Brightly Burning Bridges by Ivy Wild
We driftedin and out of sleep for the next several hours as the cleansing waters from the bath evaporated off our skin. Silas held me the whole time, not letting me go, even when I tried to shift to get more comfortable.
I’d been awake for the last hour, just listening to the sound of him silently sleeping as he held me. I laid my head against his chest and listened to his heart beat.
It was such a strong sounding heart.
It pulsed with lust, life and love.
All of it for me.
I don’t think you really get over men like Silas. If they walk into your life, even if they leave, they always stay with you. I knew there was no getting over Silas. There was only ever getting past him. And maybe that would have been good enough for some people. They would have married someone else, had their kids, and thought about their lost love in the dead of the night when everyone else slept.
But, I never wanted that life.
I wanted true love—
—the real Silas.
I smiled into his chest as I continued to listen to his heart beat. He stirred and I looked up at him as his eyes cracked open.
“Whatycha doing?” he yawned before pulling me into another embrace.
I smiled. “Just listening to your heart beat.”
A small smile played across his lips and I leaned over to capture them. The kiss was gentle and loving and he didn’t try and deepen it. He held me, kissed me, and when he pulled away, told me he loved me, but also that he needed food.
I rolled over and laughed. I climbed out of the bed and I could feel his eyes on me the entire time as I walked into the bathroom to grab his phone. I handed it to him and he winked at me before sitting up to place a Doordash order.
“No brains again,” he promised. I sat down next to him and grimaced at how wet the bed was.
“I appreciate that,” I said. “We should probably change these,” I said, looking at the mess we’d made.
Silas pushed himself to sit next to me at the edge of the bed. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll sleep at my place tonight.”
My eyes widened as I looked at him and he shook his head. “No way. Do not give me fucking ‘feigned surprised,’ Skyler. You can knock that shit off.” His tone was playful but the meaning in his words was serious. He didn’t want me playing hard to get anymore. This was real for him.
It was for me, too.
“Okay,” I said, leaning into him.
He swung his arm over me. “So, I know I totally fucked up on the protection situation. I’m going to place the blame squarely on you for having a magic pussy, though.”
I laughed and he chuckled.
“And as much as I do intend to baby trap you, I thought I’d give it at least a month before I put that plan in motion. So, you sure we’re good?”
I smiled and nodded my head. I tracked my cycles meticulously and I was a week past ovulation. “Yeah,” I said. “We’re good. Except for that baby trapping part. Who ever said I wanted to birth your spawn.”
His strong arm pulled and I found myself down on the bed with him on top of me. “You did,” he husked. “Screamed it when you came.”
I was pretty sure he was bluffing, but to be fair, I was so high from him, it was possible. I blushed and he laughed, giving the charade away.
“Now I’m definitely not having your spawn,” I said, batting his chest.
“Oh come on, the two of us combined into one tiny human? They’ll be the walking embodiment of every fucking insecurity that exists in the world. We have to do it, if not for ourselves, then for science.”
I rolled my eyes and laughed as he kissed my neck.
When he finally relented in letting me get dressed, he disappeared into the main room while I changed for a few moments. I followed him out once I was decent and looked at him with furrowed eyebrows. He looked somehow guilty, like he’d done something he shouldn’t have.
“And just what have you been up to out here?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I turned off that camera since I don’t want it catching my bare ass.”
I looked at him with wide eyes and he chuckled. “Kidding, obviously.” He shook his head and smiled. It was such a good look on him—a real smile. “You’ll figure it out eventually. Anyways, grab your stuff, let’s go before the food gets there.”
I nodded and stuffed my coat, laptop and a few overnight things into a duffle bag and followed him to the elevator. He looked down at my makeshift luggage with a bit of a sigh.
“Nice duffle bag. Is that the same bag you use to hide drugs in the trunk of your car?”
I scoffed. “Says the man who probably has another joint stashed in his pocket.”
He turned and smirked at me before pulling out another blunt. “Busted.”
I pushed him gently and he laughed as we walked into the elevator.
It seemed odd to be walking to his apartment. In all the time I’d been living in Georgetown, I realized that I hadn’t once gone to his apartment except for my first day. We breezed past the receptionist’s desk, who tried to say hi to him, but he just waved a hand at her and kept on walking, his grip tight around my shoulder, as if he thought I might run away or something.
He ushered me into the elevator and pressed me against the wall. He kissed me hard and I dropped my bag in favor of moving my hands across his firm biceps. The bell chimed and he pulled back and chuckled. “I’ve wanted to pin you to the side of this elevator since the first day you rode up to my apartment,” he said as we stepped out.
I smiled and shook my head. “How very Christian Grey of you.”
“Huh?” he said as we stepped into his apartment, kicking off our shoes.
“Never mind,” I replied with a roll of my eyes.
Something came scrambling towards us and I looked down in shock to see a much greyer but still energetic German Shepherd bounding towards me. He jumped onto me, his tail wagging wildly and I knew it the moment I looked at him that it was King. “Oh my god,” I exclaimed as I leaned down to pet him. “I didn’t realize he was still with you.”
King gave me kisses and Silas just watched us with a look I couldn’t quite decipher. “He had no one but me,” he finally said.
I stood, giving King a few more pats to the head and smiled at Silas. “He’s very lucky, then.”
Silas just chuckled softly and shook his head, but didn’t say anything else.
The food arrived within ten minutes and we ate vegetable sushi cuddled on his leather sofa while King slept on his bed, watching new episodes of the Great British Baking Show. He’d confessed to keeping up with the show after I’d introduced it to him all those years ago. It was nostalgic and perfect.
I slipped into his bed that night after he waited for me to finish in the bathroom. I had one of his undershirts on and it was like we were replaying the first night we slept together at his house over again. But this time, the occasion wasn’t sad. It was happy. I was happy and he seemed to be, too.
His fingers danced across my arms, tracing the outlines of my tattoos. “When did you get all this done?” he asked.
“After I broke off the engagement,” I admitted. “I just felt so vulnerable during that time and I thought that maybe if I put enough ink into my skin, I would look different, but not in a way that was different from everyone else, if that makes sense.”
“Yeah, it does,” he said. “But I’m sorry you felt like you needed to do that. I should have been there for you. All this time . . . ” He sighed and his voice trailed off.
I squeezed him tighter. “We can’t go backwards, Silas. And I’m just as much to blame for how everything turned out as you are. I could have figured out a way to contact you. I mean, you’ve been all over the newspapers lately. I could have done something, but I didn’t either.”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice still a bit sad.
I moved my head to rest on his chest. I wanted to hear his heart beating. It was still there, still as strong as ever.
“You know, the only way to really know if your wings work is to jump off a cliff and see if you fly,” I mused. “I think that’s what happened to us, Si. It just ended up being a pretty long fall, but in the end, we took flight. So what does it matter how long we fell for?”
“I never had wings,” he said, pulling me close.
I kissed him softly, before pulling back, our breath mingling in the small space between us. “That’s okay. I’m your angel, remember? You can hop a ride on mine.”
I sat at the table,eating an English muffin with strawberry jam as Silas poured over a pile of documents to a cup of black coffee.
“Did you figure out what you’re going to do about Vartan?” I asked. We’d put the subject on the backburner yesterday, but we were both very aware of the Friday deadline.
“I’m not overly worried,” he said, but I could tell in his voice that that wasn’t entirely true. “Just need to find some angle to work on him that’s better than the one he’s got on me.”
I twisted my lips at Silas’ words. “Do you really think his claims would hold up?”
Silas took a sip from his cup and sighed. “Hard to say, really. But, I’m certainly not the country’s favorite businessman at the moment with the way R&R crumbled.” His brows furrowed and I knew I was watching Silas’ emotions in real time. “I know I had a hand to play in Carter Ross leaving as CEO, but I’ll be honest, at the time, I really didn’t think his old man was going to fuck things up as bad as he did.” He ran a hand through his hair. “But that’s all water under yet another burned bridge now,” he said with a sad chuckle. “So, yeah, I think if the right prosecutor got their hands on anything that smelled like fraud, they might take the bait.”
I swallowed thickly. I’d stayed away from Silas for the past five years so that I didn’t have to live without him. Now that we were together, the possibility that I might truly be without him was all too real. The irony of all that was so obvious and devastating all at once.
“Is there anything I can do?” I asked quietly.
Silas looked up from the stack of papers and looked at me. “You can stop talking small,” he said, pointing out my bad habit and I blushed but nodded. “And you just being here to support me through this is enough,” he added.
I appreciated the sentiment, but I still felt totally useless. I shoved the last of my breakfast into my mouth and let my head fall into my hands. “What sort of thing are you looking for on him?”
Silas shrugged, turning back to the pile of pages. “Something that would put his character at risk, or call into question any evidence he might have on me.”
“What about the fact that he blackmailed me into getting engaged?” I asked.
“It’s good, but not great. Domestic situations don’t always hold up well in court, to be honest. It’s sad, but true. A lot of juries see them as ‘he-said, she-said,’ situations. That’s even if we could get a judge to allow you to testify about something like that.”
I deflated at his words.
“Awe, come on, angel. It’s not the end of the world,” he said with a bit of light in his dark eyes.
“No, just the reckoning,” I huffed in response.
Silas’ phone vibrating on the countertop made me jump and he winked at me. “I see someone gets excited around things that vibrate,” he kid, as I rolled my eyes. He put the phone to his ear. “Silas Jenkins.”
I put my head on the cool stone of the countertop to try and think through how I might be able to get Silas out of a mess that I arguably caused, or at least contributed to.
“You don’t say,” he said in an intrigued voice to whomever was on the other end of the phone. “Alright. Thanks for the info.”
He hung up the phone and I looked at him. “Do you never say ‘bye’ to people?”
He shook his head. “I don’t like saying goodbye.” His words were sad and my heart clenched for him. I knew he still hadn’t gotten over the loss of his mother, even now.
“Who was that?” I asked, trying to change the subject.
“Accountant. He finally came through with the information on who the agent assigned to our case is,” he said with a laugh. “A little late, but he means well.”
“Why’d it take him so long?” I asked. “I thought when the IRS opened a case on someone, they sent you a letter telling you exactly who was going to be overseeing your case and the number and all that stuff. Come to mention it, I wasn’t aware that Vartan had secured a job with the IRS. When I left him, he was in private practice.”
Silas nodded and took another sip of coffee. “Yeah, that’s the way it should work. But, my dearest brother obviously skirted company protocol. Maybe it’s cause he’s so new.”
A thought crossed my mind and I quickly reached across the table to pull the stack of pages toward me.
“Hey!” Silas said in protest, but I shook my head.
“Hold on,” I said, leafing through the pages. I was looking for the letter I’d meant to show Silas a few days earlier before getting distracted by my own jealousy. He was partly to blame on that. He’d obviously been flirting with the receptionist to get under my skin and well, it had clearly worked.
“Here it is,” I said, holding up the letter. I passed it over to him and he furrowed his brow.
“Here what is?” he asked, looking it over.
“This letter was sent on IRS letterhead,” I tried to explain.
“Yeah, and?” he asked, clearly not catching on.
“Well, you said he wasn’t following company protocol. You’re the lawyer. Doesn’t that like taint evidence or something? Wouldn’t this be proof of it?”
Silas’ eyes narrowed for a moment as he thought about what I was saying. He stayed quiet and I didn’t interrupt him as he thought. “I’d say a well-timed inquiry into a nameless letter might go a long way to getting someone reprimanded or worse. And if it’s uncovered that he’s been misappropriating government resources to resolve say, a personal vendetta, against a family member no less, well, that might be very damning indeed.”
I watched as Silas pulled together the strings to form his web until a genuine smile rested on his lips. He looked up at me and I smiled. “Well, Ms. Jackson. I’d say you more than earned your paycheck for the year.”
I blushed. “You think it will work?”
He nodded his head. “Yeah. Stay right there,” he said. “I need to call someone back.”
He picked up his phone and placed it to his ear. “Bob. Yeah, it’s me. Go ahead and send an inquiry over to the Service. Attach the letter we received from them and let them know we’re confused as to why we weren’t assigned an agent from the start and that we have concerns over a conflict of interest considering the assigned agent is a familial relation. . . . Don’t worry about that, Bob. . . . Yes, it’s true. I’m a lot of things but a liar isn’t one of them.” I watched as Silas chuckled, the sound bouncing off the walls of the room, filling me up. “Touché. Get it done today, will you? Copy me on it? . . . Thanks.”
He hung up the phone and turned back to me, grinning. It was so beautiful to see him this way and I knew it was only for me.
