Page 21 of The Last Great Omegaverse

“Best I’ve got, given the circumstances.” He drives the next post with more force than strictly necessary, not looking at me. “I don’t do this well. In case that wasn’t obvious already.”

“Do what?”

“Say the true thing instead of the practical one.”

I let that sit for a while, watching him work, the concentration he brings to even something as simple as driving a fence post, like every task deserves his full attention or none at all. There’s something reassuring about that focus, something I find myself wanting to be on the receiving end of more than I probably should admit, even to myself.

“For what it’s worth,” I say finally, “I don’t actually think you’re rooting for me to fail anymore. If that helps.”

“It helps some.” He glances over, and there’s something in his face I haven’t seen from him before, something closer to relief than his usual blankness. “Doesn’t erase what I stand to gain if you do, though.”

“No. But you keep showing up anyway. That’s got to count for something.”

“I’m trying to make it count for something,” he says. “Not sure yet if it’s working.”

We’re most of the way through the last stretch when the light starts going, faster than either of us accounted for. By the time we’ve loaded the last of the tools into the truck bed it’s full dark, cold enough that my breath fogs and the fields have gone silver-blue under a sky clear enough to see stars in.

The truck won’t start.

Silas tries it three times, jaw tightening a little more with each failed turn of the key. On the fourth he swears and gets out to pop the hood with a flashlight clenched between his teeth.

“Bad?” I ask, leaning out the window.

“Battery, maybe. Or the starter. Hard to say in the dark, and I don’t fix what I can’t see properly. That’s how you lose a finger or two.” He straightens, wiping his hands on his jeans, breath fogging thick in the cold. “Phone’s got no signal out here either. We’re a couple miles out. I can walk it, but it’ll take the better part of an hour each way, and I’d rather not leave you out here alone in the cold while I do.”

“I’m not made of glass, Silas.”

“Didn’t say you were. Said I’d rather not, which is a different thing entirely.” He climbs back into the cab, shivering slightly despite himself, and we sit there a moment in the dark, engine dead, cold seeping in fast now that we’re not moving. “We’ll wait a bit. See if anybody comes down this road. Otherwise, I’ll walk once it’s clear staying put isn’t working.”

The cold gets serious inside twenty minutes. I’ve got a jacket, but it’s not built for this, and I catch myself shivering hard enough that my teeth click together. Silas notices before I’ve said anything about it.

“Come here,” he says, already shifting closer across the bench seat. “Body heat’s not glamorous, but it works. No agenda in it, just don’t want you getting hypothermic on my watch.”

I move over, because the alternative is freezing out of stubbornness, and because some part of me wants the excuse more than I’m willing to admit out loud. He’s radiant, hotter than I expected, solid against my side that relaxes something in my nerves even as it sets off every alarm I’ve spent years installing. He smells like cold air and engine grease. His arm comes around me delicately, like he’s testing whether I’ll pull away, and when I don’t, he pulls me in a little closer, chin resting near the top of my head.

“Better?” he asks, voice rough.

“Better.” I can feel his heartbeat where my hand’s pressed flat against his chest, even and fast at once. I’m suddenly aware of how little space is left between us in this cab, how searing his breath is against my hair, how badly some traitorous part of me wants to tip my face up and close what’s left of the distance.

“Wren.” My name, low, precise, the same way he says most things that matter.

“Yeah?”

“I need you to know something, and I need you to hear it cleanly, not colored by cold or dark or any of this.” His hand splays slightly wider against my back, like he’s bracing himself for something. “Whatever’s happening between us, I want it. Have wanted it longer than I’ve let myself admit. But I’ve got a ledger full of reasons to distrust my own motives right now, and until I’ve got that sorted in my own head, I’m not going to be the one who kisses you in the dark in a broken-down truck and lets you wonder later whether it was about you or about forty acres of water rights.”

“That’s an oddly specific worry to be having right now.”

“It’s the only worry I’ve got, most days.” His voice goes rougher. “You deserve better than a man who can’t promise you his wanting isn’t tangled up with his wanting the land. So I’m not going to kiss you, much as every part of me is telling me otherwise. When I do, and I think we both know it’s a when, not an if, I want you certain it’s just you I’m reaching for. Nothing else riding along with it.”

I don’t know what to say to that, something so deliberate and so honest at once that it lands harder than any kiss would have. We sit there in the dark a while longer, his arm around me, both of us quiet, until headlights finally sweep across the road and Coop’s truck comes rattling up behind us, horn blaring cheerfully like he’s thrilled to be rescuing us at eight at night in the freezing cold.

They drop me home and I’m left to wonder what it would be like to be kissed by Silas.

I end up at the bar two nights later, restless, unable to sit still at the farmhouse with my own thoughts circling the same loop they’ve been stuck on since the truck. Dot sets a cider in front of me without asking and leans against the bar with the patience of having already watched a hundred people work up to saying something.

“You look like a woman with a problem,” she says.

“I look like a woman with four problems, technically.”