Page 76 of Lost and Found

“It’s agreathand,” she prompts.

I chuckle through my nose. “It’s a great hand.”

I watch her quietly paint my nails after that, her strokes growing steadier as she winds back down, but I struggle to shake off the emotion.

“Three colors for your good hand,” she whispers when she’s finishing my first pinkie. “Two for yourothergood hand.” For which she picks two shades of maroon. One solid, one with pink sparkles. “One of the things I’ve learned over the last few months, mostly because ofyou, is how easy it is for two things to be true at once.” She angles my pinkie to coat it fully. “I can be grieving and hopeful. I can feel terrified and excited. I can . . . Ican want something and be wary of it.” She’s on my ring finger now. “You can be scarred and beautiful. Broken and still whole.”

I taste the tears in the back of my throat before I feel one slip down my face. There is so much I want to say, but I don’t know where to start and don’t know the right words. I think if I don’t say something, I’ll buckle under the weight of it.

“I thought of you,” I eventually tell her, right as she blows on my second nail. I’m trying to say this in a way that doesn’t allow everything else to crash out of me on its heels, and the effect is that it comes out wooden instead.

I feel her eyes on me but keep mine on my hands. “When I was lying there and the pain was . . . I was in and out. But when I was lucid, at least, I thought about you and remembered what you said, and to distract myself, I made myself go through eight things. Eight memories I loved. Eight places. Eight songs. Eight colors.

“So, thank you. For sharing your memory with me. For being with me that night, that way. And thank you for today.”

And now I look at her, into light gold eyes, flecks of green sparkling through unshed tears. “I think you might be the best friend I’ve ever had.”

She doesn’t say anything for a while, just stares at me while my composure frays more and more.

“Si,” she says finally. And the way she says it is just like one. It’s a blown-out breath, a sound of relief. Acceptance. Exasperation. I look back up at her, knowing full well my entire fucking heart is in my eyes.

“Yeah, Bea?”

“Can you keep your hands still for a few more minutes?” she asks.

The feelings rising in me abruptly crash in confusion. “Yeah. Why?”

“Because I’d like to kiss you. If that’s all right.”

Another wild, volatile surge. “Bea, no. I don’t want you to feel like you need to do that because of what I just said.”

“Is that your only objection to it?” She’s moving closer. My breath goes uneven.

“Yeah. I meanno. No, it’s not. I’d rather you not kiss me if it’s not going to mean anything.”

Her hand crosses the space between us and starts to curl in my shirt. “Who the hell was I kidding, Silas? It’ll mean everything.” She pulls herself closer and her eyes home in on my mouth. “I want to kiss you because even though it’s your birthday,youare the gift, and I’d like to let myself have you.” She finds my stare again. “If you’ll have me.”

I feel like I’m dreaming again. I know I’ve had this dream before. She inches closer, her lips hovering over mine. “C’mon, baby. Have me.”

My blood drops below my gut, and my voice goes down an octave. All those promises I spouted to Ellis feel like ether slipping through my fingers. “I’m afraid you don’t know what you’re asking. I’m a selfish man, Bea. Always have been. I’m not gonna be able to keep saying no.”

She flat-out chuckles at this. Low and husky and so sexy I want to taste it. Swish that sound around my mouth and swallow it whole. “Good. And selfish? You’re the most generous man I know. You think I don’t see you, Silas? You’d let people think you’re getting special treatment before you let them see how generous you actually are. You’d rather let people think less of you—you’d make yourself need less from others, just on the off chance it let them hold on to more.” She’s unflinching and unrelenting, her grip clenching tighter in my shirt. “Who or what on earth ever made you think you’re selfish?”

My hands are shaking. I press them harder into my knees. “I took the last goodbye from my mom when she was dying.” She twitches back, and her hand loosens. “We were all supposed tobe saying our goodbyes, but I held on to her in hysterics and not one of my siblings got their goodbye in. I do that. I lose sight of things and hold on too hard sometimes.You’veconfronted death head-on and decided tocreate life. Meanwhile, I haven’t been able to say thewordgoodbye to anyone for more than twenty years. How fucked is that? I talked a big game about helping you with your grief when all I’ve ever done is find a way to be passably functional with mine. I’ve been to all sorts of therapy, and I can still barely talk about her.”

She blinks and shakes her head. One of her tears lands on my knuckle. She runs her fingertips over my brow before resting her palm on one side of my face. “That’s not true, Silas. You’ve talked to me about her. And you werenine.”

“I might’ve acted all right after you didn’t want to go forward with things before, but I wasn’t. I was a real bitch about it, actually. When you said you didn’t want me to wait, I immediately slept around.”

She shrugs helplessly. “So what? You were a single man in your twenties. I’m glad you had fun and found comfort.”

“Jesus, Bea. I startedrelationshipswith some of those women, knowing damn well I still held on to a pair of your underwear. I’m not . . . I’m notgood.”

Her tearful face breaks into a wild, open-mouthed smile, color flagging the planes of her cheeks in an instant. “Iknewyou had them!” Her second hand rises to the other side of my jaw, her thumb coasting over my bottom lip like she’s mesmerized by it. “Will you let me kiss you now?”

“I wished for this,” I blurt. “I wanted this to happen. I mean everything I’m saying right now, but still there was some selfish part of me I kept smothered that hoped we’d end up being more than friends. I can’t say I was entirely honest. This was not the altruistic deal you thought it was.”

She smiles wider, biting her lip.