11. Vaughn
ELEVEN
VAUGHN
I’m awake before the alarm, which doesn’t happen often.
When I stay in the lab until late, which is most nights—or was most nights before Silas arrived—I sleep heavily and wake slowly, my body paying the debt I accumulated the day before.
For the last week, I’ve been home for dinner every night without exception.
I tell myself it’s because Silas is a guest and it would be rude to leave him alone in the house all evening, especially when his visits to the lab have been replaced by time spent in my garden.
I’m not entirely convincing myself.
I lie in the dark for a moment, looking at the ceiling and listening to the house. It’s that kind of quiet when the land outside is still and even the birds aren’t yet awake.
Mornings like these are usually seen from the other side. When I’m still awake, rather than I’ve just woken up, and usually what causes the lack of sleep is equations, soil chemistry, or answers to problems that feel like they’re within my grasp but still elude me.
This morning my mind isn’t running equations.
My mind is doing what it’s been doing every night for the last several days, which is considerably less productive and way more inconvenient.
The bedroom across the hall is twelve feet from mine. One door between us. Silas, sleeping or not sleeping, twelve feet away.
I’ve been lying here not knocking on that door every single night since he arrived.
It takes more willpower than I thought it would considering it’s not the first time we’ve slept under the same roof.
I throw back the covers.
What I need is cold air and coffee. I pull on sweatpants and a sweater and go downstairs.
The kitchen is dark except for the light above the stove, which I leave on overnight as a habit left over from when Rowan was young, and somehow, despite him being thirty and no longer living with me, I still do it.
The light on the horizon through the kitchen window is that deep blue that comes in the last half hour before sunrise. Not full dark but also not light yet.
The scent of coffee helps wake up some of my brain cells, so I go to the coffee pot and see it’s not only full, but warm.
Is Silas struggling to sleep too? The house is quiet now, so maybe he made his coffee and went back to bed.
I fill my mug and go out to the back porch, nearly jumping when I see the lone figure on the bench.
“Morning,” he says.
He’s sitting with his own mug held in both hands and his legs stretched out in front of him, wearing a gray long-sleeved shirt, sweatpants, and socks that have little guns on them.
“Cute socks.”
He wiggles his feet. “I have them in lots of colors if you ever want to borrow them to feel lethal in the lab.”
I smile and sit next to him. “Thank you for making coffee.”
“Rowan said the sunrise here is magical.”
“It is, although I rarely get to see it.”
“Really? Why?”
“Go to bed too late.”
He takes in a deep breath, closing his eyes and leaning back on the bench. “If I had this on my doorstep, I’d be out here every morning.”
If he were mine, I’d be out here every morning with him too, which is a too-dangerous thought to have when we’re in this in-between time when anything seems possible.
“Can I ask you a question about HelixGen?” he asks, catching me off guard. He’d seemed interested about it when we were in town days ago, but he hasn’t mentioned it since.
“Shoot.”
“Does it scare you?” he asks. “That another company might try to do what HelixGen did and succeed? That someone will come and change things?”
I gaze out at the valley. At the light beginning to shine at the edges of the mountains.
“That’s the fear everyone has in every good place.
That someone will find it and want to own it.
That the thing that makes it worth finding will be exactly the thing they destroy by finding it.
” I wrap my hands tighter around my mug and take a fortifying sip.
“Sometimes that change is good. New people come, new things happen, the town becomes something slightly different and the difference is worth it.” I take a breath, then conclude, “Sometimes it isn’t because what you lose is something you can’t get back. ”
Silas is quiet and I think about how much my routine has changed since he got here.
The shape of the days, the rhythm of the house, the way I move through the morning and the evening and the hours in between. Those changes are good.
Maybe I got too used to being on my own and moving from one task to another without stopping to appreciate the life around me. Even the little things, such as going into town to grab a box of cookies from Sunrise Bakery for the team.
The birds have started their morning calls now, and the valley is filling with light as the sun comes up, glowing warm on my face.
Silas turns, hooking one leg under the other and resting his arm on the back of the bench. “Why are you still single?”
I turn to him, expecting him to be looking at me, but his eyes are closed and his face is turned to the sunlight.
“I’m always too busy. Always working. When Rowan was younger, I dated a little.
I always wondered if Rowan needed another parent.
Someone else in his corner. Someone he could turn to when things went wrong and I wasn’t enough.
” I glance back at the valley. “But I was always too scared to try and get it wrong. Too scared of bringing someone into his life who wouldn’t stay. ”
“Is that because of his mom?” Silas asks.
“What?” I shift to face him.
He opens his eyes to meet mine. “Rowan told me he doesn’t have a relationship with her. That she left when he was a baby.”
I nod. “We were young, and we weren’t careful.
I don’t regret Rowan. I want to be clear about that.
He’s the best thing I’ve ever done. But I should have made better choices at seventeen.
The choice was hers, and she wanted to keep him.
Said we’d get married one day, go to college together, make it work. She had it all planned out.”
A bird dives toward the house, then swoops away at the last minute.
“I loved her, and she was so positive and happy about it, I guess I went along,” I continue. “Then Rowan was born, and before he’d formed any real attachment to her, she was gone. I got the full custody papers in the mail a few months later.”
Silas listens with an intensity I’ve come to think of as part of who he is. “Were you left all on your own at seventeen with a newborn baby?”
“My parents were extraordinary,” I say. “They stepped in without being asked. Helped me work and save money until I could get a scholarship. I had to move to Denver for college, so Rowan was always with me. He came to lectures in a carrier when he was small, sat in the library while I studied, grew up in university buildings.” I smile at the memory.
“I’m so going to tease him for being a little nerd from birth.”
“He’s a great person,” I say. “I’m very proud of him for who he is.”
The morning has settled around us, and the last of that early chill is gone. The birds are active in the orchard, probably going wild on the apples.
“But now Rowan’s grown and you’re in Pine Ridge on your own … Don’t you get lonely?”
He studies me with those dark, steady eyes.
This is dangerous territory.
“Are you asking if I hook up?”
The corner of his mouth quirks upward. “Is that what you were doing in Warsaw?”
“That was an opportunity,” I say. “I didn’t seek it out. Seth was … Seth was a pleasant coincidence that presented itself, and I considered it until you sat at my table, and that was the end of that.”
“So, you don’t—”
“Not often,” I say. “My work is consuming, and when I have free time, I’m in Denver seeing Rowan or he’s here.
There isn’t a lot of space left over for other people.
” I want to avert my gaze, but I can’t. The short beard that frames Silas’s face makes him appealing.
I should look away, or at the very least I should shut the fuck up, but my mouth has other ideas.
“And I’ve never met anyone conveniently close who would be happy with something uncomplicated. No strings, no expectations. Just …”
“Fucking good sex,” Silas says.
“Just fucking good sex.”
I become aware that in the time since he faced me, we’ve been inching closer.
His gaze darts to my mouth and back up. He’s not subtle, and he’s not trying to be subtle either. We’re on the precipice of a kiss. One I’ve never wanted so badly.
But we can’t.
I stand up. “I’m going to grab a shower,” I say, hoping my voice comes out steadier than I feel right now. “Gotta get to the lab.”
Silas stares up at me with that same expression he wore in Warsaw. He understands, but it fucking sucks.
“Sure,” he says.
I go inside, drop my mug in the kitchen sink, and go straight to the bathroom attached to my bedroom.
Those big brown eyes, that beautiful mouth framed with the short beard, the intelligent brain. I don’t think there’s anything about Silas Cross I don’t love.
But if I’m going to survive having him around until after the festival, then I need to stop trying to be so fucking virtuous and do the only thing I can to relieve this ache I have for him.
I step into the shower, and this time I don’t make it cold. I’ve been doing that every night since Silas got here. It hasn’t helped, and I’m done pretending it’s going to.
The water runs hot down my back, and I wrap my hand around my hard cock, letting myself think about what would have happened if I hadn’t stood up from the bench on the porch. If I’d stayed and let our distance close the rest of the way. If I’d let Silas’s mouth find mine.
Those beautiful, fucking-deep brown eyes that look at me like they’ve seen the world and I’m still the only thing they want. My breath catches with every stroke of my hand. I add soap to make it easier, but I know I don’t need it. This isn’t going to take long.
I let myself think about his hands as he worked in my garden, and that damn tank top riding up, exposing his skin. Those shorts that are absolutely normal shorts, not even short shorts, but on him they’re just sinful.
And most of all, I think about what it would be like to let myself be wanted by Silas. Without restraint.
My free hand finds the wall, and I press my forehead against the warm tile.
“Fuck.”