Page 69 of The Someday Daughter
“Later,” I say. “I do want to talk about it, later.” I swallow, and Silas watches my throat move. “Right now I just really want to kiss you, if that’s okay.”
He grins. Wide and lopsided, flashing that crooked canine I noticed the very first time we met. Back in Los Angeles, when he saw the worst of me and wanted all of it anyways.
“That’s okay,” Silas says. He closes the distance between us before I have time to do it myself, dropping my hand so he can hold the back of my head. He kisses me gently and then, when I fist a hand into his T-shirt and tug him closer, not gently at all.
I’m still wearing the oldSummit School EMSshirt I slept in and half-damp pajama shorts, but Silas doesn’t seem to mind. He pulls me onto his lap and my knees dip into the sand. His lips are soft and insistent and when he arches to kiss the delicate skin behind my ear I feel it in my stomach: new and warm and wanting. His fingertips press into my rib cage. I run my nails over the back of his scalp and he groans.
“Audrey,” he murmurs, right against my lips. “Jesus.”
“Don’t bring him into this,” I say, breathless. Silas laughs and I smooth my hands over his hair, push it away from his face, hold him steady so we can look at each other.
“I like this,” I say. It’s the first thing I can think of and I just let it come out, no second-guessing. “I like you.”
He smiles, brushes a thumb over my hipbone. “I like you, too.”
Something wet nudges my foot and I yelp, tumbling sidewaysoff Silas’s lap. It’s Puddles, looking at me bewilderedly, and Silas picks her up to drop her onto my stomach. I let out anoofand he moves over us, lowering himself to hold all three of us in place. “Puddles likes you, too,” he says, kissing my cheekbone, then the corner of my mouth.
I look at her, fuzzy little face so close to mine I can’t get it in focus. “I will begrudgingly admit that I also like Puddles.”
“Knew it.” Silas rolls onto his elbow and Puddles wriggles away from us, snuffling over the sand. He watches her go, something moving across his face that I can’t quite place.
“Silas,” I say, and he looks back at me. Dips his chin, kisses me one more time. “What are you thinking about?”
“The mailboxes,” he says. I turn my face so his head’s blocking the sun. It haloes his hair, makes him look like a young god. “In Arkansas. Do you remember?”
“Of course.”
“I left a letter to my mom.” Silas curls a strand of my hair between his fingers, tracking the movement with his gaze. “Told her about you, a little.”
“Really,” I say, and he meets my eyes. Smiles in a shy sort of way that makes me want to eat him alive. “What did you say?”
“That I was hoping for this,” he tells me. “I mean, not the storm, and not even the stuff with Ethan, necessarily. Not so specific, just. That I wanted to be part of your life.” I reach up, touch his cheek, and he turns his chin to press his lips to my palm. “That I’d take any help she could give me.”
“Do you think she made this happen?” I ask, pushing my fingertips into his hair. I can feel the tendons at the back of his neck, the hard knots of bone at the base of his skull.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Do you?”
“No.” I shake my head. I can feel my hair growing sticky with sand but I don’t move to fix it. “I think I’d have wound up here, no matter what. Wanting to be with you.”
“‘It’ll be what it’ll be,’” Silas says, grinning, and I roll my eyes.
“Maybe this once.”
“If only once,” he says, “I’m glad it was this time.”
44
“I don’t want to oversell you on this, but Sadie’s pancakes are a religion.”
I eye Silas, pulling on the cardigan that hangs from my doorknob. “That sounds like an oversell.”
He shakes his head, leans down to kiss me. “You’ll see.”
It’s Sunday morning and we’re in our pajamas; the power’s back on and everyone’s in a celebratory mood about it. Which means, apparently, Sadie’s religious pancakes. When I follow Silas into the kitchen, she’s pulling a carton of buttermilk from the now-functional refrigerator.
“Good morning,” she says, smiling at us as the fridge door falls shut. “You’re both up early.”
It’s 7:06. Puddles woke Silas to take her outside, and then he woke me—quietly opening and closing my bedroom door, nudging under the covers beside me. Getting to be close to him still feels like a trick every time; I’ve spent all summer wanting him and now here he is, mine.
