Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
SILAS
She hums.
Not loudly. Not even on purpose, from what I can tell. Just a low, absent melody while she moves around my kitchen making coffee like she's lived here for years. The percolator is already on the stove. She found the mugs, the sugar, the one can of condensed milk I keep in the back of the cabinet.
Morning light comes through the window and catches her hair.
Strawberry blonde, wavy, falling out of a loose braid she must have done in the dark.
Freckles across her bare shoulders where my flannel has slipped sideways.
Those dimples showing even though she's not smiling, just concentrating on the coffee.
She's been here fourteen hours. I've barely slept. Not because of the nightmare, though that was bad enough. Because every time I closed my eyes, I felt her fingers on my knuckles. Warm and deliberate. Like she wasn't afraid of me even after I grabbed her wrist hard enough to leave marks.
The humming stops. "You stare a lot for someone who doesn't talk much."
"You hum a lot for someone who's been awake twenty minutes."
She grins over her shoulder. Full dimples. My chest does something stupid.
"Coffee's ready. Where do you keep your creamer?"
"Don't have creamer."
"Silas." She says it like I've personally offended her. "How do you not have creamer."
"Condensed milk's on the counter."
She stares at the can, then at me, then pours it into her mug with a resigned sigh. Takes a sip. Her eyebrows go up.
"Okay, that's actually incredible. Don't tell anyone I said that."
Ash nudges her leg, and she drops a hand to his head without looking. He's been glued to her since last night. Follows her from the bed to the kitchen to the porch like she's got a magnet in her pocket. Three years of loyal companionship, undone by a woman in an oversized flannel.
After breakfast, eggs again because my pantry isn't exactly a restaurant menu, she follows me outside. The storm left the world scrubbed clean. Puddles in the garden rows, branches down across the yard. The access road is a mudslide. Not a chance anything's getting through today.
"Can I see the garden?"
Nobody's asked to see my garden before. Ridge comes up here and we sit on the porch drinking beer. He doesn't ask about the tomato cages or the herb rows. He doesn't ask about anything, which is why he's the only family member I can stand.
But Wren is already walking the rows, crouching down to look at the basil. She touches the leaves gently, the way she touched my hand last night.
"You grew all this?"
"Yeah."
"From seed?"
"Most of it. Some starts from a nursery in Reno."
She pulls her camera from the bag. "Can I?"
The shutter clicks before I answer. Then again. She's photographing my garden like it's a cathedral. Moving around the tomato cages, finding angles in the morning light, shooting the raindrops still sitting on the pepper leaves.
"The light is gorgeous up here." Her voice has gone soft, professional. "Golden hour all morning because of the elevation and the tree line filtering everything. This would make an unbelievable venue."
"It's a vegetable garden."
"It's a vegetable garden with better lighting than any reception hall I've ever shot." She straightens up, pushes hair off her face. "Trust me. My whole job is reading light."
Another click. This time aimed at me.
"Don't."
"Why?"
Because nobody takes my picture. Because I don't want to be looked at that closely. Because the scar is worse in direct light, and I already know what it looks like from every angle. I've spent three years not being seen by anyone.
"Just don't."
She lowers the camera. No argument, no coaxing. Just a nod and a quiet "Okay."
We spend the morning in a strange, comfortable rhythm. She helps me retie the tomato plants the storm knocked loose, knotting the garden twine with quick fingers. Asks questions about what I'm growing and why, what the soil is like at this elevation, how the solar panels work.
Questions nobody asks. Questions I answer anyway, somehow, in more words than I've strung together in months.
Over lunch, canned soup heated on the propane stove, she tells me about her grandmother. The woman who taught her photography on a film camera from the seventies. Who died eleven months ago and left Wren the locket she never takes off.
"She would've loved this place," Wren says, running her thumb over the silver chain at her throat. "She always said the best pictures happen where people actually live. Not in studios."
"Smart woman."
"The smartest." Her eyes are bright. Not crying, but close. "She's why I shoot weddings. She said love is the only subject that never gets boring."
I don't have a response to that. Love isn't something I think about. Haven't for years. Solitude is the only relationship I've maintained successfully since I left the hotshot crews, and solitude doesn't ask questions or hum in the kitchen or make my dog switch loyalties.
After lunch, clouds build again. Not as violent as yesterday, but steady rain sets in by two o'clock. We're on the couch reading. She found a paperback on my shelf, some thriller she's tearing through. Ash is on the floor between us. The woodstove is throwing heat.
Quiet. Comfortable. Which is the problem.
I don't do comfortable with people. Comfortable means you stop paying attention. Stop watching for the thing that's about to go wrong. Bobby Callahan was comfortable on the fire line that day. Said the burnover risk was low. Said we had time.
We didn't have time.
Thunder rolls, softer than yesterday but close enough. Wren shifts on the couch, pulling her feet up, tucking them under my thigh without seeming to realize she's done it. Her toes are cold through the sweatpants.
"Sorry." She starts to pull away.
My hand lands on her ankle before my brain catches up. Just holding her there. Still. Her feet against my leg, my palm wrapped around her ankle, both of us frozen.
"It's fine."
Her eyes find mine. Gray-blue. Reading me the way she reads light, looking for the angle, the quality, the truth underneath the surface.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Depends."
"The nightmare last night. Does that happen a lot?"
Anyone else, I'd shut it down. Walk away, change the subject, go split wood until the question evaporated. But she's looking at me without pity. Without therapeutic concern. Just curiosity, warm and patient.
"Sometimes."
"You don't have to tell me what it's about."
"I know."
"But if you ever want to." She shrugs. The flannel slips off her shoulder again. Freckles. Collarbone. My hand tightens on her ankle. "Tell me later. When you're ready."
Tell me later. When you're ready. Like there's going to be a later. Like she's already planning to be around for it.
Lightning flashes. Thunder follows. She flinches, pulling her knees to her chest, and the movement brings her closer on the couch. Close enough that her shoulder touches mine.
"Not a fan of thunder?"
"I appreciate it from a safe distance. This doesn't feel like a safe distance."
"You're safe."
She looks up at me. Close. Inches. Those freckles across her nose, the pale curve of her mouth, the pulse visible in her throat. Her eyes drop to my lips and come back up slowly, without apology.
"Silas."
"Yeah."
"I'm going to kiss you. If that's not okay, say something in the next three seconds."
One. Two.
Her mouth is on mine. Soft at first, tentative, tasting. Her hand comes up to my jaw, fingers threading into my beard, and the gentleness of it wrecks me. I haven't been touched with gentleness in years. Haven't been touched at all.
My hand slides from her ankle up her calf, pulling her closer.
She makes a small sound against my mouth, and I swallow it.
My other hand cups the back of her neck, thumb brushing the chain of her grandmother's locket.
She opens for me, and the kiss goes deep.
Slow. Her tongue against mine, her body turning into me on the couch, her fingers curling in my hair.
The flannel has slipped down both shoulders now. My mouth drags across her jaw to the spot below her ear, and she gasps. Arches into me. Her hands fist in my shirt.
And then a crack of thunder shakes the whole cabin. She jerks back. Ash barks once from the floor.
We're both breathing hard. Her lips are swollen. My hands are shaking.
"That." She touches her mouth. "I've been thinking about that since you carried me through the rain."
"Wren."
"Don't tell me it was a mistake."
"It wasn't a mistake." My voice is rough. Wrecked. "That's the problem."
She smiles. Full, real, devastating. The smile I've been trying to earn since last night.
And I realize I'm in more trouble than I thought.