“I thought about telling you I didn’t want you any more,” he says. “Saying that this had all been fake, the sex was great but nothing special. That this was fun but it needed to be over, because you deserve someone who’s never gotten drunk and driven home and the whole way thought about how fast and which curve and what tree.”
He looks at me again, and his voice goes softer.
“I haven’t in years,” he says, then swallows. “But you know it never goes away, just fades.”
“I know,” I say, and take his hand.
“I’m too selfish, Kat,” he says, and a weird, broken laugh comes out of his throat. “I want you here. I want you with me. I want to keep you, in all your sharp, angry glory, and it turns out I can’t sacrifice all that on the altar of thinking I know what’s best for you.”
I don’t feel sharp and angry, just then. I feel soft as a feather mattress.
“You don’t know what’s best for me,” I point out, and it gets the first smile from him I’ve seen all night.
“That was the other reason,” he says. “That’s some condescending, patriarchal bullshit and if anyone here found out they’d light me on fire.”
“I’d be first.”
“You’d have to line up behind my sister, I think she’s got dibs.”
“I like her.”
“You would.”
I turn our hands so our fingers can twine together, and Silas gives me a long, slow look.
“You know, I got ordained on the internet and performed their wedding ceremony,” he says, and his voice is quiet again, rough like velvet rubbed the wrong way. “And I lied through my fucking teeth the whole time.”
For some reason I glance over my shoulder, back toward the cabins where Levi and June are somewhere, huddled together, worrying.
“I said all the right things, up there. Marrying my best friend to my sister,” he goes on. “About love and happiness and two souls intertwined and blah fucking blah. You know the deal. You’ve heard people talk about soulmates and shit. And I did not believe one fucking word of it.”
“About them?” I ask, because even though I’ve seen them together for about thirty seconds, they seemed genuine.
“About anyone,” Silas says. “I thought they were all lying and saying what they thought they were supposed to say, that they’d all agreed on a set of parameters for some feeling that didn’t exist but that everyone thought they were supposed to feel. I mean, I thought that maybe poets and songwriters were telling the truth, sometimes, but I didn’t really think that most people fell in love. I thought they all settled and said a lot of nice things about it.”
He looks at me, and I think my heart stops.
“Because if it was all real, why not me?” he goes on, softly. “So I figured it couldn’t be. And then.”
He’s silent for a moment, like he’s trying to decide what to say.
“And then I saw you tonight and I was happy. This stupid, miserable night, and you showed up and my heart just… sang. How fucked up is that?”
“It’s not,” I tell him, and I move closer, until I’m practically in his lap. I’m sitting off-balance on some roots and my butt is damp and Silas is half-twisted toward me in a way that can’t feel good on his back, but this is all I want. I thread my fingers through his hair and bring his face to mine until our foreheads are touching. Until we can’t see anything but each other.
“I love you, too,” I whisper.
He swallows, his eyes closed, and his hands find mine. There’s a terrible moment where I think he’s going to pull me away, shove me off him, but he doesn’t. He skims his hands along mine, my arms, shoulders, my sides. Like he’s checking that all of me is here.
“You shouldn’t,” he says, when he’s done.
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
And then Silas smiles. I’m too close to see it but I can feel it in the way his face moves, in the way his breath catches, in the way it feels like my heart splits open and light pours out.
“Fuck, Kat,” he whispers, and now he’s laughing and kissing me and it’s a terrible kiss, all teeth and lips and bad angles, but it’s also the best kiss.
We don’t say anything else. We kiss. I stroke his hair, watch his eyes close. After a while I wedge myself half between him and the tree and Silas slumps, leans his head back against my chest. I hold him and feel his breathing. Watch the fire flicker through the trees. Watch the moon arc above the trees. I’m dirty and damp and I’m pretty sure my pelvis and spine have fused with this tree, but I don’t move.