forearms, steadying herself, and she's not looking at the water anymore.
I step back.
We finish the section. Walk to the truck. Neither of us mentions it.
That evening she's on my porch.
I’m not sure why I invited her back for coffee. Well, no, I know exactly why, but I’m trying not to think about it. I just wanted to be with her. Peyton. As she is… not a client. Just the woman who’s trying to heal from what seems to be the worst breakup I’ve heard of in a long time.
The light is going off the river, gold first and then grey, and the spruce on the far bank has gone dark. We stand there and the silence is easy in a way it hasn't been since she arrived. She's stopped filling the silence with chatter.
"I like it here," she says.
I don't say anything.
"I don't usually like slow things. I move fast. I've always moved fast. It's how I'm wired, it's how I work, it's how I've done everything." She wraps both hands around the cup. "It's quieter in my head out here. I don't know what to do with that."
"Means the river's working," I say.
She looks over at me.
In the evening light she has a quality she doesn't have in the mornings. Just the person under it. She is the most alive thing I have seen on this water in a long time.
She sets her cup on the rail.
There is no moment where either of us decides. She turns toward me and I am already facing her. She puts her hand flat on my chest. I cover it with mine and feel her fingers under my palm.
I kiss her. She kisses back, both hands moving up to my jaw, and the sound she makes against my mouth tells me she has been thinking about this for a while. Good, me too.
I walk her backward through the open cabin door and she goes, watching my face the whole way.
Inside, the light is low.
I work her shirt up and over her head. She reaches back for her bra clasp and I move her hands out of the way and undo it myself, slow, sliding the straps off her shoulders.
She makes a small impatient noise. The bra drops and I take a moment to look at her breasts full and soft in the low light, her nipples already hardening in the cool air of the cabin, her dark eyes watching me.
I lay her back on the bed and catch her wrists when she reaches for me, pinning them above her head. Her whole body goes from motion to waiting, submitting, our agreement without words.
"I'm going to take my time with you," I tell her. "You're going to let me."
A beat. Her cheeks flush, and her lips tremble with need. Then: "Yeah," she says. "Okay."
I start at her throat. Her collarbone. I get my mouth on her breast and stay there, my tongue working her nipple until her hips shift under me and she pulls against the hold on her wrists. I move to the other side and do the same. Her hands flex above her head but she keeps them there.
"Silas."
"I know."
I kiss down her stomach. Get her jeans open and off and toss them over the side of the bed.
She's wearing plain cotton underwear, and something about that gets under my skin more than any lingerie would.
I drag them down and off and come back up the inside of her thigh, slowly. Savoring her scent and her taste.
I get my mouth on her and she grabs the headboard.
She's wet and warm. She tastes like I knew she would, and I take my time. She tries to rush it, her hips rolling up, broken sounds building in her throat, and I hold her still with both hands and stay exactly where I am.
"Please!"
"Let go," I tell her. "Stop fighting it."
She makes a frustrated sound. Her thighs stop tensing, the way she stops trying to steer and just gives in, and I take her the rest of the way. She comes apart, her thighs clamping around my shoulders, her whole body shaking through it.
I work my way back up her body. She gets her hand around my cock before I've finished moving.
I settle between her thighs and she tilts her hips up. I push into her slowly, watching her lips parting, head going back, that specific catch in her breath when I'm fully inside. I stop there. Let her feel all of it.
I find the angle that makes her gasp, and I stay there, steady, deep. She digs her fingers into my back as I fuck her. She starts to get loud, and every gasp and moan makes my body tingle with need.
I put my hand along her jaw and tip her face up to mine.
I take her right to the edge again and hold her there, both of us breathing hard.
"Please," she says. "Silas. Please."
I give her what she's asking for. She comes hard, clenching around me, and I follow her with my face in her hair.
Afterward, she lies with her head on my chest and we both listen to the river outside.