“We’re going to get started soon.”
I trail off when the waiter approaches, taking our orders. The entire time I’m ordering, I want to look over at my woman instead.
I can feel her smiling at me. I can feel the want mirrored in me, both of us needing it.
“But before that,” she says, once the waiter’s gone. “We have to tell Dad.”
“I thought you didn’t want to talk about that?”
Her shoulders slump. “It reminds me too much ofit never happened.”
“I’m sorry about that,” I tell her. “It was all I could think to say. I thought you’d laugh at me if I told you the truth about how I really felt, about what I really wanted.”
“How wouldyouexplain it to Dad?” she asks.
I sit back, drumming my fingers on the table.
“I’d tell him it finally happened. Iknewthe moment I saw my woman, the moment I saw you, Lauren, like I always said I would. I’d tell him I want to protect you, provide for you, and be there for you in every single way. I’ll never let anybody hurt you. I’ll never mistreat you.”
I’ll love you, I almost say,right until the day we die.
“I’ll tell him I could never speak about what happened to me…until I met you. I’ll tell him every time I feel this new tattoo stinging, I think of you, of how much it means, this new….”
“Silas,” she says, voice quivering as if she wants us to be close again like we were in the field after the jump. “You can say it. Whatever it is.”
“This light in my life,” I say, laughing at myself. “I know that sounds cheesy, but that’s what you are. You’re tattooing about the past, but there’s none of the darkness. Even with your design, with a touch of nature, it’s like you understood it even before I told you.”
“I knew it was special to you,” she whispers.
“And you did an amazing job.”
She wrings her hands. “Am I the only one who wants to be closer than….” She touches the table. “Thisright now?”
“No,” I say intensely. “But I’m not sure it’s a good idea, us being alone together.”
She leans forward, causing her wavy hair to bounce around her shoulders. She’s calling to me with every gesture, every tremor of her lips, every time she bites down.
“Why?” she asks.
I smirk, meeting her eyes, reading her. “You know why. Do you want me to say it here?”
She looks around.
The closest people are four tables over, out of earshot.
“You could use…creative language,” she says.
“You’re the creative one,” I reply.
She folds her arms, causing her breasts to shift, adding to her perfection. “I watched an interview before where you said finding a line down a mountainside is like a painter finding the best angle…or something like that. Well? Were you making it up?”
“You’re too clever for me. Okay….”
I pause when the waiter brings our drinks, saying thank you and then turning back to my woman.
“If we’re alone, as in truly alone, in a penthouse suite of a luxury hotel…I won’t be able to stop myself from….”
“Remember,” she says as somebody walks by. “Creative language.”