Page 122 of Forged in the Fire
The little thumps low on the door startled us, and Silas pushed off, rolling over so he was sitting up in the bed just as the door clattered open.
While I lay there panting toward the ceiling, trying to gather my bearings enough to sit up, too.
I did just in time to see Kai toddle through, only wearing a diaper.
Adorable dimples denting his cheeks and his eyes that were the same color as Silas’s shining in the glinting rays of morning light.
“Siwas!” He pointed a chubby finger at the man who roughed a tattooed hand through the mess of his hair, and my brow pinched, realizing it was the first time I’d ever heard Kai call him anything.
Silas.
Not Dad or Daddy.
But that confusion was getting batted away by a surge of affection when Kai turned that sweetness on me. Basically dancing as he shifted to point a little finger at me. “Bwinwey!You stay Kai’s house?”
I gathered the sheet and brought it to my chest. It wasn’t like I was naked or anything, but I still felt like I’d been caught in a scandal.
Bare and vulnerable.
That didn’t seem to keep the smile from tweaking at the edge of my mouth, though. “I did.”
“You got sweetdweams? I got sweetdweams.” He patted his chest as he kept coming right up to the end of the bed.
Without reservation, Silas shifted so he could reach for him.
The man only wore his underwear. The length of his broad back bare, though completely covered in twisting, black ink.
Two winged creatures sat in the middle facing each other, their foreheads touching in a clear standoff.
One angelic and one demonic.
Black tendrils wisped out from their fingers and chests to duel and twine. As if their spirits were battling not to be tied together.
Silas plucked Kai from the floor and pulled him into those arms he’d just had around me.
Arms I was having trouble imagining as anything other than refuge right then.
“That’s because I wished them on you when I tucked you into bed last night, remember?” Silas snuggled him close, tickling him and making him howl with laughter.
Kai grappled for his face, clutching onto his cheeks as he leaned in close and ferociously shook his head as if he were trying to convey something super important. “I noscawednigh-night.”
Silas’s flinch was almost imperceptible. A wince that seemed to come from the deepest recesses of his soul. If I hadn’t been watching so closely, I would have missed it.
But maybe I would have felt it, anyway. Sensed the way he pulled the child a fraction closer, breathing in as he buried his nose in Kai’s golden-brown locks.
Every word gravel as he pushed it from his throat. “That’s right. You don’t have to be afraid to go to sleep. Not anymore. You’re safe. You’re safe.”
My stomach clenched and something just as deep inside me began to ache.
In question, I cut my eye toward Silas.
God, I wished there was a way I could see inside him the way he seemed to be able to see inside of me.
Without separating from Kai an inch, Silas still managed to glance at me from the corner of his eye.
In that brief, fleeting moment, I swore he was flayed open wide.
Love. Pain. Hate. Determination.
