Our eyes met.
His gaze traveled down my frame—slow, assessing,enjoying. He paused at the flannel slung over my arm.
I saw the moment he recognized it. His eyes softened, just a little. His lips parted like he might say something…but he didn’t.
Neither did I.
Because the room had gotten loud again—Willow greeting Delilah with a grin, Rhett hollering for help in the kitchen, Beau scooping Hazel into his arms—and I was still just standing there, hurricane pitcher in hand, heart beating loud enough to drown out the music.
But Silas didn’t look away.
CHAPTER 12
Silas
The chaos had quieted.
Dinner had been loud—Hazel passing from arm to arm like she was the goddamn royal baby, Milo begging under the table with sparkling brown eyes, Holden telling some story about a local ghost down in Guatemala that had Beau nervously knocking on wood every five seconds. Laughter, clinking silverware, overlapping voices…too much to talk to her, to apologize.
But now the sun had slipped low, the sky turning lavender at the edges. Hazel had given into sleep, curled up on Rhett’s chest with her tiny fist clenched in his shirt. Delilah, Whit, Beau, and Holden were on the porch, passing a joint and arguing over which Fleetwood Mac song was sexiest—though it seemed Delilah and Whit were the only ones participating at this point.
And June…
June was standing in the yard barefoot, holding a drink in one hand and my flannel in the other.
The porch light glowed a short distance away, but she was mostly backlit by fireflies—little flickers of goldrising and falling around her legs, the hem of her dress, her long hair. She wasn’t doing anything special, just…standing there.
And I couldn’t stop looking.
It had only been a week since the snakebite, and I felt like I’d been starving just for aglimpse of her. Now, I had to drink my fill while I could, before I fucked everything up again. I wanted to tell her I was sorry for how I’d behaved, make sure she knew she could tell me anything…but I didn’t know the first thing about being something to someone.
She turned her head a little, just enough for the porch light to catch the side of her face—her freckled cheek, full lips, the dark line of lashes. I thought she might look back and catch me starin’. I almost hoped she would.
That, at least, would give me an in…maybe make this less awkward.
I reached into my pocket, searching for the trinket I’d brought her. I’d salvaged a piece of old oak from one of the pews, sanded it smooth, stained it with cedar oil and scratched a hexafoil into it—an old symbol that Hazel used to scratch into thresholds and the insides of our lunchboxes. Through that charm, I’d threaded a length of leather cord…not because I wanted to charm her with a gift, but because I needed her protected.
If I was going to ask her to put herself at risk to be with me—no matter how superstitious that risk was—I wanted her safe.
I made my way down the porch steps, hoping none of the stoner crew would notice—and I was relieved to see they seemed fully distracted by Whit and Delilah’s verbal sparring match, or maybe just too high to give a shit. June didn’t hear me either, only looking over her shoulder when I was a few steps away, and she didn’t stop me from coming to stand beside her.
In fact…she smiled.
“You done avoiding me, Mr. Ward?” she asked.
I smiled down at the firefly-lit grass. “I’m done avoiding you, Reverend Fontenot.”
She let out a soft hum, eyes back on the horizon. “Well, that’s a relief. I was starting to think I’d imagined the whole thing. Snakebite, flannel, heat-of-the-moment kissing, existential breakdown in a house of God…”
“Pretty vivid imagination if you did.”
June laughed—quiet, dry, like she was trying not to wake the ghosts tucked under the eaves of the Ward house. “It was vivid, alright.”
We stood there for a minute, the kind of silence that didn’t beg to be filled. The sky was purple now, almost navy, and the air smelled like cut grass and honeysuckle. I looked down at the charm still clutched in my palm, then held it out to her.
“I made this for you,” I said.
She turned, brows lifting, reaching out to take it. Her fingers brushed mine—just enough to start a low, stupid thrum in my chest.
