Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
WREN
Morning three. The rain stopped sometime before dawn, leaving the world outside the cabin windows dripping and green. Silas is already up when I wake, which tracks. The man sleeps like a soldier, light and brief, and he's always vertical before the sun clears the ridge.
Coffee is on the stove. Two mugs on the counter, mine already doctored with condensed milk. He remembered how I take it from yesterday.
My last boyfriend didn't learn my coffee order in eight months.
Through the kitchen window, Silas is in the garden shirtless, staking up tomato plants the second round of rain knocked sideways.
The burn scar covers most of his right shoulder, trailing down his ribs in a map of ridged tissue.
In the early light it's copper and silver, and he moves like he's forgotten it exists.
Reaching, bending, tying off twine with his teeth when his hands are full.
Every muscle in his back flexes when he pulls the stakes tight. His jeans ride low on lean hips. Forearms corded, hands sure.
My thighs press together on the kitchen chair.
Two days. Two days in this cabin, and this man has taken up permanent residence in my brain.
The quiet way he does things. How he answers my questions in full sentences now, not just single words, like I've slowly convinced him that talking won't kill him.
The way he put his hand on my ankle last night and held me there, and then kissed me until I forgot my own name.
And then stopped.
He kissed me back. Fully, completely. His hand on my neck, his mouth on my jaw, his body turning into mine with want so obvious I could feel it through his jeans.
Then the thunder cracked, Ash barked, and the moment broke.
We sat on opposite ends of the couch pretending to read for an hour before I went to bed alone, vibrating with so much unspent energy I could have powered his solar panels.
Ash bumps my hand. One ear up, one flopped, tail wagging slow. He's been splitting his time between us, torn in his loyalties, sleeping on the bedroom floor near me but following Silas outside every morning.
"Your dad is killing me," I tell the dog. "You know that, right?"
Ash wags harder. Complicit.
By the time Silas comes inside, I've made scrambled eggs. His eyebrows lift a fraction when he sees the plates on the table.
"You cooked."
"I'm a passable cook when the ingredients are limited to eggs, butter, salt. Don't get excited."
He sits. Eats. We don't talk about the kiss. Fine. I can be patient. Patience is literally my job. I once waited forty minutes for a flower girl to stop crying at a ceremony in Tahoe. I can outlast one stubborn mountain man.
After breakfast, he takes me to check the road. We walk the half mile in rubber boots he found in the shed, mine stuffed with socks to keep them from falling off. The access road is still soup. Deep ruts, standing water, a section near the curve where the mud is shin-deep.
"Tomorrow," he says, studying the drainage pattern. "Maybe. Day after is more likely."
One more day. Possibly two.
"There are worse places to be stuck."
He glances at me. Something warm moves through those hazel eyes before he shuts it down. He's good at that. Opening a door an inch, letting me see the light behind it, then closing it before I can step through.
Back at the cabin, afternoon sun breaks through the clouds for the first time since I arrived.
The garden steams. Everything smells like wet earth.
Silas splits wood in the yard while I sit on the porch steps editing photos on my camera's display screen, deleting the duds from my last wedding shoot.
"Can I ask about the scar?"
The axe pauses mid-swing. He sets the log, brings the blade down clean, stacks the split halves. Takes his time. I don't push.
"Wildfire." He drives the axe into the stump. "Burnover in Idaho. Nine years ago. Fire crowned over our position. I pulled a guy out from under a fallen tree."
"While it was burning."
"Yeah."
"And the people who didn't get out?"
The muscle in his jaw works. "Three. My crew boss Bobby. Martinez. A kid named Darren who'd been on the line six weeks."
The grief in his voice is old but alive. Calcified around his bones.
"That's why you live up here."
He picks up the axe again. Splits another log. "Part of it."
"And the rest?"
"The rest is that I spent twelve years watching things burn. People, forests, houses with kids' toys in the yard. After a while you start to believe that's all the world does. Burns. So I came up here, built something fireproof, and stopped watching."
The honesty of it sits in my chest. This man who pulled a stranger out of fire and then walked away from everything because the cost of caring was too high.
"You're not broken, Silas."
His hands go still on the axe handle. "You don't know that."
"I photograph people for a living. Hundreds of couples. Thousands of faces. I know what broken looks like." Standing, I cross the yard to him. Close. Close enough to see his pupils dilate. "You're not broken. You're just convinced you have to be."
His hand comes up. Rough fingers against my jaw, thumb tracing my cheekbone. My pulse hammers.
"You're gonna be gone in two days." Low. Rough. Not a warning. A fact he's trying to make himself believe.
"So make the two days count."
He kisses me. No hesitation, no slow build. His mouth takes mine, and his hands grip my hips to pull me flush against his body. The axe clatters off the stump somewhere behind him. He walks me backward until my shoulders hit the porch post, pinning me there with his weight.
My fingers find the waistband of his jeans. His stomach muscles tighten under my touch. The scar is under my palm, the ridged skin warm from the sun, and he tenses for one second before I press my lips to the edge of it where it meets his collarbone. He exhales hard.
"Inside."
We barely make it through the door. His mouth doesn't leave my neck. My fingers fumble with his belt. Ash lifts his head from his bed, takes one look at us, gets up and walks himself out the dog door. Smart animal.
Silas pulls the flannel over my head. No bra underneath, and his eyes rake down my body with an intensity that makes my nipples tighten. My breasts are full, heavy, and his hands cup them both. Rough thumbs dragging over my nipples until I arch into his palms.
"Fuck." His voice is gravel. "You're perfect."
The sweatpants go next. His thumbs hook the waistband, sliding them down my hips, his mouth following the path along my stomach. He drops to his knees on the cabin floor. Looks up at me from below with those gold-flecked eyes.
Then his mouth is on me.
My hand grabs the back of his head as his tongue drags flat and slow through my pussy.
He eats me like he does everything else.
Thorough. Patient. Focused. One hand gripping my thigh to hold me open, the other splayed across my stomach, holding me against the wall.
His tongue circles my clit with maddening precision, then sucks gently. My knees buckle.
He catches me. Of course he does.
Lifts me. Carries me to the bed. Lays me down, strips his jeans and pulls a condom from the nightstand drawer. My eyes track down his body. Lean, scarred, hard everywhere. His cock is thick, flushed, straining toward his stomach.
He rolls the condom on, settles between my thighs. The head of his cock drags through my wetness, nudging my clit, and I gasp. His forehead drops against mine. Those hazel eyes holding me.
He pushes inside with one long, deep stroke.
"Oh God." My nails dig into his shoulders. He's big, stretching me full, and the ache of it blooms into something electric when he pulls back and drives in again. Deeper. Harder.
"Right there." My hips tilt up to meet him. "Don't stop."
He doesn't stop. His pace is steady, devastating, each thrust angled to drag against the spot that sends sparks up my spine. One hand slides between us, his thumb finding my clit, rubbing tight circles while he fucks me.
"Come for me, Wren."
The orgasm tears through me. My back arches off the bed, his name breaking apart in my mouth. He follows two strokes later, burying himself deep, his face pressed into my neck.
Quiet. Just breathing. His solid weight on me.
His lips press against the chain of Gran's locket. Soft. Deliberate. And something inside me cracks wide open. Not grief. The opposite. Something bright and terrifying that feels an awful lot like falling in love with a man I've known for three days on a mountain I can't leave.
"Silas."
"Yeah."
"Is it wrong that I don't want the road to clear."
He lifts his head. Looks at me. Those eyes are unguarded for the first time since I met him. Raw and warm and scared.
"No. Me neither."
And I know, lying in this bed in this cabin on this mountain, that I'm in love with him. That it's too fast and too much and that none of that matters. Gran always said love isn't a slow exposure. Sometimes it's a single frame that captures everything.
This is my single frame.