"You'll see." He turned and started down the steps, pausing at the bottom to look back at me, one hand extended in silent invitation. "Trust me?" He asked, and there was something fragile underneath the question, something that made my heart clench.
"Yes." I took his hand, feeling the calluses on his palm, the strength coiled in his fingers, the faint tremor that ran through him at the contact. "I trust you." I said it firmly, letting him hear that I meant it, watching the way something in his expression shifted—relief, maybe, or gratitude.
He led me around the side of my cabin to where a canoe was beached on the shore—I hadn't even heard him bring it. The water was black and still in the pre-dawn darkness, the cypress trees rising like sentinels on either side.
"A canoe?" I looked at him with raised eyebrows, a smile tugging at my lips despite the early hour, taking in the weathered wood and the paddles resting inside, clearly well-used and well-loved.
"Kayaks are too loud." He said it like it was obvious, his pale eyes meeting mine with a hint of something that might have been humor. "And motorboats scare away everything worth seeing." He steadied the canoe as I climbed in, his hand warm on my elbow, guiding me to the front seat with careful precision.
"Everything worth seeing?" I settled into the seat and looked back at him as he pushed us off from the shore, his movements silent and economical, not a single wasted motion.
"You'll see." He said again, and there was a promise in the words, a gift he was waiting to give me. He paddled with the same eerie stillness that characterized everything he did, the oar barely disturbing the water as we glided through the darkness.
The bayou at four in the morning was a different world. The air was cool and thick with moisture, the water like black glass beneath us. I could hear frogs singing in the distance, the occasional splash of something moving through the shallows, the soft hoot of an owl somewhere in the trees.
"Where did you learn to paddle like that?" I asked softly, not wanting to disturb the quiet, my voice barely above a whisper as I watched his silhouette move with practiced grace.
"The military teaches you to move without being seen or heard." He answered, his voice equally soft, the paddle dipping soundlessly into the water. "Useful skill. Didn't think I'd be using it for this." There was a hint of dry humor in his tone, unexpected and oddly charming.
"For taking women on dates at four in the morning?" I teased gently, glancing back at him over my shoulder, catching the way the first hints of dawn light caught on his sharp cheekbones and softened the hard angles of his face.
"For anything good." He said it quietly, and the weight of those words settled between us like a stone dropped into still water. We paddled in silence for a while, the sky slowly lightening from black to deep blue to the first hints of purple and pink. The bayou came alive around us—birds starting to stir, fish jumping, the world waking up one piece at a time.
Then Silas steered us into a narrow channel I would never have noticed on my own, hidden behind a curtain of hanging moss. The passage opened up into a small, secret lagoon, surrounded by cypress trees so old and massive that they seemed to hold up the sky.
"Here." He shipped the paddle and let the canoe drift, his pale eyes scanning the treeline with an intensity that made me hold my breath. "Now we wait." He murmured, his voice barely audible.
"Wait for what?" I whispered back, my green-gold eyes trying to follow his gaze, trying to see what he was seeing.
"Just watch." He pointed toward a massive cypress on the far side of the lagoon, its trunk wider than my cabin, its branches draped with moss like an old man's beard.
I watched. For five minutes, nothing happened. Then ten. I was about to ask what we were waiting for when I saw it—a flash of white in the gray-green foliage. An egret emerged from the branches, its feathers like fresh snow against the dark water. Then another. And another. Within minutes, dozens of birds were taking flight, their wings catching the first rays of sunrise, turning them gold and pink and blazing white.
"Oh." The word slipped out of me on a breath, inadequate for the beauty unfolding before us. "Silas, this is..." I couldn't finish, my throat tight with wonder.
"I found this place three years ago." He spoke softly, his pale eyes fixed on the birds, something almost peaceful in his expression. "I come here when..." He stopped, his jaw tightening.
"When what?" I turned to look at him, really look at him, taking in the tension he carried in his shoulders, the shadows under his eyes, the way his hands gripped the sides of the canoe like he was anchoring himself to something solid.
"When I can't sleep." He admitted, his voice rough around the edges, his gaze still fixed on the egrets. "When the nightmares get bad. When I need to remember that the world can still be beautiful." He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. "I've never brought anyone here before." He finished quietly, finally turning to meet my eyes, and the vulnerability there made my chest ache.
"Why me?" I asked softly, holding his gaze, my heart pounding against my ribs with something that felt bigger than attraction, bigger than want. He was quiet for a long moment, the egrets wheeling overhead, the sunrise painting the water in shades of gold and rose.
"Because you asked for the real me." He said finally, his voice low and rough. "And this is... this is as real as I get." He gestured at the lagoon, the birds, the quiet beauty of the morning. "This is where I come to be a person instead of a soldier. Instead of a..." He stopped, his jaw clenching.
"Instead of a what?" I pressed gently, leaning toward him slightly, wanting to understand, my hand finding his knee in a gesture of support, feeling the tension coiled in his muscles.
"Instead of a weapon." The word came out bitter, edged with old pain. "That's all I was for a long time. All I knew how to be.Point me at something and I'd destroy it." He stared down at his hands, scarred and capable, spread out on his thighs. "I was good at it. Too good." He closed his hands into fists, his knuckles going white.
"What happened?" I asked, keeping my voice soft, giving him the same space I'd given Harper and Remy—room to answer or not, room to be as honest as he could bear. The silence stretched. The egrets settled back into the trees. The sun climbed higher, turning the lagoon to liquid gold.
"I lost them." He said it flatly, the words worn smooth from repetition, from nightmares, from years of carrying them alone. "My unit. All of them." He stared at a point somewhere over my shoulder, his pale eyes gone distant. "Ambush. Bad intel. I was the only one who made it out." His voice cracked on the last word, and he pressed his lips together hard, fighting for control.
"Silas." I breathed his name, my heart breaking for him, for the weight he'd been carrying alone for so long.
"Don't." He held up a hand, stopping me before I could offer comfort he didn't think he deserved. "Don't tell me it wasn't my fault. Don't tell me there was nothing I could have done." His pale eyes finally met mine, and the anguish there was devastating. "I've heard it all. From the brass, from the therapists, from everyone who wasn't there." He shook his head slowly. "They were my brothers. My responsibility. And I watched them die." His voice broke, and he looked away, his jaw working.
I didn't say any of the things he'd told me not to say. Instead, I carefully moved from my seat to his, the canoe rocking gently as I settled beside him, close enough that our shoulders touched. I didn't try to hug him or hold him—I just sat there, a solid presence at his side, letting him feel that he wasn't alone.
