And what was I supposed to do when what I felt and what I felt was right were completely at war with each other?
My relaxing float down the river was turning more stressful than I’d planned, so I shook the thoughts away for the moment, leaning up to take in the scenery again.
My fingers dragged along in the water, figure skaters on the crystal clear glass, and I watched them until I saw Anderson’s cabin in the distance.
He was there, working out back, chopping more firewood—likely for Momma Von. The summer would end soon, and he took it on himself to make sure everyone was stocked up and ready for the colder months ahead.
For a moment I just watched him work. He was shirtless, the muscles in his back shifting under each lift and pull of the ax, and the way he slung it told me he was working through thoughts of his own.
I leaned forward a little more, and it was as if he sensed me because he stopped mid-strike, looking up to find me on the river. I smiled, waving in his direction, but his face was hard as stone. He was too far away to make out his expression, but I could see how tense he was, and when he dropped the ax and started sprinting toward the river, I furrowed my brows.
He was yelling out something, but I didn’t have time to figure out what.
Because when I looked back in front of me, I saw the rocks.
I was too close to them, the water rushing too fast. I didn’t feel panicked at first, just kicked off one of them the way I’d seen Tucker do when we’d floated down together, but then my tube spun, water splashing up and over me, shocking the breath from my chest.
I hit another rock and then another, bouncing between them like a pinball, heart racing when I realized I couldn’t stabilize it. I reached my hand out, braced with my feet, but I was rushing too fast and when the rocks hit my hand with brutal force I yelped, pulling it back just as I bounced off another rock. The river dipped, and then I hit one final rock, this one at an angle.
My tube flipped, tossing me into the water with just enough time to take one last deep breath.
I couldn’t move.
My feet were bricks, my legs lead. I was running, but not fast enough. Every sound was muffled, save for the beat of my heart loud in my ears. It drummed harder and harder, echoing my racing thoughts.
Not again. Please, God, no. I have to save her. I can’t lose her—not like this, not ever.
As soon as my legs hit the water, every sense came rushing back. The icy water shocked my system but I dove in anyway, praying I’d catch her before she floated past. Wren kept bobbing up for air before being sucked down again, her hair in a whirlwind around her, arms flailing, tube long gone now.
Flashes of Dani’s face flitted in and out, and I wondered if this was what she’d looked like the day the river took her life—the day I’d pushed her too far.
Guilt and panic surged as high as the water. I was drowning, suffocating from the threat of death’s hands around my neck again. Wren was almost to me now and I wasn’t far enough into the river to stop her from floating past.
The current was strong and I gritted against the pressure of it, boots grasping for friction on the rocks below as I fought through my demons to fight for life. Her head went under as she floated past me and I growled, lunging.
I reached out as far as I could and squinted against the sun, vision blurred from the water and the rays. Just when the river hit the bottom of my chest I caught her by the ankle, ripping her back upstream until I held her in my arms.
She wrapped around me, coughing over my shoulder as I trudged back to the shore.
She held on tight and I did, too—both of us adjusting and readjusting our grips like we were afraid even one inch of separation would lead to our demise. And though I had her and I knew she was safe, I was still shaking, heart thumping so hard against my ribs it nearly knocked my breath away.
When we hit the shore, I tried to calm myself, tried to take a breath, a moment, even a split second to think before I spoke, but I couldn’t. I dropped her gently to her feet, still coughing, and held her small face between my hands.
“Are you okay?” I asked, voice too high-pitched, hands shaking as I held her.
She nodded, eyes wide and lips trembling, and though I wanted to pull her into me and rock her and soothe her, I couldn’t.
I snapped.
“Jesus Christ, Wren, what were you thinking?!”
I dropped my hands from her face and ran them back through my wet hair, pacing away from her as my entire body shook. With what, I wasn’t sure—cold, terror, rage, a mixture of the three, maybe.
“I,” she started, still shivering. She looked so small, dripping wet and crossing her arms over her middle. “I lost control of the tube. The rocks, they—”
“I know! I saw!” My nose flared, fists clenched together at my sides so hard I thought they’d never unfurl again. “Why were you on the river by yourself? It’s dangerous. It’s stupid.”
“I just wanted to float, I didn’t know,” she started and I clamped my mouth shut, jaw clenching as I stormed past her and up to where my shirt was thrown over my toolbox. Her face screwed up in confusion as she followed. “What is your problem? I’m sorry, okay? It’s not like I meant to fall in the river.”
“You shouldn’t have been out there at all, not alone.”
“Okay, well I was, and I’m sorry. Can we drop it now?” She was panting, catching up to me just as I swiped my shirt off the back of my box and threw it on over my head.
“No! We can’t fucking drop it!”
Wren’s mouth popped open, her eyes flicking between mine like she didn’t know who I was. And in that moment I couldn’t blame her. My body had been seized by terror, my mind pirated by the ghosts of my past.
“What’s this really about?” she asked, taking a small step toward me. I took an even bigger one back and she paused again. “Is this about last night?”
“No, it’s about right now. It’s about you putting yourself in danger and not even thinking about what you were doing.”
“Oh my God, Anderson, I said I’m sorry! It’s not like I took Benjamin with me or something, it was just me. I was the only one affected by the choice, okay?”
“Are you really that selfish?!” I screamed, chest heaving, and the way her face dropped pulled me back to reality.
I’d gone too far, and I knew it before I even went there. I just had no idea how to control myself.
I sighed, shaking my head and plopping down on the cutting log I’d been using.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. I just...” How did I tell her why I was acting this way? How could I say the words that would show her the monster I really was?
We were silent, me sitting with my head in my hands and her standing just three feet away from me, legs shivering, water still dripping down to the ground.
“What are we doing?” she asked after a moment, voice soft.
My heart stopped and I looked up at her. The dejection I found on her face, the hopelessness, it was enough to make me jump to my feet again.
“I’m sorry—” I tried, but she cut me off before the apology had a chance to be born.
“No, seriously. I mean you’re right,” she said with a laugh. “Everyone is right. I am selfish. I only think about myself. Why do you even want to be around me?”
“Don’t do that,” I said, reaching for her. It was her who pulled away this time. “Don’t make this about us.”
“But isn’t it? I mean look at us.” She gestured between our wet bodies with a pained face, as if the two of us together was an abomination she’d been taking part in. “What did we expect? We never talked about it, about what this was. I’m leaving, Anderson. I just went through a divorce. And you’ve never even had a girlfriend. Not one.”
I swallowed with a closed throat, fighting her truths like pills that would kill me if I let them slide down. “That’s Sarah talking, not you.”
“No, it is me.” Tears pooled in her eyes and desperation
rolled off her. “We can’t do this anymore. I can’t do this anymore.”
“Wren, please,” I tried again, reaching out. She let me hold her for just a moment, her eyes squeezing tight before she pulled back again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it—any of it. You scared me, and I was angry but not at you.”
She shook her head, tears marring her cheeks now, blending with the river water until I couldn’t tell the two apart. I was only inches from her, yet it might as well have been miles. She was pulling further away by the second, and nothing I could do would stop her.
Silence slipped over us like a cloak, encasing us for what felt like hours, but it hurt even worse when she broke it.
“I have to go.”
Wren turned, and panic knocked against my chest with enough force to drive me forward after her.
“So, what? We get in our first fight and you’re already done? You won’t even give me a chance to explain?”
“Explain what?” she screamed, turning to face me again. “I’m leaving. You’re staying. I’m still going through a divorce. You’re still mourning the death of your cousin. I ruined the only relationship I’ve ever had and you’ve never even had one to begin with. We’re both walking disasters, Anderson. How are we supposed to do this?”
I opened my mouth, ready to tell her not just how but why and where and when, but the words were lodged in my throat. It was true. I was still mourning Dani. But more than that, Wren was mourning.
And hadn’t Tucker reminded me of that last night?
I’d been so angry, ready to knock the smug smile off his face as he told me I was Wren’s rebound, that there was no way I’d get to keep her, but was I only mad because I knew he was right?
I’d known since the moment Wren opened up to me about Keith that she was still healing, and I’d thought I could help her. Now here she was standing in front of me telling me I was only making it worse.
How could I convince her I could heal her when the last man to touch her was responsible for the scars?
“I’m sorry,” I croaked out.
I tried to tell her more with my eyes, to let her see me, but she just blinked, freeing two more tears to race down her cheeks.
“Me too,” she whispered, and then she turned, and I watched the only woman to ever make me feel alive walk away, taking the last of my breath with her.
ASSUAGE
as·suage
Verb
To lessen the intensity of (something that pains or distresses) : ease
My teeth chattered as I stumbled my way back to my cabin, feet bare and aching on the unpaved road, arms wrapped around my shivering frame trying to find any kind of warmth. The sun had disappeared behind clouds now, making the long walk home a shaded one. By the time I made it inside the cabin, it was all I could do to strip off my freezing cold bathing suit and step into the shower. And as soon as the water turned hot, I hissed, the sting of it against my skin jolting me back to reality.
I was numb, and yet I felt everything.
“Damn it,” I cried out loud, voice bouncing off the shower walls and hitting me with even more force the second time.
My eyes squeezed closed, hands rubbing the goosebumps from my arms as my wet hair fell over my face. I needed to go get my car, I needed to eat something, I needed to calm down, I needed to stop thinking. I was so exhausted, mentally and physically, and I swore I was just one minute away from breaking entirely.
I wrapped myself in a towel and padded straight into the bedroom, pulling on an oversized sweater and leggings and crawling into bed without even brushing my hair. I tucked one arm under my pillow and curled in on myself, wanting nothing but to sleep, to fall away from the world for a while—but my thoughts wouldn’t let me rest.
What had I done?
I was so shocked by all of it. The fall into the river, the terror of not knowing if I’d be able to catch my breath, if I’d surface. The relief when Anderson pulled me into him, the safety I felt there, and then the immediate sadness that followed when he ripped into me.
The man I’d just realized made me the happiest I’d been in years called me out on my biggest fear—that I was selfish. And wasn’t that just proof that it was true?
The longer I’d been there with him, watching as anger and fear danced across his features, the more I’d realized he wasn’t mad about the river. That might have been his excuse to let it free, but the truth was he was scared just like I was.
Because I was leaving, and he was staying, and just like the summer had begun, it would end.
In two weeks, I’d head back to Seattle—back to the boutique, where my team expected me to have a brilliant line designed and ready to be worked on, back to my friends, who would expect me to be the happy go-getter I was before my divorce, and back to the city, where the mountains were only faint ghosts in the distance.
My hand jetted out to where I’d left my phone on my bedside table earlier and I unlocked it quickly, ignoring all the missed texts from earlier and clicking through my favorites to dial Adrian.
“Hey, mountain girl,” he answered, to which I only replied with a pause and a sniff, and then I heard him sigh. “Oh babe, what happened?”
“It’s all ending, Adrian. The summer is almost over, I have to find a place to live, I have to figure everything out and I haven’t done anything. I don’t have a line,” I admitted. “I don’t have anything.”
My hands tightened around the phone and I curled in on myself even more, aching in every way. I’d spent almost three months trying to find myself and I’d come up empty handed.
“Hey, everything’s going to be okay. You can stay with me until you find a place and don’t worry about work. The boutique is just fine, Wren. Everyone still loves you and your work and no one is worried. Plus, the team and I have been working on some designs, too, and if we need them to float us through next year’s summer line we can do that. I think you’re going to love what they’ve come up with.”
I sniffed again, feeling even more like a failure. Adrian and the team had already had to do next year’s spring line all on their own because I’d been too fucked up. Now they would possibly have to float me through another one. Did they even need me anymore, for anything else other than my name? I felt useless, hopeless, completely broken.
“When do you check out of the cabin?”
“Two weeks from today.”
“Okay,” he answered, voice soft and encouraging. “Just come straight here before you go anywhere else. I’ll have wine ready and I’ll help you unload boxes if you want or we can just talk or we can go out. Whatever you need.”
I nodded into my pillow, but another ache rolled through my chest. I wasn’t ready to leave.
“We’re going to get through this. You’re going to get through this. You’re too strong not to.”
I stopped nodding then, silence my only response. I felt a lot of things in that moment—heartbroken, sad, guilty, inadequate, lost, unsure.
There was a long list, but strong wasn’t on it.
Later that night, I wrapped myself in a blanket and made a giant mug of hot chocolate before settling in on the front porch. The clouds had cleared out completely, leaving me bathed in the soft light of the moon and stars as I sat with my sketchbook in my lap. I didn’t even get to open it and attempt to work through my feelings before Momma Von appeared at the edge of my drive.
“Hope there’s something strong in that mug,” she said as she climbed my stairs. Her bangs were pinned back in a braid tonight, skin freshly tanned from a day of working outside I assumed.
“Hot cocoa. But I can spike yours, if you want?”
“Like that’s a question,” she answered with a wry smile.
I popped up and dipped inside as she made herself comfortable, and five minutes later I returned with hot chocolate for her, too—complete with two shots of Baileys.
She took it gratefully, a hum of appreciation on her lips as she took the first sip and I covered the two of us with
my blanket. I loved the little bench on my front porch, the view of the mountains, the stars. I’d miss it all, more than I had words to explain.
“I think it’s time I tell you the rest of the story,” Momma Von said after a moment, her hands wrapped around her mug. “About Dani.”
I tucked my legs up onto the bench, balancing my mug on my knees. “I thought that wasn’t your story to tell.”
“Yeah, well,” she started, eyes focused off in the distance. “I’m afraid the person whose story it is to tell may never have the strength to tell it.”
“You talked to Anderson?”
She nodded. “He told me about what happened earlier. I’m so sorry,” she said, pausing for a long drink. “And I’m so happy you’re okay.”
“Is he? Okay, I mean?”
“No,” she answered quickly, shaking her head. The movement was so soft, so slight that I couldn’t even be sure it’d happened. “But it’s not you he was mad at today, Wren. It’s not you he was yelling at. It was himself.”
I sighed. “Maybe, but I think the river was just a catalyst. I think it brought all of his fears about us to the surface and he just snapped. I did the same. We both realize how careless we’ve been.”
“No, sweetie, today may have been about you leaving in your eyes, but it was about Dani in his.”
Now I was confused.
I tilted my head, unsure of how Dani was tied into anything about today. “Okay, you have my attention.”
Momma Von had this look about her when she was conflicted over something, and she wore that look like she wasn’t sure about what she was about to tell me. She glanced at her hands and then off somewhere in front of her, finding the words in the distance between the two. Her eyes seemed softer, as if they were more of the storyteller than her words were.
“You already know how Dani and Anderson’s relationship was. She was the one who kept him in line, who demanded more of him. When he would find himself in a heap of trouble, Dani would be there to bail him out of it—and then lecture him on how to be better.” Momma Von smiled then. “He told me once that she was like his angel. His outspoken, annoying, too-smart-for-her-own-damn-good angel.”
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