Chapter 45

That night’s “book club” is a black-tie cocktail hour on the back deck of a country club overlooking the Atlantic. I’m not sure beachfront property can reputably refer to itself as “country” anything, but the women there who crowd my mother with their pristine hardcovers of Letters to My Someday Daughter certainly serve Stepford energy.

It’s awkward but tolerable, mostly because Mom lets me slip out to the beach after the initial QA. I haven’t had a moment truly alone to break into Sadie’s Letters notes—I hid the book between folded shirts in my suitcase, so it’ll be there when I’m ready for it. I feel criminal but justified—what’s she doing taking notes on me? Collecting annotated copies of my mother’s book has always been an inexplicable compulsion, and I’m equal parts fascinated and mortified to learn what Sadie’s written inside. Someone I actually know. Someone who actually knows me.

I stand with my toes in the water and watch my mother illuminated in the frame of a warm-lit window, smiling with her captive audience. That book’s been like a third person between us my entire life, telling stories only she knows by heart. I think about how much there is we don’t know of each other, and how maybe we’re chipping away at all that now.

Silas and Sadie stayed back at the house, but Mags is here with Mick and Cleo. The book clubs never get recorded; usually Mom and I go to them alone. But this one’s high-profile enough for photography and social media support, apparently. Plus Mags, flitting around like some kind of Botoxed fairy godmother to make sure everyone has enough canapés.

Puddles greets us at the door when we get back to the house, all snuffly enthusiasm. Cleo picks her up and her sun-yellow nails disappear into Puddles’s folds.

“Hello, angel,” she says, kissing Puddles directly on the nose before holding her out to me. “Look who it is. Your mommy’s home.”

I narrow my eyes but she just smiles and deposits Puddles into my arms. Instantly, my black dress is covered in fur. This dog is a glitter bomb.

“Hey!” Silas calls from the living room. He stands as we come closer, a paperback in one hand. “How was it?”

“Fantastic,” my mother says. She’s pulling off her heels, one hand on Magnolia’s shoulder for support. “They had this incredible croquembouche covered in caramel sauce, Silas, your sister would have loved it. I wanted to bring some home for you to try, but they were all out by the end of the evening.”

I think of what Silas told me about his sister back in Chicago, her penchant for baking. That he must have told Camilla that story, too—and that she remembered it.

“Hey.” Sadie’s voice precedes her down the hallway. She’s in a hoodie and leggings. “Did any of you grab a book from the kitchen this morning? Trying to pack up and I can’t find it.”

I swallow, fight the fire rising to my cheeks.

“Which book?” Camilla says, lowering back onto her bare feet.

“Um.” Sadie blinks twice before smiling shyly and saying, “Yours.”

My mother laughs. “I haven’t seen it, but I’m flattered. And I’m certain we can get you another copy.”

Sadie glances at Silas before the rest of us. He shrugs, and she says, “Anyone else?”

“Nope,” Cleo says, and I manage to shake my head, and Mom declares, “I’m dying for a bath.”

The moment breaks, and as my mother disappears down the hallway with Magnolia, Sadie does the same.

Cleo looks between the three of us with her eyebrows raised. “Ocean skinny-dip?”

I feel myself go rigid, spine lengthening and shoulders setting. I narrowly escape outing myself as a kleptomaniac, and now this? Mick lets out a whoop and a fuck yes that’s so loud Puddles jumps. Her black nails skitter on the marble.

“Audrey?” Silas says, catching my eyes across the foyer.

And the thing is, I want to be this person. The one who goes to a honky-tonk in Nashville and tells her mother the truth and knows how to be fun in brave, public ways. But skinny-dipping feels like pushing the gas pedal through the floor of the car, and when I tap my thumb to my pinky finger Silas tracks the movement with his eyes.

“You know what,” he says, “you guys go ahead. I think we’re good.”

Cleo snorts, hooking Mick by the arm. “Yeah, I bet you are.”

My mouth drops open and Cleo shoots me an exaggerated wink, sticking her tongue out. By the time they cut through the front door I’m flushed all the way down to my toenails.

“Not so into public nudity, huh?”

I turn back to find Silas much closer, soft smile on his lips and his hand reaching for mine.

“Maybe we can work up to it,” I say.

He shrugs one shoulder. “If you want.”

“Thanks for being my out.” When I prop onto my tiptoes his face changes, an expression I’ve come to know well over the last few days. The way Silas looks right before I kiss him—like I’ve surprised him so entirely, like every time his lips meet mine it’s brand-new. Like even as it’s happening, he can’t quite believe it.

“Happy to be your out,” he says quietly as I lower back onto my feet. His hand is warm on my waist and when my eyes flick down the hallway his do, too.

“Help me take this dress off?” I ask, and Silas smiles.

“Audrey St. Vrain,” he says quietly. “Are you asking for help with your zipper?”

This time, there’s no reeking Los Angeles alleyway. There’s no unidentified liquid underfoot. It’s not humid and I’m not angry and when Silas reaches for my zipper, I don’t feel anything except his fingers on my skin.

“This almost made me pass out the first time,” he tells me. We’re in my room, door shut tight, and the bedside lamp casts a warm glow. “Just so you know.”

“My zipper?”

“Mmm.” He pulls it down, trailing one fingertip above it along my spine. “You were so mad and your skin was on fire and you were the most beautiful person I’d ever seen.”

Silas smooths his palms through the unfurled sides of the dress until his fingers are splayed across my ribs. His thumb brushes a ridge of muscle in my back and then his lips land at the nape of my neck, the top of my shoulder. I shiver, goose bumps blooming down my bare arms.

“I wanted to kiss you so bad,” he whispers.

“You didn’t even know me.”

“No,” he says, and I lean back until I meet his chest. The motion of it pushes my dress up his arms and the rest of the way off, so it puddles at my feet. “And now that I do, I want to kiss you even worse.”

Blood roars in my ears. Silas is warm in a way that swallows me whole. He doesn’t turn me around for a moment—we just stand like that, his arms around my bare waist, his lungs rising gently into my back.

But then I lift one arm to wrap it around his neck, and we crash together in a rush: my body spinning to face his, his hand rising to my hair, his lips meeting mine. One warm palm pressed between my shoulder blades.

I reach for the hem of his shirt and he pulls it over his head, hair curly and wild as he leans back in to kiss me. I’m drowning in a way that feels like filling my lungs. I’m one, big feeling. More.

When his fingers skim the line of my bra I reach back and unhook it myself. Silas tips me toward the bed and I reach for the hem of his sweatpants, brushing my fingers against the soft, warm skin underneath. His breath catches and I watch him swallow.

“Hey, we can go slow.” His eyes scan mine, pupils wide and dark. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

“I don’t want to go slow,” I whisper. Ethan always made me feel like this was something we weren’t ready for, but I know now that Ethan not being ready didn’t mean I wasn’t. I was. I wanted this with him, once. And I want it now, in a way that feels like being set on fire. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah,” Silas says, and when I lower the waistband of his pants he swallows again. “Yes.”

I tilt my chin up and he kisses me, one hand around my ribs and the other in my hair. I feel him kick his pants off, the thin fabric of his boxers on my bare thighs.

“Audrey,” he whispers. “You’ve done this before?”

I’m scared to say it, but this is Silas. So I say it anyways—quietly, like a confession. “No. Have you?”

His eyes move over mine, dark in the lamplight. His thumbs brush the sensitive skin between my ribs and my pelvis. “Yeah,” he says eventually. Watching me carefully, like I might be hurt. But I’m not—he’s here with me now, and it’s enough. “But you—this is your—” He breaks off, drawing a big breath that I watch move through his rib cage, his chest. “Audrey, are you sure?”

“Silas.” I take his face in my hands—the same one that I saw tight with anger on Lake Michigan, blank with shock in Nashville, now so worried and so careful. “I’m sure. Of you and of this.”

“Okay,” he says. He kisses my shoulder, the curve of my neck. I feel him against my leg and something clutches inside me, a whole new room in my body opening up.

“Then you have to talk to me,” Silas says, his lips beneath my ear. “All right? You’re the boss.”

I’m scrabbling for the waistband of his boxers but he stops me, lifting my hands to his chest. He traps them there under his own.

“Audrey,” he says, in a way that makes me feel like I’ve never heard my own name before. His eyes track over mine. “Okay?”

His lips are swollen and pink. I draw a steadying breath. “I’m the boss.”

“You’re the boss,” he says again, softly, and carries the words to my mouth.

Later, Silas turns off the lamp and kisses my ribs over the faint ghosts of his fingerprints.