Chapter 32
Now
Silas
Bea is still asleep and lying in a sunbeam, curled on her side in my bed, dust motes glimmering like tiny stars around her, and I am staring like a besotted fool.
She’s got one bare leg stretched outside the sheets and her hands folded beneath her cheek like a maiden in a painting, and I know, logically, it’s impossible that she looks different already.
That the word glowing is synonymous with pregnancy, so that’s why it’s skipping through my head like a scratched record.
It’s also accurate.
She’s glowing, serene . . . doing nothing other than soft, steady breathing while the universe expands inside her.
I want to tuck that leg back under the covers and make sure she’s warm.
Strap her in a suit of armor. Make her French toast from one of the ten loaves of bread sitting around my kitchen.
Bend her over the counter and mark her as mine, inside and out.
Physically remind myself that she wants me as hers, too.
But Bea is maybe the one thing in my life I’ve been patient for, so I can keep it up a while longer. Just being able to touch her in any way is like carbonation in my bloodstream. I think I’ll be glad when it gets a little less intense, if it ever does.
I was full-up on happiness when she told me . . . So why do I feel like I’ve got a hand cupped around my throat, squeezing occasionally just to remind me it’s there?
Admittedly, I was taken aback that she took the test without me, but I’m not trying to read into it more than I should. I’m in this for her. It’s her body, her baby until she decides otherwise, and I guess I just need to be supportive in whatever capacity she’d like me to be.
“I can feel you staring.”
I laugh through my nose and bend to kiss the corner of her mouth. “Just trying to figure out how you managed to steal all my blankets while only needing half your body covered.”
She makes a petulant little sound and nestles deeper into the pillow.
“Lie with me a while longer. Catch up on sleep while you can.” My chest tightens sweetly, thinking she means catch up on sleep before a baby comes.
Thinking she’s automatically included me in this future.
But then she adds, “Before the Fourth of July happens and people misplace common sense in favor of pyrotechnics.”
I kiss the high point of her cheek. The side of her jaw. “How about I make you some breakfast instead?”
The Fourth of July comes around, and predictably, fires break out across the state. One grows large enough to roll into a campaign, and now, two weeks later, I’m stuck somewhere in central Oregon trying to keep this thing from hitting a hundred thousand acres.
Bea is doing great. She did a blood test in her doctor’s office that confirmed she’s pregnant. She was thrilled the first morning she threw up, because it made her feel like everything was progressing as it should. The third time it happened, she was slightly less enthused.
I’ve only been home one other time in the last two weeks, for less than forty-eight hours, and basically fell upon her like a man returned home from war.
She went to her knees in the shower and barely had me in her mouth before I fell apart, just as I remembered that I literally was not allowed to reciprocate for another whole week.
My anxiety hasn’t abated in the slightest. I want her to want me.
I need her to need me. I want to give her space.
I don’t want her to want or need anything at all. I am a goddamn mess.
Four days ago, I had to come back to work, and now I’m sitting under a sickly yellow sky, looking out over a charred chunk of earth, trying to eat my lunch.
And my brother won’t stop singing.
Ellis plops heavily beside me in the dirt, humming some jaunty, unrecognizable tune, a dopey smile splitting his dirty face. Compared to the stoic, even-keeled, serious captain and brother I’ve always known, it’s fucking spooky. Even when he finds me giving him a dirty look, he’s undeterred.
“You good?” he asks.
No. I’m hot, sweaty, filthy, the scarred section of my elbow that still gives me trouble itches like a son of a bitch, and I’m torn up from wanting a woman I probably shouldn’t have, missing her, fretting over her, and so deliriously happy I feel possessive of it and edgy, like I’m waiting for something to tamper with it. Like I’m waiting to fuck it up myself.
“Yep,” I say.
“Here. Have a cookie.” He tries to pass me one of Wren’s chocolate-dipped shortbreads.
“I don’t want a cookie, Ellis.”
Now he frowns, clearly alarmed. “Are you sick?”
“No, dammit, I’m not sick.”
“Then why don’t you want the cookie, Silas?”
“I want the cookie, all right?!” I’m trying to practice self-control like it might help strengthen my self-preservation skills.
“Then fucking take the cookie. I’m offering you the cookie.”
His hand is still hovering in front of my face. I give in and snatch the cookie, then take an angry bite.
He plucks a fresh one from the pastry box at his side and starts to eat around a high, loose laugh. “That bad, huh? Feels so good it’s scary?”
I give him a flat look. One of the nights we were home, Bea also wanted to have my family over to let them in on us being an Us, and she shared her pregnancy over BLTs.
We had an abundance of bread. Fisher and Sage had a bounty of tomatoes.
They reacted how I knew they would—by being elated and supportive. I still felt their eyes on me like they were weighing whether I was up to the task.
I drop my arms and scrub a hand down my face.
Cup my palms in front of me and scowl at them.
“I’m . . . Jesus, Ellis. I’m pathetic. I can’t eat.
I can’t sleep. When I’m home, I have to stop myself from following her from room to room.
I’m worried I’m going to end up smothering her.
” I can’t even stop myself from taking a cookie. I don’t know how to not be too much.
Ellis battles with his laugh for half a moment before it breaks free. I temporarily forget my worry, outweighed by the joy of making my brother laugh like that. He gets to his feet and claps me on the shoulder hard enough to ground me again.
“Si, save yourself some time and pain, and do your best to believe me, okay? Being pathetic for a woman? Never pathetic.” He passes me another raspberry thumbprint with a sigh, then leans back against a tree. “You remember that mini dirt bike you got for your tenth birthday?”
“Yeah.” The one I crashed after having it for less than six months.
“You wanted it for so long that you built it up in your head, you remember? You wouldn’t ride it for a whole month after you got it.”
“Yeah, Ellis, and I still managed to crash the thing.” Fuck, his metaphors could use some finessing.
He’s chuckling again, the bastard. “I’m just saying. You put the idea of it on a pedestal and then held yourself back because you were afraid of sabotaging it.”
“Which I did. I did sabotage it.”
“Which you learned from,” he says. “We got it fixed and you got better at it and you rode that bike until you couldn’t anymore.
” He turns to me and takes his typical stance.
Arms crossed. Legs braced. All he’s missing is his stern frown.
“That distancing thing, though, and what you’re doing with Bea .
. . In the biz, aka therapy, those are examples of attachment styles. ”
“I’d like to never hear you say in the biz ever again.”
“The bike was avoidant attachment. I think what you’re experiencing with Bea is anxious attachment . . . er, actually maybe it’s also a form of avoidant? I’d have to check the book.” He scratches his head. “This is why it’s important to get advice from a licensed therapist.”
I give him an incredulous look. “Ellis, there was no advice in that statement whatsoever. You tried to give something a name, and you’re not even certain if it’s the right one!”
“All right, here. Let me try this again.” He rakes a hand through his hair, wipes over his mustache, and sinks to his haunches six feet away.
“All I know is, not communicating your needs, not communicating in general, even when you don’t want to burden the people you love .
. . All you’re doing is minimizing yourself.
Bea didn’t fall in love with the minimized version of you. Don’t rob her of you.”
I do my best to give him a grateful smile. He searches me until he’s satisfied, nods, then walks off toward the trucks, whistling gaily as he goes. Uncanny.
I finish my lunch and mull over what he said.
I don’t think he has it totally right. I don’t think I’m withholding myself or making myself smaller.
I’m just . . . trying to take my cues from Bea.
I feel like I’m still on a trial run. A probationary period where I’m being assessed for my dream job.
I’m not sure how to become less aware of that.
In my dingy hotel room that night, I get a picture message from Bea.
Still into this tree, btw.
It’s the giant oak in the backyard with the lights twinkling in the branches.
There’s one thick limb that shoots off straighter than the rest and it’d be perfect to hang a swing from one day.
There’s plenty enough yard for a whole playground, too.
Maybe even a trampoline. My brothers and I could build a dream playhouse in the other corner.
Saying any of this feels like it might be too much.
Stop trying to make me jealous of my own tree, I text. How’d you feel today?
Good. I got sick when I brushed my teeth this morning but otherwise felt great all day. Tired, though. Wanted to catch you before I went to bed.
I notice the picture is from the upper floor. Not sleeping in my bed anymore?
Another image comes through. She’s back in her bed but still wearing one of my shirts. It calms some caveman part of me to know I’m still on her skin.
I put your bedding in the wash a few hours ago when I was still a person with energy and willpower, and unfortunately, it’s not dry yet.
I send her a picture back. Miss you.
Silas!! You’re gonna stretch that out, lol! Comes her reply.
What? I figured if you were stealing my shirts I had free rein to steal one of yours.
It’s a little tight across the shoulders and chest. It’s tight all over, really.
But it’s faded and soft and it made me chuckle when I plucked it out of the laundry.
It says YOU CAN GO TO HELL. I’M GOING TO TOYOTATHON.
I like it on you, she texts. And I miss you, too.
I’ll let you get to sleep.
Good night xx
I’m not going to overthink her not telling me she loves me. I’m hoping to play my cards well enough that I’ll have a whole lifetime to hear her say it.
Sweet dreams.