Page 133 of The One Month Boyfriend (Wildwood Society)

“You think I have teeth and claws?” I ask, after a moment.

His fingers sift through my hair, mindlessly soothing.

“Teeth. Claws. Spikes. Horns, probably,” he says. “Razor-sharp, too.”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, trying not to cry more at this particular revelation.

“Sorry,” I say, and Silas laughs.

“Please don’t be,” he says, and his voice is gentle as rain. “You wouldn’t be you if you were all softness and rounded edges. I like the teeth and the claws, even when it’s my throat they’re in.”

I look up at him, and then wriggle a little until I’m on my back, head in his lap.

“That can’t possibly be good for you,” I say.

“Fuck good. This is better,” he says, and he’s smiling down at me, happy and relaxed, like he’s never wanted to be anywhere else but here, an abandoned warehouse that’s crumbling apart, crying girlfriend in his lap. “You know I haven’t had a girlfriend for… six years, I think?”

“Don’t tell me I interrupted your vows of celibacy,” I say, dryly. “Not that I’m sorry.”

“Not quite,” he says, and tilts his head back against the wall. Fingers still in my hair, probably splayed into the dirt and leaves below us now. I don’t give a single fuck. “There were people, sometimes, but there wasn’t someone.”

I just watch him. It’s a strange angle, from below like this, but right now Silas looks like an angel with the blue sky stretching above him, backlit, sunlight picking out copper and gold in his hair.

“There’s a lot wrong with me,” he starts.

“Sil—”

“Please don’t,” he says, so I don’t. His hand is on my ribcage so I slide my own over it and stay quiet. “I felt like everyone wanted to fix me, or put me on some pedestal, or convince me I was fine so I could be who they wanted.”

Then he smiles, eyes still closed.

“And that gets old,” he says. “So I gave up. And then it turned out I didn’t want sympathy or sweetness. I wanted someone with teeth and claws who could see my cracks and not go all soft. Someone who could destroy me.”

I watch him, and wait, sliding my fingers into the valleys between his.

“I can be soft,” I point out when I’m sure he’s done.

Silas looks down at me, the sky behind him like a halo, his eyes dark in the shadow.

And he starts laughing. After a minute I start laughing, too, even if I’m not totally sure what the joke is. I think it might be at my expense.

“You want to know when I started falling for you?” he asks, and I want to say, you fell? But I don’t.

“I think you’re gonna tell me no matter what I say.”

“You see?”

“Yes,” I tell him.

“Driving home after you had a panic attack,” he says. “You were still so damn prickly. It was—I don’t know. I couldn’t help it. I felt like you wanted to cut me to pieces and I wanted to let you do it.”

The breeze shifts the leaves overhead, making shadows play across my face.

“When you got Melissa to stop bothering me about karaoke,” I say. I don’t say: I fell, too. I let it hang there, between us. “When you acted like it was her problem that she wanted me to sing, not mine that didn’t want to.”

“It never occurred to me.”

“Well, there you go,” I say, and pause for a moment. Thinking. “And when you said you’d make Evan crawl.”