He looked at the whiteboard. Her timelines were to an end, and she’d filled the empty space with demographic stats on what looked like two towns.

He heard Keaton’s little feet making their way toward the kitchen.

“Where’s Sy?” Keaton sang.

His chest hurt. Physically hurt. She was weighing her options, and from the looks of the research, she wasn’t even considering what he thought was the best choice. Him.

Couldn’t she see they’d started to build something here? Something real. Something that felt right.

“So you’re deciding between another house or a show with a network?”

“Among other options,” she said vaguely.

He crossed his arms over the ache in his chest and stared her down.

“Just because I don’t want you making decisions for me doesn’t mean we’re not in a relationship,” she said, getting a bit of fire in her eyes.

“If the situations were reversed, I would have brought all of this to you. I would have asked you your opinion because you know what’s most important to me, Maggie?”

She remained silent.

“You. These aren’t just my decisions anymore. They’re our decisions.” It was coming out wrong. But he didn’t care. He needed to be part of the process, needed her to trust him to listen to her. But maybe that was asking for too much.

“I live the way I do for a reason. I don’t have to take other people’s feelings into consideration.”

“Are you even taking yours into it?” he demanded. She sounded pissed off and just a little bit scared, and he hated it.

“Silas, you’re the one who wanted me to have a little time and space to think. And I thought about a lot of things on that water. A lot of those things scared the hell out of me. So I’m doing what I do, weighing my options, doing my research.”

“Are you even going to stay long enough to find out how Campbell found the gold? What he did with it all? Do you even care? What about Cody? And Wallace? Your sister? Were you even going to ask me to go with you?” he snapped. The ache in his chest was getting worse, blooming bigger by the second.

“Sy,” she said, hurt in her voice, “you mean a lot to me—”

He held up a hand, cutting her off. “Save it.”

“Hey, Sy, what do I do with the chicken?” Cody called from the kitchen.