The one I wanted to save.
The one I thought I could save.
The one I married, before he proved how silly and wrong I could be.
The one who-
“You lost, Slimy?”
I jerk my head up, right into his grinning, cocky face.
Silas.
I’ve walked further down the piers than I thought, lost in my own head. I’m down by the resident slips, and he’s standing a foot above me, perched on the edge of a dilapidated looking tug-boat of some kind.
Yeah, the years have been good to him - ridiculously, unfairly good to him.
He looks older of course, but in that staggeringly handsome way. The lines by his eyes are a little deeper, but only in a way that makes him look better somehow.
Dick.
But there’s the same shadow across his eyes, the same dark hollows in his cheeks. That same perfect nose, and those deep, Atlantic-ocean-blue eyes.
I shake those thoughts away as I hold a hand up and squint through the afternoon sun at him.
“I told you not to call me that.”
Silas grins. “Aww, but I like it.”
I scowl.
“C’mon, you used to like it.”
“When we were ten.”
He chuckles as he shakes his head.
“Enlighten me how I keep running into you like this?”
Silas straightens, raking his nails across the stumble of his chin. “Could ask you the same thing, Hammond.” He winks. “And anyways, you’re trespassing.”
“What?”
He steps back into the low boat moored to the docks and spreads his arms wide.
“You’re on my lawn.”
My brow jerks up as I realize it’s not a tugboat he’s standing on, it’s a houseboat. A very junky, very beat-up, very I-can’t-actually-believe-it’s-floating houseboat.
My nose wrinkles. “You live here?”
“Yep.”
“Here. On a boat?”
Silas rolls his eyes. “It’s a houseboat, yes.”
“It’s a boat.”
He chuckles as he runs his finger thorough his hair. “Yeah, well, it’s home.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “Since when?”
“Since…” He glances down at the watch on his wrist. “Since about an hour ago. Rented through the month.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “You’re staying in Shelter Harbor? Why?”
Silas groans. “You know, you ask a lot of questions in the morning. How did I not remember that?”
I swallow the lump in my chest.
“Because I probably didn’t before,” I shrug. “Whatever, I’ve changed a lot.”
“I can see that.”
His gaze lingers, and I feel the heat before I can stop it. The same sort of forbidden heat from the night before.
My face goes red as I shake my head.
“Listen, you want coffee? I can’t do question-time before coffee.”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
He grins. “C’mon, Sl-” he stops himself, clearing his throat. “C’mon Ivy.”
God the way he says my name. It’s like a lover’s touch all over again - the same velvet sound of his voice from that throat, tugging something inside of me like I’m hardwired to his sound.
“Come on in, I’ve got some brewing.”
I raise a brow skeptically. “You want me to come into your house?”
He laughs. “Oh, so it is a house now?”
I give him a look.
“It’s coffee, Ivy. I think we’re adult enough to have coffee together. I’ll behave.”
His face hardens. “Look, there’s some things I should tell you-”
“There are things you should have told me,” I toss out before I can stop myself.
“Eight years is a long time, you know,” he growls out, moving towards me with his eyes suddenly steely and locked right on me.
I bark out a mirthless laugh. “Believe me, I know.”
“What I mean is, eight years does a lot to change people, Ivy. I’ve changed.”
I swallow thickly. “Well so have I.”
“Yeah you have,” he says darkly, his eyes flicking across my face. “But you’re exactly the same too.”
My mouth tightens, feeling my anger rising at the gall he has to assume he knows a single damn thing about the person I’ve become in a post-Silas world.
“You don’t know anything about me, Silas,” I say tightly. “I am not-”
“You still have it?”