Silas stays right where he is as I click on my computer, pulling the prescription file up again and opening the live controller screen as I wait for him to join me. But he doesn’t.
I glance over my shoulder, and he’s just standing back, watching me.
“Well, you’ll have to get close enough to see,” I say, gesturing to the laptop.
His throat bobs, and he reaches up to adjust his backwards hat before he finally steps forward. My eyes stay locked on him as he crosses the garage floor, walking straight towards me, and my chest tightens.
He stops just a couple feet away from me, and I fight the overwhelming urge to push up from my stool and pull him into a hug. This is the closest he’s been to me since I’ve been here, and I can’t help but take this moment to look into his hazel eyes, at the familiar flecks of green, and the faint freckles across the bridge of his nose. The small details of Silas I haven’t seen for so long. And I’m suddenly hit with how much I’ve missed seeing them every day.
A smile spreads over my lips, and his gaze drops to it.
But he doesn’t smile back.
Instead, his eyes fill with tears, and he blinks them back as he bites the inside of his lip.
My smile falls as I watch him fight to hold himself together. “What’s?—”
But before I can finish, Silas takes a step back, like he’s going to leave.
I’m off my stool before I can even think about it, stepping towards him in a desperate attempt to keep the space between us from growing any bigger. But as his shoulders stiffen, I stop.
And he stops too.
We stand in complete silence, the only sound coming from the hum of the overhead lights, as Silas keeps his gaze fixed on the concrete floor, and I keep mine on him.
While my heart hurts that he still can’t come all the way to me… I know this is a big step. And I’ll take it.
Silas lifts a hand and gestures towards the laptop, his gaze shifting with it. “What do I do?”
I draw in a slow breath and nod, stepping back to sit on the stool again and give him the space he needs. He stays where he is, so I angle the laptop towards him so he can see.
The live planter profile in the controller interface fills the screen, showing the field boundary map overlaid with management zones and their assigned populations.
“This is the prescription map tied to the planter monitor,” I say. “Each coloured zone represents a section of the field with a different target population. When you cross from one zone into another, the controller adjusts the seed rate automatically instead of holding one flat number across the entire field.”
Silas’s brows draw together as his eyes move across the screen, and I watch his chest rise and fall as tension seems to build within him.
I shift the laptop away and point towards the tractor. “You know, it’s actually better to see it on the display inside the tractor.”
He pulls in a breath and glances up at the cab, and he looks so defeated already. Like he already knows he’s not going to understand this and is ready for failure before he’s even tried. I’m sad that this belief still lives in him, even after everything he’s done here on the farm to prove himself.
He turns towards the tractor, and my eyes immediately land on his ass when his jeans pull tight across it as he steps up onto the ladder and swings himself into the cab.
And once again, my stomach flips, heat travels up my neck, and my heart picks up its pace.
What the actual fuck…
He drops into the seat, and I snap my focus back to the laptop, shifting on the stool as I try to push that visual out of my mind… even though I apparently don’t want to.
“You should see the usual display up there right now,” I say, keeping my eyes on my screen.
Silas doesn’t say anything, so I look at him again, and he’s just staring at the monitor in front of him.
“Silas?”
His eyes snap to mine, then back to the display with a nod. “Yeah.”
“Ok…” I watch him for a moment as he shifts in his seat and awkwardly looks over the display while his fingers twitch.
