Well that could have gone better.

I’m sulking later, laying back in the deck chair on the roof of my boat with my feet kicked up.

She’s in Boston by now, with that douchebag. And I get it. I’m not actually childish or jealous enough to think she’s there for any other reason besides that she has to be there.

But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

The other part of this is the sort of ambiguity we’ve fallen into here. I mean we’re falling right back into the old ways and going down the same paths we took all those years before, but we haven’t actually addressed that.

We haven’t said what that is, or what it means.

I mean, we’re married, but that joke’s getting old and I know it.

Are we friends? Friends who fuck? Or is it something more?

I want that third one. I want the third one and then some. I want everything with Ivy that I always assumed I’d have before it all went to shit. I want everything with her that I promised to her in vows spoken in a church rectory.

Acting like a selfish, jealous little jackass earlier was hardly the way to show her that.

I slump back in the chair and frown at the small ferry in the distance as it putters around the breakers.

My personal storm-cloud is broken though by the pitter-patter sound of small feet running down a pier. I turn and grin as I see Stella with her son running ahead of her coming down the docks towards me.

“Carter!” She catches up with him, swinging him up into her arms. “No running on the dock, honey.”

He squirms, but she hoists him up and raspberries his belly, melting his little scowl away in a fit of giggles.

I smile as I climb down from the roof of the boat. “What are you two doing down here?”

I reach out and help Stella climb aboard.

“I thought you might want a friendly face.” She gives me a wry look. “And I also thought you might want to actually meet your nephew.”

I do a double take, blinking at her.

My nephew, as in, family.

She pushes her fingers through her hair and holds my eyes with a fierce gaze. “Look, I know, okay? About you and Ivy.”

My jaw drops. “What do you-”

“I know,” she says quietly, jerking her hand up and flashing her bare ring finger at me with a meaningful look.

Oh.

Shit.

I stare at her, dumbfounded. “She told you?”

Stella nods. “Pretty sure I’m the only one she did, but yeah.” She shakes her head at me. “Jesus, Silas, she had to tell someone after you left like that.”

I meet her hard gaze. “I’m not the monster you think I am, Stella. You know that.”

“I knew that,” she says, her eyes narrowing. “But that was before you left.”

She leans closer out of toddler earshot. “By the way, I’m not quite ready to forgive you for doing that, either.”

“You know it’s complicated.”

She smiles thinly. “Yeah, heard that one before, sport,” she says, nodding meaningfully at Carter. “That’s a guy favorite for why they can’t act like men.”

I glare at her, but she holds it, throwing it right back at me.

I break first, looking away before glancing down at her son. Bright blue Hammond eyes, tow-headed blonde like his mom.

I hate that I wasn’t around for this.

Stella was basically my older sister growing up, even if we’re the same age. She’s always acted older, and she grew up fast. Had a kid fast, that’s for sure. And God should I have been there for this. For one, I wish I’d been there when Carter was born, to be the uncle I should have been. Well, secret uncle, or something.

The other part of me wishes I’d been here so I could have knocked the teeth down the throat of the dumb prick who walked away from her when she was pregnant.

“So, you’re Carter, huh buddy?”

He moves behind his mom’s leg.

Stella sighs. “Carter it’s okay honey, this is your Uncle Silas,” she says, shooting me a look.

I kneel, smiling at him. “How’s it going, little man?”

“Good,” he mumbles quietly, eyes wide.

“You’re being good for your mom, right?”

He nods, wide-eyed.

“Good boy.”

He smiles.

“Can I get a high five?”

He grins wider and nods as I raise my palm. He smacks it, and I glance up to see Stella smirking.

“I’m trying to make things right, Stel,” I say as I stand. “I’m trying to be the man I need to be here. I’m not running from this, not anymore.”

She nods slowly, her eyes sizing me up before the corners of her lips pull up just enough to count as a grin.

Well, at least I’ll be counting it.

I turn back to Carter. “You like fishing, buddy?”

“He’s four, Silas.”

“Well, high time he learned then.”

She gives me a look.

“I could show him how to pick a lock or steal a candy bar if you’d rather.”

Her look sours, but she looks away to try and hide the grin that comes to her face.

“C’mere, buddy.”

I duck into the wheelhouse and grab a spool of fishing line and a lure hook from the rusty old tackle box that was in there when I rented the place. I lace on the lure and cut off a length of line before I kneel next to Carter at the back of the boat. He looks on with big, wide eyes as I show him how to hold on and dangle the line over the side.

I turn back to Stella, who looks reluctantly impressed.

“So. You and Ivy are….?” she trails off, raising a brow at me.

I shake my head. “I don’t know what we are, but I’m working on it.” I hold her look. “I’m not giving up this time.”

Stella moves next to me, her hand ruffling her son’s hair as he stares intently down the line into the water.

“Silas, I wanted you to meet Carter, and I want to believe things are good now, but I haven’t totally forgiven you.”

“You know why I left.”

She nods. “I know why, but that doesn’t mean I like it. You were better than all that, Silas.”

I shake my head. “No, I wasn’t.”

I glance down at my nephew, feeling anger at all the years I missed, but also this glowing warm feeling at being so close now to what I’d always wanted.

Family.

“You all wanted me to be better than that, but I wasn’t.” I look up into Stella’s eyes. “But I am now.”

Carter suddenly screeches as he looks up at me sharply with a wild look on his face and the line jumping in his small hands.

Stella laughs. “Did he actually catch something?”

I kneel next to Carter, whose cackling away as I help him pull the line up out of the water with the flip-flopping 2-inch flounder flailing around at the hook.

“Fish!” he says with almost wonder, his eyes round as he stares at his tiny catch.

“Yeah, buddy!” I throw my hand up for another high-five, and he smacks it. “You got one!”

I take it cleanly off the hook for him, letting him see it flop in my hand before I toss it back into the water.

He giggles.

“I’m not going anywhere, Stella,” I say as I stand. I glance back at Carter.

“I’ve got a lot of making up for lost time to do.”