Silas

“You want to talk about it?”I ask later. We’re still on the couch, cleaned up now, my shorts on and her dress decent-ish as she leans against me, our feet on the coffee table. The last time we were like this, she’d just washed my hair and I woke up hours later with my head in her lap.

Kat sighs, pushes her head back into my shoulder.

“You already know,” she says. “That’s all there is. Just… the specter of getting fired from a job I like in a town with nothing much else going on because I got mad enough to stalk my ex and make sex noises at him.”

My brain snags on nothing much else, and I slide a strand of her hair between two fingers, watching Beast sleep in the armchair across the room.

“Sprucevale’s got plenty going on, you know,” I finally say, trying to sound light.

“I meant—shit,” she says. “I didn’t mean that. I meant in terms of, you know, tech jobs. Not a ton.”

“Of course.”

I don’t want it to bother me, but it sticks in my brain, lodged there like a sliver of glass: her tenuous connection to this town. The truth that she’s only here for a job and because we were far away from her ex, and one of those things might not be true much longer.

“You staying?” I ask, still playing with her hair because I can’t help it: dark and ribbony, sliding through my fingers like water. Soft and pliable. Everything I thought she usually isn’t.

Kat sighs.

“I don’t think tonight’s a good idea,” she says, and looks down at her dress.

“You can’t wear that to work?”

“It looks like I just got fucked in it,” she says, her head tilted back, her eyes laughing behind her glasses, and I grin. I grin at the fact that she’s right, and because I got to do the fucking. I grin because I love that she’s saying that at all. Laughing about it. Looking happy like this, like it’s something I did. Like I got her to lower her spikes and let me in for a little while.

“Later, then,” I say.

* * *

Friday morning,after my usual gym-and-shower-by-seven routine, I stand at the sliding glass door in front of my deck, holding my coffee and staring at nothing.

You shouldn’t, I remind myself. It’s been forever since you pulled shit like this.

When was the last time? The golf cart?

Okay, but the golf cart was fun as hell, and now I can’t stop grinning. Was it stupid to put on night vision goggles and drive a borrowed golf cart around a fancy wedding venue? Hell yes.

Do I regret it? Hell no. I didn’t even get caught.

And this isn’t borrowing a golf cart. This is only… an outing.

I text Kat before I can think better of it.

Me: Call in sick to work today. I’ll be at your place at nine.

I grab myself another mug of coffee while I wait for her to respond. It’s only seven-thirty, so maybe she’s not even awake yet, and so Beast and I do a little bird watching from the door while I wait for Kat to text me back.

Kat:I can’t.

Thought so.

Me:Sure you can.

Kat:I can’t just call in sick whenever I want.

Me:You literally can.

Tags: Roxie Noir Romance
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