Chapter 22
Now
Bea
I gasp awake and immediately know I’m being watched. Sure enough, the cat is sitting on the bed beside me, giving me her best menacing glare.
“Hello,” I say, squinting back.
“Hi.”
I gasp again and reflexively yank the covers up.
“Sorry. You left this open,” Silas explains, rapping the molding of my open doorway.
“How long have you been standing there?” I ask groggily.
“Not long,” he says, voice an octave too high to believe. “You don’t talk in your sleep or snore or anything, though. And who sleeps on their back like that? Vampire,” he accuses.
He lets himself in and places a paper mug of coffee on my nightstand, alongside a grease-mottled bag with the tail end of a glazed raspberry twist poking out.
He sits at the foot of the bed, and something about the movement jostles the memory of our couch night right to the forefront of my brain.
I resist the urge to hide under the sheets completely.
His demeanor, however, is suspiciously relaxed for someone who has been just as weird as I’ve been this past week, and who has avoided me as much as I’ve avoided him.
“Thank you,” I say. “What time is it?” Cali pads over and rubs her head into his tricep.
“Eight A.M.,” he says.
Despite already grabbing breakfast, Silas looks as if he’s just woken up, too.
He’s in gray sweats, slippers, and a flannel over a fire department shirt.
His hair is rumpled, and he needs a shave.
It’s like he’s stepped out of a catalog for camping and outdoor gear.
I picture him strapping on one of those backpacks with the cat porthole built in.
It’s unbearably hot to me now, and I’m irrationally mad about it.
This must be how he felt about my sleep shorts.
The silence we fall into is immediately oppressive. God, what was I thinking, kissing him like that? Grinding on him like an animal in heat. He said he wasn’t even ready for casual, and my impending situation is about a million miles beyond it.
“You should try the doughnut,” he says quietly. “It’s good.”
I swallow my coffee down the wrong pipe, because I also hear the echo of him saying, So good. So fucking friendly.
My lips feel bruised a week later. I still feel the hard press of him against me and smell his salt-and-mint skin.
Good Lord, is that a faded hickey on his neck?!
I take an overlarge bite of the doughnut.
“You good?”
I jerk my head in a nod.
“You ready to do this?”
God, can everything be sexual if you try hard enough? What is wrong with me? I force another nod.
“All right. Well. What happened the other night, far as I can figure, was just a culmination of things. We’re attracted to each other, this is a given.
Look at you. You’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen, with jelly on your face and a rat’s nest in your hair.
” I start patting it down with a frown, heart leaping into my throat.
“That we’ve gone almost two months living together without anything happening is a testament to our emotional maturity, I think. ”
I swallow loudly. “It’s only been six weeks.” One week ago, it had only been five.
“Basically two months.” He smirks when I take another bite so huge I have to stuff the straggling end of it into my mouth with a finger.
He’s managed it so beautifully—being the right amount of earnest and aloof, and yet all my nerve endings are practically singing at him calling me the sexiest woman he’s ever seen, delivered in that plain, matter-of-fact way.
Taxes are due in April, the earth is round, and I’m the sexiest woman he’s ever seen.
“You’re right,” I tell him. “And—and we’ve shared dinners and our space. We talk every day. Well . . . most days. We’ve shared more—more intimacies than plenty of new couples, I’d wager.”
“Exactly.”
Every time we’ve been less than okay and been open about it. Every time I’ve cried or shared a hope and he’s made me feel safe to. When I’ve asked him for help. In a way, I’ve been getting naked with him repeatedly.
“Not that it wouldn’t be fun,” he murmurs, his hand circling my ankle through the comforter. “Or good.”
My throat goes thick. “We would be a lot of fun,” I say. And so good. “But I think we were right to stop.”
“Right. Because that specific kind of fun can get messy.” He says it like he’s reciting it back to himself from a flash card.
“Sometimes literally,” I add unhelpfully. I drop my forehead against my hand. My entire blood supply is pooling in the spot where he’s squeezing my ankle bone. “Sorry.”
He huffs a laugh and watches his thumb swipe back and forth, with a considerate look. “I wouldn’t want either of us to accidentally hurt the other.”
This makes me blink up at him sharply. I hadn’t even considered that I could be the one to hurt him at this juncture in our lives, not even when Wren asked me to be careful before.
I only thought about me and the baby and not becoming dependent.
But now a new realization comes into focus.
I already did hurt him once, more than I was willing to see.
He’s got plenty of reasons to feel wary of me, too, including how many other times I’ve kept him at arm’s length over the years.
“I’m sorry about before, Silas,” I tell him. “About brushing you off after that night.”
He takes back his hand and studies it. “It’s all right. I knew Merritt was your priority right then, and I understood it.” His mouth sighs into a smile. “I just . . . I knew you weren’t mine to miss, but I still did. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” I strip off a piece of my own self-preservation to admit the next part. “I felt the same way about you.”
“But,” he says, leaving it open-ended for me to finish.
The way he looks at me makes it hard to remember. I’m still all out of alignment and have to take my time finding my answer. “But. Now that we’re real friends again, I don’t want to mess this up. I can’t afford for this to get messed up.”
“Yeah. You’re . . . you’re in my system, Bea. I don’t want you to get me out of yours.” He’s talking to his lap again. “Now that we’ve got this, I don’t want to lose it, either.”
I watch his hand over my ankle a little longer. “So we won’t. It happened. But we’re friends and we know what’s at stake, so we won’t let it happen again.”
“Good. Sounds like a plan,” he warmly agrees. “Wanted to ask you a couple of other things, too,” he adds, eyes drifting away and back. “First, do you need help with your shot today?”
“No, I’ll be okay.”
“You sure? I’m in a surprisingly good mood. I can suffer your booty cheek.”
I nod sagely. I think if I had to see a single bare inch of any of his erogenous zones today or in the near future, I would combust on the spot. I’ll spare him as much as I can. “I appreciate how noble you are, Silas, thank you. I’m certain I’m all good today.”
“Second, I thought I’d see if you were free and wanted to go with me to Wren and Ellis’s for a barbecue later? We’re celebrating Wren’s birthday late and mine a little early.”
I sip on my coffee. “I moved a few clients to today so I could take your birthday weekend off, but I’ll be free later in the afternoon. I can meet you there.”
I feel his smile like a magnet—warmth gathering in my cheeks like filaments beneath my skin. Damn.
“All right. Cool,” he says. “Cool, cool, cool.” He starts peppering Cali with kisses.
“Was there anything else?”
“Hmm?” He’s distracted scratching Cali’s chin.
“You said there were a couple things? Didn’t sound like you were done.”
“Oh, ah, yeah.” He heaves a breath. “I know what I want to add to your list. For my thing this summer. Or fall. Fall is fine, too. Winter. It doesn’t really matter, I guess. It’s more of an open-ended goal.”
I wait patiently and sip from my mug.
“The group meetings,” he says. “I want to keep going. I want to—keep trying to make friends, I guess. A couple times a year, they do some sort of group activity together. Labor Day weekend, there’s this hike and a campout.”
“I can go with you,” I volunteer, doing some quick mental calculations.
Even if the stars align and I have a successful transfer on this first go, come Labor Day, I’d still be super early along.
I’d be done with progesterone by then and wouldn’t need to worry about any more shots, either.
“As long as I’m feeling good and everything, I’d love that. ” I like this, making plans with him.
“Yeah?” he asks.
“Yeah, why not,” I say. “I wouldn’t call myself outdoorsy, but I can handle one night with you.
” Obviously not . . . or, at least not well, but I don’t need to point this out.
And look at me, making a joke, acting like everything is normal and like I couldn’t sketch the image of his head thrown back and his neck tendons pulled taut by memory.
His mouth clamps shut like he’s caging a comeback.
I let my mouth and eyes fall wide open. “Wow, Silas. I’m really proud of you for passing that one up.”
He gets up and heads for the door, Cali bounding after him. “Go easy on me, Red.”
I wait until he’s a safe distance away, when I hear his footsteps hitting the stairs. “You, too, please. You go easy on me, too.”