The ringing stopped after a few moments and my heart slowed, Anderson’s fingers drawing lazy circles on my skin as we both began to drift off again. The questions and fears we’d left downstairs were louder now, calling out to us, reminding us we’d abandoned them. But we weren’t ready to face them yet, so we held on tighter, and with a press of Anderson’s lips to my forehead, I slipped from consciousness and shut them out until morning.
It’d been a long time since I’d laid awake as a night passed slowly, but this time was different.
My eyes still watched the shadows move along the ceiling as each hour ticked by, my mind still raced with thoughts too twisted to let me sleep, but this time I wasn’t alone in my own bed. I was in Wren’s, her head on my chest, my hands in her hair, our bodies zipped together and legs tangled in her soft cotton sheets.
She’d fallen asleep quickly, which was probably for the best. I knew when she woke she’d have questions, ones I wasn’t sure I’d have answers for. When the sun started peeking through her sliding glass door, I played with her hair gently, brushing it back from her face and counting the seconds between her inhales and exhales.
Every thought I had was underlined with the notion that last night was a huge mistake, but in reality that was the last thing I actually felt. I’d needed her, my body knew it before even I did.
I’d walked here after leaving the cemetery almost as if there was no other choice, as if I had no say in the matter, and when she’d seen me she knew. I didn’t know for sure why she’d been the only person I wanted to see. Maybe it was because she’d been the last person I’d talked to about Dani, or really the only one I’d talked to about her in years. Or maybe it was because the pain in me recognized the pain in her, and the more she asked about me, the more I wanted to tell.
Even more, I wanted to know her, too—and I hadn’t given a shit about anyone in my entire life. I found myself enamored by her, perplexed in the sweetest yet most terrifying way. Still, no matter how mixed my feelings, I couldn’t take back what happened last night. And I wouldn’t have even if I could.
Maybe I was reading too much into it, but it almost felt like she needed me last night, too. The way she’d held onto me, the pain that bent her face the same way it bent my own when we connected—nothing about last night felt wrong, not even close.
The sun’s rays shone through her thin curtains, and I watched it highlight the gold in her hair as it dropped from my fingers and I started over again, brushing her scalp and running my hands through to the bottom strands. It wasn’t long before she stirred, and when her hand slid up my chest and hooked around my ribs she stilled, as if she’d just realized where she was, and who she was wrapped around.
Still, she seemed calm, and her hand stayed resting on my ribs as she waited for me to say the first word. I owed her that, and I knew it, but I didn’t know where to start. How could I tell her why I’d come to her last night if I wasn’t even sure myself?
“I went to see her yesterday,” I started, voice gruff. I cleared the thickness from my throat while my hand kept busy with her hair. “She’s buried in the same place my grandma is, a little garden cemetery not too far from here. My Aunt Rose used to meet me there. It was the one time each year that we saw each other. But she didn’t show yesterday.” I swallowed. “It’s been seven years, and I guess she’s finally moved on. Maybe I should have by now, too, but I don’t know if I ever will.”
Wren’s hand found mine and we laced fingers over my chest. I didn’t think I needed to say more about yesterday, the way she held my hand told me she understood more than any words could, so I told her what I’d been meaning to for a while, instead.
“It probably doesn’t make much sense to you, the way Dani’s death affected me. I know Momma Von has told you a little bit. But she wasn’t just my cousin, Wren—she was my sister, my best friend, the only one in the world who saw good in me when I wasn’t even sure it actually existed. Sometimes we butted heads over it, because she wanted more for me. Hell, she demanded it. And I felt like I always fell short.”
I still remembered nights I’d come home too drunk to form full sentences and Dani would rip into me, asking me if that was all I wanted for my life. She and Aunt Rose always bailed me out when I blew my paycheck on partying or ended up in jail for something stupid, but where Aunt Rose looked at me with pity in her eyes, as if I was born that way and would never change, Dani looked at me with determination.
She wanted answers, wanted me to dig deep and find the root of my problems to expose them, kill them, replace them with the better side of me that only Dani saw.
That part of my heart was still raw, and I rubbed my chest with the thumb under Wren’s, smoothing out the ache. I wasn’t ready to go there yet.
“She used to do these words of the day. Every day at breakfast she’d tell us the new word and the definition, and then we’d all have to use it in a sentence. Of course, she and Aunt Rose actually did it correctly while I usually aimed for somewhere between ridiculous and offensive.”
I felt Wren’s lips smile against my chest and she placed a tender kiss there.
“One day the word was revelry. I forget the exact meaning of it now, but it was something along the lines of rowdiness. Basically, it encompassed everything that I was—loud, drunk, obnoxious.” I chuckled. “She said if ever there was a word made for me, that was it. And so my nickname was born. Rev.”
Just the sound of it from my own mouth made me tense, and Wren gripped my hand a little tighter, her soft skin like silk against my course palm. I didn’t know what else to say, so for a while, I just held her. We breathed, and the sun rose a little higher, the sheets grew a little warmer. It was nice, just existing with her, and even though I’d barely told her anything, I already felt lighter, like I’d shed five pounds of pressure from each shoulder.
I was so tired, as if what’d I’d told her had given my body permission to rest. I closed my eyes, my hand slowing where it still ran through her hair, and my breathing steadied. But then, she spoke.
“What you said about feeling like you always fell short,” she started, her voice soft, almost a whisper. “I get that.”
She sighed, leaning up on her elbow so she could look down at me. Her hair pulled away from my hand and fell like a curtain over her bare shoulder and onto mine. Her eyes were so bright, the gold tangling with the green even more than usual in the morning light.
“Anderson, I’m mourning the loss of someone I love, too.”
The hand that had been playing with her hair needed something to hold, so I slid it down to her hip, pulling her closer. So that was it, I thought. She lost the guy she loved. That’s why I saw death in her eyes.
But it wasn’t that simple.
“The sad thing is, he’s still alive.”
I furrowed my brows, watching as her face twisted in pain. I didn’t know what she meant, but I pulled her even closer, our hands resting over my chest still laced together.
“I married my high school sweetheart, Keith, when we were twenty. He was my everything. He was absolutely all that I felt I’d ever need in my life.” She shook her head, and now her eyes were on where our hands stuck together. She wouldn’t look at me. “It’s a long story, one I’m sure you don’t want to know, but over time, our love changed. More specifically, his love changed. It became conditional.”
I thought it had been difficult to show her my demons, but as she undressed hers in front of me, I found the lump forming in my throat even harder to swallow. I knew it from the first time I saw her—those eyes hid pain, they hid fear—and she trusted me enough to show me why.
“I didn’t see it at first, but every day I slipped further from who he thought I should be as a wife.” She shrugged, and her eyes welled with tears I knew would fall if she so much as blinked. “He was working hard to make his dreams as a dentist come true, and I was working at mine to open my own boutique. But the more my dreams took off while his grew only slowly, restricted by school an
d processes with many setbacks along the way, the more he resented me.” She sniffed, resisting a blink. “I didn’t think it would ever matter to him, that I made more or that I was well known. I’d always seen us as a team. But I’d travel for fashion shows or explore boutiques in other cities with Adrian and Keith would be stuck doing residency at school or, when he opened his practice, working to build clientele. He couldn’t go with me, and so he blamed me. I wasn’t home at night to listen to him tell me how his day was. I was too busy doing what made me happy.”
My heart ached right under where she rested against my chest. This smart, beautiful, driven woman, who was one in a million, was ashamed of everything that made her so.
“And you know what? Maybe he was right. Maybe I did fail him. Maybe I’m not fit to be a wife.”
Her voice quivered a little and I pulled my hand from hers to brush the pad of my thumb against her cheek. That’s all it took for her to squeeze her eyes closed and let two symmetrical tears fall. Those tears were linked to the knot in my throat and I forced a swallow.
“Why would you ever think you aren’t fit to be a wife, Wren?”
“Because,” she said automatically, her voice weak, eyes still closed as she leaned into my hand. “No matter how I tried, I could never be what he needed. Failure is my biggest fear, and every single day I failed him in some way. I watched the love drain from his eyes for years.” She sniffed, and I gritted my teeth against the urge to lash out about a man I didn’t know. “When it all ended, he called me selfish. He said I would never make a husband happy as his wife. At first I was angry and sad, but honestly, he’s right. I am selfish.”
I leaned up, cradling her small face between my hands. “What makes you selfish, huh? Because you have a dream and you fight for it?”
“Maybe,” she argued. “If I loved him the way I was supposed to, shouldn’t I have dropped everything for him? Shouldn’t I have put his dreams above my own?”
“What was stopping him from being happy? Not just with his career, but with you?” I shook my head, thumb lining the soft skin of her cheek. “Wren, if he loved you, he would have been proud of you. He would have supported you the same way you supported him. You can be married and still have dreams of your own. It’s about being a team in all aspects, not just the ones that benefit him.”
She opened her eyes then, wet lashes framing them as she looked at me again. She watched me for a moment, as if I’d said what she’d been feeling all along, like my words had validated her, or maybe like she didn’t believe me at all.
“So he asked for a divorce?” I asked, wanting her to keep talking.
“No,” she answered, eyes still on mine. “I left.”
I couldn’t help it, I smiled. It turned out she was strong enough to realize she was good enough—whether he saw it or not. Really, I didn’t even believe she truly saw it yet, what her leaving meant. She was more brave than she even knew. It was my only thought as I traced the lines of her face.
And that’s when I noticed.
“You’re not wearing makeup,” I said softly.
“Not since I took it off when you were here the other night.”
I leaned in, pressing my lips softly to hers. I kissed her with all the words I didn’t have to make her see how astounding I already knew she was, and I’d only known her a month.
“You’re beautiful.”
I meant that, not just because she didn’t need makeup, but because she had courage. She was strong. I was running from every feeling that crippled me while she did whatever it took to get her life back.
She inspired me.
The last person to do that was Dani.
Wren shook her head, swiping at the tears that had stained her face. “Ugh, I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I just unloaded all that on you. I haven’t talked about it much, about him.”
“Hey,” I said, tilting her chin with my knuckle. “I unloaded on you, too. And I don’t know if I speak for you when I say this, but... it felt good. To talk to you about it. About Dani.”
Wren nodded, her eyes soft. “It felt good for me, too.”
“Maybe we talk more often,” I suggested. “You know. When it feels right.”
Rev pounced onto the bed with a loud meow and we both laughed, the spell between us broken by our furry friend. I pecked her cheek once more, petting Rev as he hopped right up on our laps.
“See? Rev agrees.”
Wren rolled her eyes, but her cheeks flushed a sweet shade of pink and she reached forward to pet behind Rev’s ear. “What does he know? Boys are dumb.”
I chuckled. “No arguments here.”
VACILLATE
vac·il·late
Verb
To waver in mind, will, or feeling : hesitate in choice of opinions or courses
Once again, the night was my enemy.
Anderson had stayed at my cabin all day, and for the first time since our little arrangement, he didn’t work on a single thing. We laid in bed talking, eventually made our way downstairs for my favorite breakfast—coffee and cinnamon rolls—and then we spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening talking on the back porch. It seemed like once the flood gates had been opened that morning, we couldn’t stop the words from pouring out.
And it was amazing.
I didn’t realize how much I needed to talk about—not just about Keith, but about life in general. Maybe that was the missing part of my experience at the cabin that I hadn’t yet discovered. It turned out the more I learned about Anderson and how he grew up, the more I thought about my own upbringing and how it affected who I was.
Throughout the entire day, even when we talked about the difficult subjects, I didn’t have one single bad feeling wash over me. Every conversation was comfortable, every touch welcome, and when Anderson kissed me soft and sweet on the front porch as the sun set before heading off to his own cabin for the night, I was content as could be.
But then he left.
And my brain kicked on.
Suddenly, nothing felt okay, and I tried to distract myself by cleaning up the cabin, but it did little to help. I made the bed first, and of course the sheets smelled like Anderson—cinnamon and pine—so my thoughts ran wild while I folded and tucked.
What the hell were we even doing?
Here I was divorced for all of five months and he had admitted in one of our conversations that he’d never really had a girlfriend—not in the traditional sense of the word, anyway. But then again, why did I even care that he hadn’t had a girlfriend? It’s not like that’s what I was expecting to be. I mean, I was fresh out of a ten-year relationship, I wasn’t trying to jump into another one. We had literally just slept together not even twenty-four hours ago and already I was thinking about meeting parents and sharing houses?
I huffed, stomping downstairs and getting straight to work on the dishes from our breakfast and lunch. The soapy hot water turned my hands red as I scrubbed, wishing I could cleanse my anxiety just as easily. I needed to calm down, so I tried focusing on the reality of the situation.
What were the facts?
One, I was divorced.
Two, he was guarded.
Three, I was only here temporarily.
Four, we clearly had feelings for each other.
Right?
I knew I had some sort of feelings toward Anderson. Yes, the sex had been of another universe, but it was more than that. Wasn’t it?
I shook my head, rinsing the last fork before cutting the water off and drying my hands. I grabbed the broom next, trying to stay busy and turning my thoughts back to the facts.
Okay, so what were we honestly dealing with here? I would be in Gold Bar for a couple more months, we would hang out like normal, maybe share our beds once in a while, and then I’d go back to Seattle and he’d go back to his life before me and we’d just have fun together while we could. It’d be a sexy, fun summer affair.
Perfect.
It sounded simple, but in reality it made my t
hroat close in, because how could I know that’s what Anderson wanted at all? Was he even thinking about me, about any of this? What if he’d just wanted to get laid, would he even come back the next day? Did he think he was a rebound? Was he a rebound?
The broom slipped from my hands and I growled in frustration, hooking it against the side of the fridge before giving in and tugging on my boots. There was no way I’d get sleep with my anxiety clawing at me from the inside trying to escape. So I pulled it out willingly, and I walked it down to Anderson’s cabin on a tightly bound leash.
I felt like the stupidest girl in the world every step I took toward his place, especially since I knew I was overreacting. Nothing needed to be figured out tonight, and yet I couldn’t stop thinking. So before I could talk myself out of it, I knocked on his door.
His shades were drawn, so I couldn’t see anything until he swung the door open. He didn’t invite me inside, though—just slipped out and onto the porch, wearing only his gray cotton sleep pants, the edges of his briefs just visible where they rose higher on his hips than the pants.
“Wren? You okay?”
“Define okay.”
He frowned, closing the door behind him and stepping into me. His arms fit around me easily, like he was meant to hold me, and though it should have calmed me I only freaked out more.
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” I said, hands flying up before I let them smack against my sides again. “Everything was fine and then you left and I started thinking—about everything—and now I just don’t know what to do. Listen, if all you wanted was a little action that’s totally fine but I just... I need to know. I need you to be honest with me. I swear, I can take it. I’m not clingy. I’m just new to all this, you know? I haven’t dated since high school.” I blanched. “Not that we’re dating. That’s not what I meant. I’m not saying you have to take me out on dates or that we’re in a relationship. God, I know we only slept together once.” I smacked my hand against my forehead. “This sounded so much more sane in my own head.”
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