Chapter 24
Silas
The world slowly stitched itself back together around us. Her breathing settled first. Mine followed, but my pulse was still a damn drum line.
Colette blinked at me, lashes heavy, lips kiss-swollen in a way that made my brain shut down entirely for a dangerous second.
Then she looked down at the utterly destroyed kitchen floor, at the flour and cracked egg and god-knows-what stuck to our knees and clothes, and let out a tiny, breathless laugh.
“We’re…,” she started, glancing between us, “we’re a disaster.”
I ran a hand through my hair, still kneeling, still unable to stop staring at her. “You started it,” I said.
She shoved at my shoulder, cheeks pinkening. “I was trying to make us breakfast!”
“It was mostly your fault.”
“I was scrambling eggs, Silas.”
“Semantics.”
She rolled her eyes and stood, shaky but smiling, gathering her underwear and tugging them into place. Seeing her like this — soft, flushed, domestic and so utterly unprepared for how badly I wanted to keep her — it did something lethal to my chest.
I stood too, scooping her shirt off the tile and offering it to her.
She slipped it on with a breathy little thanks, and then — a beat of silence, a real one — she looked at me again, eyes softer than the dim winter light.
“We should… clean up,” she said, even though neither of us moved right away.
Our fingers brushed — just that — and she looked up at me. Eyes shining, mouth curved, hair wild and pink and everywhere. I don’t stand a chance in hell. Not with her looking at me like I’m the fun part of the mess.
“You’re going to drip all over the floor… again,” she said, wiping a streak of something off my jaw with her thumb.
“You say that like it’s a threat.”
Her eyes darkened, curious. “Maybe it is.”
I tossed the sponge into the sink. “What are you gonna do about it, Colette?”
She didn’t back down.
She stepped closer.
“I could make you clean this mess up,” she said, voice low. “Properly. Shirt off. Apron on.”
“Apron.” I said it like I needed it spelled out in neon. “Nothing else?”
“Maybe shoes,” she fluttered, grin wicked. “Safety first.”
I huffed a laugh, heat roaring back to life in a way that wasn’t even remotely appropriate for a post-blowjob exhale. Then she nudged me, shoulder and hips and intention, and I grabbed her waist, yanking her fully into me because I couldn’t not.
“We’d get absolutely nothing done,” she said, laughing against my throat, already breathless again.
“Maybe that’s the point.”
She squeaked as I spun her, pinning her lightly against the counter — easy, not aggressive, but claiming. Just enough pressure to remind her that we were in uncharted territory, and neither of us was walking away unscathed.
Flour from some forgotten meal, smeared on the cabinets, still dusted her thighs. Her underwear was hanging on for dear life. My shirt was halfway unbuttoned, and her giggle made my entire world tilt just a little more.
“We’re a disaster,” she whispered.
“I think you might be my favorite brand of disaster, Colette.”
I kissed her — quick, wrecked, and not nearly enough. Then pulled back with a grin that matched hers.
“Come on. Help me wipe the counters before I take you right back down to the floor.”
“Hardly a threat,” but she sighed like it was a hardship. “Fine. But then I’m making cookies.”
“Barefoot and half-dressed?” I asked.
“Would you prefer fully naked?”
I almost dropped the sponge again.
We didn’t rush.
Not like before, when we were all hands and mouths and frantic need. This was… quieter. Like the air had shifted, loosening something inside us both. We cleaned up in a way that barely counted as cleaning—halfhearted swipes at the counter between lingering touches and looks that went on too long.
She was humming under her breath — humming — as she searched the cupboards for a bowl, barefoot, underwear still peeking under my half-buttoned flannel.
And I couldn’t stop staring at her. I couldn’t believe that this was the same girl who had me on my knees not ten minutes ago, now acting like she had every right to make herself at home in what was supposed to be my kitchen — because she did. Somehow, she did.
“You’re staring,” she said, not looking up.
“I’m allowed.”
That made her smile, that little one she tried to hide — like she hadn’t been waiting her whole life for someone to tell her that. The little blush that tinged her cheeks was enough to bring a weaker man to his knees.
She found the bowl, set it down. Paused a moment with her fingers tucked around the rim. That’s when I saw it — the quiet flicker in her expression. Not fear, exactly. More like… realization. What happened between us wasn’t just something that fills an afternoon and then burns away.
It lands.
“Silas?” she said, not turning around.
“Yeah?”
She hesitated, then lifted her head. Watery eyes met mine over her shoulder. “Can you… stay right here with me for a minute?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
That earned me another genuine smile, teary, but real. Messy. Unfiltered. The kind that would haunt me if I ever had the awful sense to walk away.
She didn’t say anything else. Just came toward me, slow. And I opened my arms — slow too. Gentle. No game. No heat. Just… us.
She stepped into me, forehead resting against my collarbone, breath steadying against my chest. I closed my eyes. Pressed a kiss to her hair and let myself sink into the ache of it all. Wanting more but being so damn grateful for exactly this.
The kitchen was quiet. The fire crackled in the next room. And for one rare, suspended moment, we weren’t broken or horny or spiraling idiots with no idea what we were doing.
We were just two people. Safe. Close.
In a type of quiet that means everything.
The snow was still falling outside when she declared we were “absolutely baking cookies,” like it was a thing grown adults did in post-orgasmic bliss on a Thursday afternoon.
“What kind?” I’d asked, knowing full well she’d already decided.
“Chocolate chip, obviously,” she said, like the question was embarrassing.
I watched her dig through cabinets again. The longer I watched her, the more my chest tightened with something that was not purely lust.
Something worse.
Something like — hope.
She didn’t notice. Or maybe she did and pretended not to, keeping just enough space between us, like this was the new game. Closeness. Domesticity. Intimacy disguised as mischief.
“Are you going to help,” she asked, twisting around to look at me, “or are you going to stand there and smolder like a Victorian widower?”
I stepped in behind her. Bent just enough to murmur in her ear, “That depends. Do you want help, or do you want a reason to accuse me of being controlling again?”
She scoffed, but she smiled. “Just grab the flour, old man.”
She didn’t see the way that hit me. Not because it was insulting — but because she was so… here. Joking. Settled. Acting like I’d always been in this kitchen with her, like she’d always been free to tease me into a mood I couldn’t quite pull out of.
I pulled down the flour. She squealed when the bag puffed a cloud of fine dust right into her face. I should’ve said sorry. Instead, I laughed. Hard.
She scowled at me. “That wasn’t funny.”
“Yes, it was.”
She didn’t say anything. Just reached into the bowl of sugar and flicked a spoonful directly at me.
I stopped laughing — immediately.
She froze. “Silas.”
A grain of sugar slid down my cheek.
“You just made a tactical error.”
She backed up. I advanced. Slow. Deliberate. Predatory.
“Don’t you dare,” she said.
“Oh, I dare.”
She shrieked just as I lunged for the mixing bowl. Handed it off to her like a grenade. She twisted, darting away — too late. I swept her in, pinning her back against the counter with my hips, flour-dusted, sugar-streaked, and breathless.
“You’re unhinged,” she whispered, but she wasn’t pushing me away. Her hands were already on my chest.
“And you like it,” I said.
Her fingers curled into my shirt. She looked up at me, and there it was again — that same flicker from earlier. Something soft. Scared. Wild.
“We’re going to ruin the cookies,” she murmured.
“There’s no power. We can’t even put them in the oven, yet..”
She didn’t move. Neither did I.
But she laughed. Really laughed. “Fine,” she said, slipping out from under me. “But if these end up tasting like chalk, it’s your fault.”
“You’re the one who threw sugar at me.”
“I regret nothing.”
And she didn’t. I could see it in the way she reached for the chocolate chips like she’d lived here forever. How she still couldn’t meet my eyes for more than a second without blushing.
We ate most of the dough before either of us could wrap it up. We kept brushing past each other, reaching around each other, touching like we didn’t know how not to.
And when she stood on tiptoe to grab the cling wrap, I didn’t stop myself from leaning down and pressing a kiss to the back of her shoulder.
Just a light one.
Just enough to say: I think I’m ruined for you, and you don’t even know it yet.
She was humming — a tune I didn’t recognize, probably something she made up on the spot — while licking chocolate off her thumb. I was leaning against the counter, half just watching her, half bracing myself for the way my chest kept pulling tight every time she smiled.
We weren’t ready for it.
The lights flashed.
Then flared back to life.
The refrigerator groaned awake. The oven beeped. The heater rumbled. And in the corner where her phone had not been charging on the ancient side table — a dozen notifications lit up at once.
We both froze.
Her iffy little reality, the one we’d been living in like it was a shared dream — warm fires and flour fights and 2 a.m. confessions under blankets — shimmered and broke.
“Shit,” she breathed, staring at the blinking blue screen like it had just revealed a countdown clock over her head.
My own phone buzzed inside my back pocket, but I didn’t look at it.
Couldn’t.
She swallowed. “It’s back.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly.
She felt it too. The shift. The dread. The reminder that the world hadn't disappeared, it was just… waiting. And now it wasn’t anymore.
“It’s fine,” she tried to say, but her voice cracked halfway through it. She didn’t reach for her phone.
I didn’t reach for her.
But God, I wanted to.
Colette was staring at her phone where it sat on the table, screen lit with a name I hadn’t heard her mention. Not Josh. Someone else.
Her thumb hovered over the screen, frozen midair.
Everything in me strained to go still, to stay controlled. But all I could see was the way her face tightened, that same terrified softness I’d glimpsed in the quiet of the night, curled against me in the dark.
“Is it someone you need to call back?” I asked, and God — my voice sounded like gravel. That old instinct kicked in. The one that said if she needs space, give it. Don’t crowd her. Don’t cling.
Her eyes lifted to mine. For a moment, she looked like she didn’t know me at all. Like all of this — the mess on the floor, our half-buttoned shirts, the flour prints on her thighs — was suddenly something fragile and stupid.
“It’s my sister,” she said quietly.
I wanted to be relieved. I wasn’t.
There were other names lighting that screen beneath it. Text bubbles stacked. One of them said "Answer me, Cole."
And it hit me, almost violently:
This cabin wasn’t a beginning.
It was a pause.
“You should talk to her,” I said.
“I know.” Her voice cracked so slightly I nearly missed it. “I just… I don’t want to yet.”
She was shaking — not visibly. But I could feel it.
So I stepped toward her. She didn’t back up this time.
“Hey,” I murmured. “You don’t have to explain.”
But she started anyway. “I haven’t talked to anyone in…
I mean, I basically vanished. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going.
And now it’s — what do I even say? ‘Hey, sorry, I had to run away and breathe for five minutes and got accidentally snowed in with some brooding, middle-aged author I’m not… not sleeping with’?”
The laugh that escaped her was too close to tears.
I reached for her then. Just grazed her wrist, a question I didn’t know how to voice.
“Does it feel like you’re still running, Colette?”
She didn’t pull her hand away. But she didn’t take mine either.
She just held the phone like it was an anchor. Looked at me like I was the storm.
I didn’t move for a long moment.
Not when she walked past me. Not when she took her phone and retreated toward the bathroom. Not even when I heard the low murmur of her voice from behind the half-closed door, words hesitant as they bridged whatever gulf had opened between her and the outside world.
I stood in the kitchen like a man stunned by the sudden shift in gravity. The overhead lights — blinding after days of candlelit haze — felt like a spotlight, exposing the flour scattered across the counter. The bowl of overmixed dough. The half-unbuttoned shirt clinging to my skin.
A scene that belonged to a movie, not my life.
I reached for the dishtowel, wiped my hands, and forced myself to breathe. It shouldn't hurt—because this was inevitable. Inevitable in its sweetness. Inevitable in its ending.
I glanced back toward the bedroom door, as I shut off the jarring overhead light.
Tried not to listen.
Listened anyways.
A laugh, soft and broken, filtered out into the hall.
My chest tightened.
She was on her timeline now — her story, her unfinished business, her life reasserting itself with each word spoken into a phone pressed to her ear. And… I didn’t have a place in it.
Not really.
Not outside this cabin. Not under normal sunlight.
I backed away from the kitchen entirely, moving quietly, almost reverently, as though afraid to disturb the outside world her voice was rejoining.
I passed the mattress on the floor, still rumpled from hours of laughter and warmth.
From that strange, aching softness I hadn’t known I was even capable of anymore.
I stopped just before the door.
The door that led out into the early morning chill. Where the world was beginning again, and the roads were clear, and the silence between me and Colette bloomed wider with every passing second.
I didn’t open it. Not yet.
But my hand rested on it like a man steadying himself before a blow. And in the quiet, I let the ache expand — uninterrupted, undeniable. Because maybe the worst part wasn’t that she was calling someone else. It was that I knew she should.