Page 103 of Yours on the Canvas

“Start the paperwork,” Silas interrupts, his hand sliding into his pocket before resting a heavy, protective, and grounding arm over my shoulder once he walks back to my side. “We aren’t fostering him. I’m starting adoption proceedings first thing tomorrow morning, and he stays with us. He’s ours, and he isn’t going anywhere.”

I watch him as he doesn’t speak further, just stands there watching her, daring her to defy him.

She’s clearly smart enough to recognize a dangerous man when she sees one because she doesn’t push it. She backs down, packing up her paperwork and leaving a few minutes later, having already agreed to meet with Silas the next day to start the process.

Later that evening, the house is quiet again. Hale is upstairs in his room, finally sleeping, though I know why he’s quiet. He had overheard the social worker earlier, terrified that he was going to be ripped away from us and thrown into the system, and he had stayed locked in his room all day. In the end, Silas had gone up to talk to him, promising him he wasn’t going anywhere.

And me? I may have hovered out in the dark hallway, standing outside his slightly ajar bedroom door, unable to stop myself from listening.

“But she said she was taking me, Si,” Hale’s small, trembling voice drifts out into the quiet of the house. “I don’t want to go. Please let me stay.”

“Buddy, you aren’t going anywhere,” Silas replies, his voice softer than I’ve ever heard it. Then, a pause. “But… I want to ask you something. It’s important.”

“Okay,” Hale whispers, tiny and still holding his breath.

“I was wondering…” I smile in the dark as I hear Silas clear his throat, because it would seem that even a lethal former Special Op’s, tech guru can get nervous. “Um, how would you feel if I started the paperwork on your adoption? Um… with me. So I can, you know, be your dad.”

“Really?”

I feel hot tears prick my eyes at Hale’s voice, so small and overflowing with raw emotion.

“Yeah, buddy. Really. I love you, Hale. And I really want to be your dad. If that’s okay with you.”

My heart leaps into my throat at Hale’s next words.

“But what about Jack? Can he be my dad too?”

I lean further against the doorframe, holding my breath, desperate to hear Silas’s answer.

“One day, buddy. One day.”

“Then yeah. That would be pretty cool. Si. Can I call you dad?”

“You sure can, buddy.”

I stepped away from the door after that, leaving them to their quiet, little miracle.

They spent the next hour talking, and as I walked back down the stairs to wait for Silas, I know the last remaining pieces of my fractured heart is finally clicking back into place.

* * *

Silas and I are sitting side by side on the edge of the bed, the quiet of the evening wrapping around us like a blanket.

The heavy gold ring catches the amber glow of the bedside lamp as Silas reaches out, his large, calloused thumb gently brushing a stray lock of hair from my forehead.

My eyes drop to his hand, catching the flash of polished metal resting against his pinkie finger. My breath stutters in my throat. It’s my ring, the one I had slipped off and left behind on my bedside table the night I left, terrified of dragging him into my nightmare. He’s kept it with him the entire time.

I run my fingers over it, “It was my mother’s. She gave it to me before she died.”

Silas leans closer, pressing his forehead against mine. “You did say it was hers. Why did she give it to you?”

Silas’s arm tightens around me, pulling me flush against his chest where his heart beats a steady, frantic rhythm just for me.

“She told me to save it,” I murmur, “She told… She told me to give it to the man I love. Because when I find him, I need to hold onto him so tightly that the rest of the world stops existing.”

Tears well up in my eyes, hot and clean, washing away the last of the dirt and blood from Seattle.

“I found you, Sol,” I whisper, looking up into his dark, unwavering eyes.