“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?”
He nods his chin at the place beneath my breast to the side, and I blush.
“No.”
He arches a single brow, and suddenly I’m caving.
“Yes,” I grumble out. “Yes, I still have it.”
His lips pull into a white grin. “Me too.”
He reaches down and snags the hem of his t-shirt, lifting it over that chiseled body. Sure enough, it’s right there, in the same place it was drawn nine years before at the place in Cambridge that only glanced at my ID.
It was my first that night, his fourth or fifth. He’s added more since that night, it appears - much more, in swirls and images and lines of text across his skin. But it’s still there. The tiny outline of a key, with plenty of space around it from the other, newer tattoos.
I shake my head. “We were young, and stupid.”
He grins. “Young, yeah.” Silas shakes his head as he drops his shirt back down. “Not stupid, though.”
“What are you doing here, Silas?”
The question comes tumbling out yet again. Because past all this banter, past this little sugar-coated jaunt down memory lane, it’s the only question that matters right now.
He shrugs again - that same effortless easy and easing motion that hasn’t changed at all as he’s gotten older.
“Told you, Rowan invited me to see your dad’s-”
“Yeah, that’s actually another thing,” I say coolly. “ You and Rowan all buddy-buddy.”
“The guy’s my best friend, Ivy, despite what happened.”
“Well he’s my brother, Silas. Even after what happened.”
I hold his gaze another second before the words come tumbling out.
“He doesn’t know, does he.”
Silas frowns.
I shake my head, raking my fingers through my hair. “No, he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. I’d have heard about it.”