Chapter 10
Silas
I stand on the sidewalk for four minutes after he walks away.
I count. It's the only thing my brain can do that isn't replaying the sound of his voice going flat, it's fine, don't worry about it, the customer service mask sliding over his face like a door closing. Like something I'd spent a week carefully opening had been shut and locked from the inside.
My lion is furious. Not at Devin, at me. The low steady warmth that's been building all week has turned into something sharp and agitated, pacing behind my ribs, snarling at the part of my brain that opened its mouth and ruined everything.
I get on my bike. Ride to the bar. Don't remember the ride.
The bar is quiet. It's always quiet, because the bar isn't really a bar. It's the pride's living room with taps and a pool table and sixty years of oak. Nobody comes here who isn't family.
Knox is behind the bar. Ezra's on his stool with his tea and his laptop.
Nico's beside him, working through NSRC case files, their shoulders touching.
Jason's in the kitchen. Vaughn's somewhere, garage, probably.
The bar smells like oak and cooking oil and years of people crammed into not enough room.
Knox looks at me. One look. His face changes.
"What happened?"
"Nothing."
"Silas."
"I fucked up."
He pours me a beer without asking. Sets it on the bar. Waits.
I don't know how to explain it. The walk, the conversation, the kiss that escalated.
His back against the wall and his hips rolling against mine and the sound he made, that small wrecked sound that went straight through me.
How good it was. How right. How my hands knew exactly where to go and his body responded like we'd been doing this for years instead of hours.
And then my brain. My stupid, responsible, thirty-two-year-old brain catching up to what my body was doing.
He turned twenty-one yesterday. He lives in a shelter.
He has nothing and you have everything and he said don't stop without hesitation and what does that mean?
What does it mean when someone with no safety net says don't stop to the person who represents safety?
"I was kissing him," I say. "Against a wall. It was good. And then I stopped."
Knox's expression doesn't change. "Why?"
"Because he's twenty-one. Because yesterday he was twenty. Because he lives in a youth shelter and has three shirts and a countdown clock to homelessness and I had him against a brick wall and he would have let me do anything."
"And?"
"And that's — Knox, the power imbalance —"
"What power imbalance?"
I stare at him. "He has nothing. I have a home, a pride, stability. He —"
"He has a job," Knox says evenly. "A plan. A timeline. A brain that works. He's not a child, Silas."
"I know he's not a child —"
"Do you?" Knox leans on the bar. "Because pulling away from him in the middle of a kiss and telling him it's because he's twenty-one, that's treating him like a child. That's you deciding he can't know his own mind."
"That's not what I —"
"That's exactly what you did." Knox's voice isn't harsh.
It's the voice he uses when he's being precise, the alpha voice, the one that doesn't waste words.
"You decided he was too young and too vulnerable to choose you.
You made that decision for him. How do you think that felt for a kid who's probably had every decision made for him his entire life? "
Ezra looks up from his laptop. "What did he say? When you stopped."
"He said it's fine, don't worry about it. And he left."
"Customer service voice?"
"How did you —"
"Because that's what people do when they've been rejected and they're trying to survive it." Ezra's voice is quiet, precise. "I did the same thing to Nico. Three days of the wall, distance, careful politeness, the mask. Because it was easier than admitting I wanted something I was afraid to have."
Nico glances at Ezra but doesn't add anything. Doesn't need to. The weeks of Nico in his booth and Ezra on his stool, the distance and the circling and the slow collapse of every wall between them. We all watched it happen.
"The question isn't whether he's too young," Ezra says. "The question is whether you trust him to know what he wants."
"He's twenty-one —"
"And I was twenty-eight when I almost let Nico walk out of this bar because I was afraid my lion wanted him for the wrong reasons.
" Ezra closes his laptop. "Age doesn't make you smarter about this.
Experience doesn't make you smarter about this.
Wanting someone is terrifying at any age.
The only thing that matters is whether you show up. "
Jason appears in the kitchen doorway, plate in hand. He's been listening, of course he has. "What time's the date?"
"Seven. Lucia's."
"You're running out of time."
"He might not come."
"He might not," Jason agrees. "But you should be there anyway.
Because if he does show up, after you stopped kissing him and made him feel like it was about his age, after he walked away because that's probably the only survival skill he has, if he shows up after all that, that's a twenty-one-year-old who's braver than you. "
The bar is quiet. Knox's eyes on me. Ezra's. Jason's.
"Go," Knox says. "And Silas?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't apologize for wanting him. Apologize for making him think you didn't."
* * *
Lucia's is small and warm and smells like garlic and bread.
The kind of place Jason would approve of, simple, honest, the food doing the work instead of the décor.
Twelve tables with white cloths and candles.
A bar along one wall with wine bottles stacked to the ceiling.
Quiet enough to talk. Loud enough to not be overheard.
I'm at a corner table at just before seven. The waiter brings water and bread and I don't touch either because my stomach is a knot and my hands won't stay still. I've positioned myself facing the door, safety position, the same way Devin sits in the café, and I watch every person who walks in.
It's after 7. He's still not here.
He's not coming. Of course he's not coming.
I told him his age was a problem while I had him against a wall, and he heard what every foster kid hears when someone pulls away.
You're not enough, you're too much trouble, this was a mistake.
I know that's what he heard because Robin told me about the interview where his hands shook, because Margaret told me she lets him stay because she sees what he needs, because I counted twenty-two minutes of sleep in a library chair and the way he flinched awake like the world was something that happened to him and not with him.
I should go. Sitting here in a restaurant waiting for someone I hurt is —
The door opens.
Devin.
His hair is slightly damp from the drizzle outside. He's standing in the doorway scanning the room, exits, occupants, threats, and then his eyes find me and he stops.
He looks terrified.
He came anyway.
I stand. I don't know why. Instinct, or something my mother taught me about standing when someone enters a room, or just the need to be on my feet when the bravest person I've ever met walks toward me.
He crosses the restaurant. Twelve tables. An eternity. His hands are in his jacket pockets, his shoulders slightly hunched, every line of his body saying I'm here but I'm ready to leave.
He stops at the table. Looks at me. His jaw is tight. His eyes are guarded. Not the full mask, not the customer service blank. A door that's closed but not locked.
"Hi," he says.
"Hi." My voice comes out rough. "You came."
"You said you'd be here."
"I said I'd be here whether you came or not."
"I know." He pulls his hands from his pockets. They're shaking slightly. "I almost didn't."
"I'm glad you did."
He looks at the table, the bread, the water, the candle, the two place settings. Then back at me. His expression shifts. Not softening, not yet. Assessment. The careful evaluation of someone deciding whether to stay.
"Sit down?" I ask. Not a command. A question.
He sits.
I sit across from him. The candle between us throws warm light on his face, catches the dark of his eyes. He looks exhausted and beautiful and so young that my chest aches, and I need to say this right or I'm going to lose him.
"I owe you an explanation," I say.
"You don't owe me anything."
"I do. Because what happened on the sidewalk, I did that badly."
"Silas —"
"Please. Let me say this." I wait until he nods, barely. "I didn't stop because of your age. I stopped because of mine."
His eyebrows, the argumentative ones, draw together.
"I'm thirty-two. I have a home, a family, a pride that would do anything for me.
You're twenty-one and you have hardly anyone and almost nothing.
And when I had you against that wall and you said don't stop, I panicked.
Not because you're too young. Because I have so much more than you, and I was afraid that what you wanted wasn't me. It was what I represent."
Devin's face goes very still.
"Safety," I continue. "Stability. Someone who stays. And you deserve all of those things, but I need them to not be the reason you're with me. I need it to be the books and the notes and the smiley faces and the way you argue about Eragon. I need it to be real."
The stillness holds for a long moment. The restaurant murmurs around us, silverware, conversation, the kitchen working. The candle flickers.
"Are you done?" Devin asks quietly.
"Yeah."
"Okay." He picks up the bread basket. Tears off a piece. Eats it. Takes his time. Then: "You're an idiot."
I blink.
"You think I'm with you because you're stable? Silas, I didn't even know you had a home for the first few days. I thought you were some quiet guy who read books in a library. You could have been homeless yourself and I still would have put that note in your pastry box."
"Dev —"