Swallowing, the shower pounds on around us. My hands are still resting against his shoulders, sliding now and then from the water. I don’t move them.
“I don’t want this to stop,” I say.
That confession is smaller than the others, but somehow more frightening.
He closes his eyes for half a second, like it physically pains him to hear it.
“Neither do I,” he whispers.
The answer goes straight through me.
Then he opens his eyes again, and whatever softness had started to bloom there gets held carefully in check. Not extinguished.
Controlled.
“But tonight it has to.”
The words feel like a hand closing around my throat.
My fingers curl against his skin. “Silas-”
“The next time I touch you,” he says, voice low, “I’ll be sober.” His thumb brushes once over my hip, a movement so slight I almost miss it. “And you won’t spend a single second wondering what it means to me.”
I can’t breathe for a beat.
Because I believe him.
Because he means it.
He steps back then.
The loss of his body is immediate. Cold air hits wherever he was touching me. Water keeps falling between us, but now it feels like a barrier instead of an excuse to stay close. He pushes wet hair back from his face, reaching for a towel hanging near the sink, wrapping it low around his waist with a sharp, efficient movement that somehow only makes him look more appealing. Bruised chest. Bare shoulders. Damp skin. The moth at his hip vanishing beneath the white cotton.
He looks at me one last time.
Really looks.
My ruined tank top clings to the floor of the shower. My hair is soaked. My lips are swollen from his mouth. My whole body is still flushed from his hands, his tongue, the hard promise of what almost happened.
His gaze drags over me slowly.
“You look fucking beautiful,” he says.
That’s all he says before opening the bathroom door, leaving me standing under the spray with steam in my lungs and his restraint burning hotter than anything he could have done if he’d stayed.
CHAPTER 19
Silas
Morning makes everything feel more unforgivable.
That is the first real thought I have when I step into the dining room and see her already sitting at the table, coffee steaming near her elbow, hair still a little damp from the shower, as if she didn’t spend last night underneath my hands trembling hard enough to make me forget my own name for a few brutal, glorious stretches of time.
The room looks painfully normal.
Steph has set out breakfast with the same quiet efficiency she always does, plates arranged neatly, fruit cut up, toast in a basket, coffee poured. Jacob is reading something on his phone between bites, the kind of small domestic ritual that belongs to safe households and ordinary mornings. Sunlight spills over the table in broad, clean bands. It catches on Octavia’s mouth when she lifts her cup. That alone is enough to send me straight back into the shower.
Steam.
