Page 85 of Lost and Found

I kiss the high point of her cheek. The side of her jaw. “How about I make you some breakfast instead?”

The Fourth of July comes around, and predictably, fires break out across the state. One grows large enough to roll into a campaign, and now, two weeks later, I’m stuck somewhere in central Oregon trying to keep this thing from hitting a hundred thousand acres.

Bea is doing great. She did a blood test in her doctor’s office that confirmed she’s pregnant. She was thrilled the first morning she threw up, because it made her feel like everything wasprogressing as it should. The third time it happened, she was slightly less enthused.

I’ve only been home one other time in the last two weeks, for less than forty-eight hours, and basically fell upon her like a man returned home from war. She went to her knees in the shower and barely had me in her mouth before I fell apart, just as I remembered that I literally was not allowed to reciprocate for another whole week. My anxiety hasn’t abated in the slightest. I want her to want me. I need her to need me. I want to give her space. I don’t want her to want or need anything at all. I am a goddamn mess.

Four days ago, I had to come back to work, and now I’m sitting under a sickly yellow sky, looking out over a charred chunk of earth, trying to eat my lunch.

And my brother won’t stop singing.

Ellis plops heavily beside me in the dirt, humming some jaunty, unrecognizable tune, a dopey smile splitting his dirty face. Compared to the stoic, even-keeled, serious captain and brother I’ve always known, it’s fucking spooky. Even when he finds me giving him a dirty look, he’s undeterred.

“You good?” he asks.

No. I’m hot, sweaty, filthy, the scarred section of my elbow that still gives me trouble itches like a son of a bitch, and I’m torn up from wanting a woman I probably shouldn’t have, missing her, fretting over her, and so deliriously happy I feel possessive of it and edgy, like I’m waiting for something to tamper with it. Like I’m waiting to fuck it up myself.

“Yep,” I say.

“Here. Have a cookie.” He tries to pass me one of Wren’s chocolate-dipped shortbreads.

“I don’t want a cookie, Ellis.”

Now he frowns, clearly alarmed. “Are you sick?”

“No, dammit, I’m not sick.”

“Then why don’t you want the cookie, Silas?”

“I want the cookie, all right?!” I’m trying to practice self-control like it might help strengthen my self-preservation skills.

“Then fucking take the cookie. I’m offering you the cookie.”

His hand is still hovering in front of my face. I give in and snatch the cookie, then take an angry bite.

He plucks a fresh one from the pastry box at his side and starts to eat around a high, loose laugh. “That bad, huh? Feels so good it’s scary?”

I give him a flat look. One of the nights we were home, Bea also wanted to have my family over to let them in on us being an Us, and she shared her pregnancy over BLTs.

We had an abundance of bread. Fisher and Sage had a bounty of tomatoes.

They reacted how I knew they would—by being elated and supportive. I still felt their eyes on me like they were weighing whether I was up to the task.

I drop my arms and scrub a hand down my face. Cup my palms in front of me and scowl at them. “I’m . . . Jesus, Ellis. I’m pathetic. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. When I’m home, I have to stop myself from following her from room to room. I’m worried I’m going to end up smothering her.” I can’t even stop myself from taking a cookie. I don’t know how to not be too much.

Ellis battles with his laugh for half a moment before it breaks free. I temporarily forget my worry, outweighed by the joy of making my brother laugh like that. He gets to his feet and claps me on the shoulder hard enough to ground me again.

“Si, save yourself some time and pain, and do your best to believe me, okay? Being pathetic for a woman? Never pathetic.” He passes me another raspberry thumbprint with a sigh, then leans back against a tree. “You remember that mini dirt bike you got for your tenth birthday?”

“Yeah.” The one I crashed after having it for less than six months.

“You wanted it for so long that you built it up in your head, you remember? You wouldn’t ride it for a whole month after you got it.”

“Yeah, Ellis, and I still managed to crash the thing.” Fuck, his metaphors could use some finessing.

He’s chuckling again, the bastard. “I’m just saying. You put the idea of it on a pedestal and then held yourself back because you were afraid of sabotaging it.”

“Which I did. I did sabotage it.”