32. Vaughn
THIRTY-TWO
VAUGHN
He looks terrible.
That’s my first impression in this restaurant garden with the lights strung above us and the warm smell of cooking coming through the kitchen door as Silas sits motionless, an expression on his face I’ve never seen before.
I’m not at my best, because between my son being shot and Silas leaving without so much as a goodbye, sleep seems to be a lost privilege.
But Silas? He looks like he’s lost a lot more than sleep.
And I know what he looks like when he sleeps. I have nights of it filed away in my brain. Those memories are bookmarked for easy access in my weakest moments, when it’s just me and the cold space beside me in my bed.
The person standing in front of me has not been sleeping. There are shadows under his eyes and a dullness that wasn’t there in Pine Ridge.
Rowan told me very little about what happened when Silas visited him in the hospital. He said Silas had explained everything and said he was retired from his job as a—and I still can’t wrap my head around it—hit man.
I was too confused to ask for more.
Too confused and too hurt and too full of knowledge I didn’t know what to do with: the revelation in the waiting room, the almost detached quality in his voice when he said I was hired to kill you, the way he said everything that happened between us was real, and the way I wanted to believe it and didn’t know if I could.
I came home to the farm, walked through the house, and found not a single trace Silas had ever been there.
It was as if the past four weeks had been a dream, but only if I didn’t still have the taste of his lips lingering on mine and my son in a hospital bed to prove he had been here. That for a moment everything felt real.
And now Silas is sitting across a table from me in a restaurant garden in Atlanta, looking like he hasn’t slept in a month, and Rowan has just walked out with the satisfied energy of someone whose plan has come together.
The garden is way too quiet. Too early for diners to start flooding the small space, but it won’t be long until we’re no longer alone.
Neither of us says anything until Silas takes in a breath of air and expels, “What are you doing here?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“I don’t know. Is it?”
I look at the table. At the lights above us and the waiter lingering in the background, his presence reflected in the glass of the hanging lanterns.
“Rowan said he was going out of his mind in Pine Ridge. That he wanted to come to Atlanta for some exhibition of historical weaponry.” My voice turns dry. “Which I’m now fairly convinced isn’t an actual thing.”
Silas says nothing.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know he was going to do this. I made him promise we wouldn’t see you.”
Silas stands up. “Don’t break promises on my account.”
“Silas,” I say. “Sit down.”
He levels his brown eyes on me, and my heart breaks at the misery in their depths.
“Please.”
He sits.
I open my mouth, but I’m not sure what to say, other than I want to keep staring at your beautiful eyes, and I hope if I do it long enough, they’ll stop looking so tired and sad. Which is my fault, but I don’t know how to express everything I’m feeling without maybe making it worse.
“I’m sorry,” he blurts out.
I close my mouth.
What?
“I’m sorry. I never wanted things to be this way,” he says.
“I never—” He searches for the words. “I never intended to act on my feelings toward you. That was never the plan. The plan was to go to Pine Ridge, find out who wanted you dead, keep you safe, and leave without … without complicating things.”
His eyes meet mine briefly before they focus on the small artificial candle between us on the table.
“And then I got to Pine Ridge, and Tess and Clayton were so welcoming. Everyone was, and it was the first time in my life, apart from Rowan, that I felt like people didn’t want anything from me in exchange for something.
They were just there, making me part of their community as if I had a right to be there.
I couldn’t … I couldn’t help indulging in the kind of life I’ve only ever dreamed of.
And I know that’s not an excuse. I know that doesn’t explain the lying, and I know it doesn’t fix any of it … ”
I want to reach out to him, but this moment feels so fleeting I truly believe that if I so much as breathe too loudly I’ll scare him off.
“It kills me,” he continues, and his voice is lower now, “that I still don’t know exactly who placed the contract.
Vertex Holdings, yes, but the specific person?
I don’t know. I failed at the thing I went to Pine Ridge for.
” He looks at his hands. “But I know the threat is gone and your research is safe … And I promise I’ll stay out of your way.
I’m not going to— I’m not going to make this harder than it already is. ”
His eyes rise to meet mine again.
“But I need you to know,” he says, “that I’m not giving up Rowan.
I know it might be selfish. But Rowan has been the light in my life since the day he decided we were going to be friends and didn’t give me a choice about it.
He’s the only person who has ever— He doesn’t take any shit from me, and he loves me anyway.
Unconditionally. Without an agenda. And I know that what happened between us makes everything complicated, and I know that you might not want me near your family.
and I understand that, I do, but I can’t—” His voice has gone rough at the edges. “I can’t give him up. I won’t.”
This man, with the frazzled, weary edges of someone who hasn’t slept for weeks, sat down across from me and apologized first and is asking me not to take away the one person who has always shown up for him.
I think about the beds he tended in my garden and the coffeepot already full in the morning.
I think about our morning conversations on the porch and the valley in the early light and that first kiss in my kitchen.
Silas just looks at me.
It’s the full gaze. The one with nothing held back.
Like he’s saying goodbye.
He stands up.
“Silas—”
He’s already moving.
The server appears beside me as if he’s been waiting for this moment to pounce.
“Can I get you anything?” he asks.
I stand up, kicking my chair back. “I’m sorry … I have to …”
The mostly residential area was quiet when I arrived at the restaurant to meet Rowan, but it is busier now.
I look around for Silas, but it’s like he’s a ghost. Still, I keep searching the passersby. It takes me a while to see him. He’s about thirty feet ahead by the crosswalk. I pick up the pace to catch up to him.
“Silas!” I call.
He turns around, and for a moment I think he might bolt, so I don’t give him a chance. When I get within touching distance, I take his hands in mine and pull them up to my chest. “You’re wrong.”
He glances at the people waiting to cross the road before his eyes land on mine. “About what?”
“Rowan isn’t the only one.”
His eyebrows lower with confusion.
“The only one what?” he asks with care.
“Who loves you without conditions.”
The street is busy around us: people talking to each other as they wait to cross the road, the chirp of the traffic light when it finally turns green.
But I keep my eyes fixed on his, hoping he can see in them something that validates my words.
For a whole month I wondered what I’d say to him if we met again, even if I wasn’t sure it was something I could face. I’ve been sitting on the porch at the farm in the early morning with my coffee and the valley ahead of me, thinking about what I would say if I had the chance to say it.
None of those versions feels right out here, fifteen-hundred miles away from my safe space.
“I loved you before I knew I did,” I say.
“I loved you before I knew who you were. In Warsaw, at the hotel, when you sat down at my table and said you were one of my favorite people, I loved you then.” I squeeze his hands, shaking them for emphasis.
“I loved you in my kitchen and in my garden and on my porch at five in the morning, and I loved you under the fireworks, and I’ve been loving you for a long time before I could even name it as what it was. ”
Silas doesn’t squeeze back, but I keep going.
“And even if I could have helped it,” I say, “I wouldn’t have.
Even if there had been a version of this where I had a choice, I would have chosen it anyway.
Because being with you was the only time in my life that I felt like I was the main character—not the scientist. Not the single father.
Not the man who eats dinner standing by the counter because sitting down at the table is a reminder of how alone I’ve allowed myself to become.
With you I’m the main character. The one the story is about. ”
Silas releases a breath. “What are you saying, Vaughn?”
I smile. “I thought it was obvious.”
I release his hands and put one hand on the back of his neck and the other against his cheek because I need to feel him closer, and warm and real and here, on this pavement in Atlanta.
“I’m the one who needs to apologize, Silas. For how I behaved that night at the hospital.”
Something moves through his expression. “Vaughn—”
“I shut down,” I say. “I know I did. You told me the truth, and I—”
“Your son was fighting for his life,” Silas says, his voice quiet and certain. “And I chose that moment to tell you I’d been lying to you for weeks … years. I don’t think there’s a right way to react to something like that. I don’t think you owe me an apology for how you responded.”
The traffic light changes, and more people gather to cross, so I pull him away, closer to the building.
“Maybe so,” I say. “But it took me far too long to realize something.” I hold his gaze, hoping he sees honesty and adoration in mine.
“I don’t think I care. About who you are or who you’ve been.
I’ve been sitting with it for a month, and I keep coming back to the same place.
If you weren’t a … hit man … if you weren’t on that last job, I wouldn’t be here now, and I really want to be here, living this life because”—I stroke his cheek, his beard longer than I’ve ever seen it rasping under my thumb—“the way you make me feel is more important than any of it. The way I feel when you’re with me and the way I feel when you’re not. And I know—”
Silas kisses me. He grips my shirt in his fists, stopping me from moving away—as if I would. I respond with everything I have. My tongue swipes over his, tasting him, playing, claiming.
When we break apart, we’re breathing hard. We’re chest to chest, and his heart beats against mine.
He drops his forehead to mine.
“I love you,” he says. “I love you so much. I’ve loved you for so long that I don’t remember what it felt like before. I really tried not loving you. That’s why I stayed away, but one evening with you in Warsaw, even with everything that was happening, I just knew.”
“I know,” I say. “I know.”
He pulls back slightly and looks at me.
“I don’t know what to do with my life,” he says. “I’m serious. I have a suitcase and an apartment that’s for sale, and I have absolutely no plan, and I—” He swallows hard. “I’m so lost, Vaughn. I don’t know who I am when I’m not doing the job.”
I study him, thinking about a man who grew up in a system that kept moving him on. Who spent years working to get himself to college. Who has been a weapon for ten years because someone decided his particular gifts were useful and he needed somewhere to belong.
“Come to Pine Ridge,” I say.
He cocks his head, a question in his eyes.
“Come home. Your family is there,” I say. “Rowan is there, at least for now. Tess and Clayton are there. The Knot Today folks who gave Sir Squash-a-nova a commendation for realism are there.” I hold his gaze. “I’m there.
“The vegetable beds need attention,” I add. “I’ve been doing my best, but the drainage is still not right, and you’re the only person who knows what it needs.”
Something moves through his expression. The almost-smile becomes a real, unfiltered one.
“The drainage?”
“Yes,” I say. “It’s a genuine problem. I need help.”
I’m so full of bullshit.
“Come home.”
“I guess I could have a look at your … beds.”