Page 58 of Lost and Found

Wren: Come back upstairs and I’ll show you.

Silas: Good, cheer that grumpy motherfucker up, Wren. Also, ftr: sickening. Please adhere to the group rules going forward and refrain from explicit content, thank you.

Fisher: The Byrd comfort level makes me deeply uncomfortable.

Sage: Is that why you’re grinning like an idiot? (Photo)

Sage: That’s what I thought.

Wren: Love you guys! Si, invite Bea to family dinner later today!

Micah: Why the FUCK are we all awake this early?

CHAPTER 22

Now

Bea

I gasp awake and immediately know I’m being watched. Sure enough, the cat is sitting on the bed beside me, giving me her best menacing glare.

“Hello,” I say, squinting back.

“Hi.”

I gasp again and reflexively yank the covers up.

“Sorry. You left this open,” Silas explains, rapping the molding of my open doorway.

“How long have you been standing there?” I ask groggily.

“Not long,” he says, voice an octave too high to believe. “You don’t talk in your sleep or snore or anything, though. And who sleeps on their back like that? Vampire,” he accuses.

He lets himself in and places a paper mug of coffee on my nightstand, alongside a grease-mottled bag with the tail end of a glazed raspberry twist poking out. He sits at the foot of the bed, and something about the movement jostles the memory of our couch night right to the forefront of my brain. I resist the urge to hide under the sheets completely.

His demeanor, however, is suspiciously relaxed for someone who has been just as weird as I’ve been this past week, and who has avoided me as much as I’ve avoided him.

“Thank you,” I say. “What time is it?” Cali pads over and rubs her head into his tricep.

“EightA.M.,” he says.

Despite already grabbing breakfast, Silas looks as if he’s just woken up, too. He’s in gray sweats, slippers, and a flannel over a fire department shirt. His hair is rumpled, and he needs a shave. It’s like he’s stepped out of a catalog for camping and outdoor gear. I picture him strapping on one of those backpacks with the cat porthole built in. It’s unbearably hot to me now, and I’m irrationally mad about it. This must be how he felt about my sleep shorts.

The silence we fall into is immediately oppressive. God, what was I thinking, kissing him like that? Grinding on him like an animal in heat. He said he wasn’t even ready for casual, and my impending situation is about a million miles beyond it.

“You should try the doughnut,” he says quietly. “It’s good.”

I swallow my coffee down the wrong pipe, because I also hear the echo of him saying,So good. So fucking friendly.

My lips feel bruised a week later. I still feel the hard press of him against me and smell his salt-and-mint skin.

Good Lord, is that a faded hickey on his neck?!

I take an overlarge bite of the doughnut.

“You good?”

I jerk my head in a nod.