“Keep trying,” Silas responded with a chuckle. “You’ll probably have better luck than Stacia.” She had never managed to get him to agree, but then he’d never been that inclined to bend to her demands. Just because she’d been his closest cousin in age didn’t mean he’d ever really gotten along with her. He was suddenly fuzzy on if he’d ever mentioned much of his family to Rae. He knew that he’d mentioned his grandparents, and explained that a little, but couldn’t place anything else. “She never had that much leverage on me either,” he tacked on, brushing the question in his head aside for now.
Possessive. But he was the same, so it was complementary in a way. And he loved it. “Don’t want to be shared,” he told her, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “But now you got me worried about your safety. Might need to protect you from that fan club of women you’re always saying I have.” He’d be lying if he told her that he didn’t like hearing the compliment. Every man needed their ego stroked once in a while, he was no different. “Follow you everywhere and keep my eyes on you at all times, you know, that kind of thing.”
Funny how their fears seemed to mirror each other’s. He’d been afraid of what she would say too. Maybe not for the same reason, but it had still been fear that had kept his mouth shut. “I can handle heavy shit,” he told her, not to discount her fears, but because he needed to say it. “I was scared out of my mind that if I said it, you’d realize I wasn’t what you wanted,” he admitted, dropping his gaze for a split second, “and I couldn’t have handled that.” He was so beyond worrying about showing his cards to Rae, that he didn’t care how vulnerable that made him sound. When she smiled he couldn’t help returning it with a small half-quirked happy expression. “He’s pretty amazing.” What else was he going to say? “You’re pretty amazing for doing the parent thing on your own.” A lot of women wouldn’t have. His mother hadn’t been built for it that was for sure.
Ah hell. There went the comfortable, happy mood. He knew that she didn’t mean to put him on the spot like that; she couldn’t possibly know how long he’d known he loved her. How could he answer that, and it wasn’t a question of answering, because he knew he had to. But it was a little difficult forming words and Rae probably noticed the hesitation.
“Dunno exactly,” he hedged, trying damn hard to keep any hesitation out of his voice. “It happened in increments. Like, one day I just kinda realized it was more of thing than it was, y’know. It snuck up on me.” A poor explanation, but honest. He’d had feelings for her for a long time, but he couldn’t have attributed it to love from the very start. It was hard to love someone you didn’t know. But it didn’t take long for him to realize that was what he was feeling. Only took him a good long time to open his mouth and say it.
“Knew what it was soon as I felt it, ‘cause it was something I’d never felt before,” he added as his expression went a little introverted. It wasn’t new, the fact that he’d never loved someone before Rae, but it was still strange, not but, just different putting a voice to it.