Chapter 12
CHAPTER 12
WREN
The shock sends the phone careening down my chest, and with my hands still clutching the tray, I have to pitch my shoulders forward to catch it… right in my cleavage.
The moment stretches painfully. Ellis looks at where it sits, snug in my décolletage, then drags his eyes back up to my face.
“Wren?” comes Sage’s voice. “What paper? Why is everything muffled?”
I wince. Somewhere along the journey down my chest, the speakerphone button has been pressed.
“You’re in my tits,” I say dully, still staring at Ellis. He’s got a fresh haircut and shave. My eyes go to the indent on his chin, and his mouth quirks. “Your brother is here,” I quickly add.
“Oh… OH . All right. I’ll, uh… see you at the ceremony.” Thank god she’s observant enough to infer that it’s not one of the other two brothers. She trills her lips loudly and says, “ Nice motorboating you! ” before she hangs up.
Ellis and I blink at each other. Three feet of counter space and three decades between us.
“May I?” he asks, nodding to where I’m still squeezing the phone.
“All right,” I squeak.
He deftly plucks it from my chest and places it on the counter, his jaw ticcing.
“I thought I would come see if you needed help getting everything over to the school,” he tells me. His voice is like having my back scratched. That perfect combination of grit and slide, deep enough to feel. I remember when it changed from boy to man. The new, confusing thrill I’d experienced when I heard it for the first time. I remember so many other new discoveries over the years, too. When I turned fifteen and saying his name felt different, all of a sudden. Like it left a taste on my mouth. How I realized I wanted to be so much more than his friend.
“Ellis, we have to talk,” I say quietly. I set the tray on the counter and start piling in the pastries. Today, Mom and I made raspberry lemonade blondies and strawberry custard tarts in addition to our regular lineup.
“I did find your paper on the counter,” he says abruptly. “If that’s what you’re going to ask.” Our gazes catch and hold. “I do want to help, but I also wanted to talk about it. That’s why I’m here. And yes, I did read it. I’m… sorry.”
I feel my eyebrows crash together. “You don’t sound sorry at all.”
He struggles to suppress a grin, and I have the sudden urge to mash a poppy seed cupcake in his face. “I am sorry that I violated your privacy, but I promise it was an accident,” he says more genuinely. “At least, at first it was.”
I’m… Dammit, I’m embarrassed nonetheless. I don’t care if this man’s been eight inches deep in me in every conceivable way or that he once was etched onto my heart and soul. Him seeing into my mind, seeing himself still living in there after so long apart, is different.
“It’s a journaling exercise,” I explain, avoiding his eyes and going back to my task. “It’s… With Sam heading off to school and everything, new stage of life and all that. It’s just something I’m going to do for… for closure.”
I can’t bring myself to look at him, but I feel the shift ripple through the space between us, the notch of tension clicking up.
“But you’re not,” Ellis rasps. “That means you’re not already closed . Not entirely.” My head whips his way, and I mark something restrained in his eyes. I’m suddenly not breathing well at all.
“Is that—is that a question?” I ask. It comes out like a gasp.
He swallows heavily, and a searing look of longing flashes across his face. It’s gone, and he’s composed just as quickly, but if I closed my eyes, I’d still see it, outlined in neon against my lids like I stared at something too bright. “Yes, it’s a question,” he states.
I’m immediately flustered. I think of that kids’ movie where emotions are all represented by their own characters, and mine are rioting. They’re throwing chairs and falling to the ground wailing, and there’s one in the background screaming, “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU GOING TO SAY!” on a loop.
“Ellis, I’ve been dating,” is what I go with. “Not like one person or something serious, but I’ve been trying to date and go out, and I’ve been working on opening myself up to something new.” I pick up the tray and turn to flee. “That’s the only reason I was starting that letter— journal thing.”
He comes around the counter in a few ground-eating strides and follows me to the back kitchen. “But are you over us?” he says urgently. “Seems like if you were, you wouldn’t care about writing us down.”
“We’re divorced,” I say helplessly. “We already gave up. And, hold on, haven’t you been seeing people?”
“No,” he says, baffled. “What would make you think that?”
I can feel my pulse in my palms. I can’t see a way to sidestep the truth. Whatever, he already saw my stupid paper. This isn’t any worse than that. “Last Thanksgiving. I had your phone when Micah called and—and a woman texted you a picture of herself.”
His eyebrows go up, and his lip juts out like this is news to him, too. “What was her name?”
I make a face. “I don’t remember,” I lie. Kirby. Young. Blond. Light brown eyes. A little beauty mark above her lip and enthusiastic about her poultry. Seems like your type. Sent me into an emotional spiral that spun me out so badly it took months for me to see straight, until I attempted to move in another direction. It’s been like swimming against a current ever since. And how embarrassing is that? That I’ve had to try so hard at something that was once as easy as breathing, with him. That I only threw myself into dating in the first place because of him.
He shrugs with a worn-out sigh. “Wren, I haven’t been on a date in over two years.” When I don’t formulate a response, he laughs without humor. “Please, Wren. Just answer me.”
“Answer you what?” I say hoarsely.
“Does any part of you think about us still?”
My eyes dart around the kitchen like a cornered animal. I don’t know what the fuck to do with this. Five years of having to pirouette around emotional land mines while maintaining polite distance, of having to strike a flawless balance between friendly and unbothered so that I could keep my family and friends even though I could barely handle being near him. He wants to blow it all up in my bakery kitchen in one afternoon. And yet, I watch his hands curl and open inside his pockets like he’s holding himself back. “Ellis, I’ve… slept with other people. I’ve done everything to try to move on.” My voice breaks traitorously. Every time I think I’m making progress, something pulls me back under.
He’s silent for so long that I eventually calm down enough to look at him. When I do, I’m shocked to see him studying me with a gentle look. Not a hint of anger. His smile is soft, like an apology.
“Did you hear me?” I hazard. “I said I had sex with other people.” I cannot explain what is possessing me to hammer in this point, but I think I need him to acknowledge that we have been living separate lives. Maybe I want to shock him as much as he’s shocking me. Whatever it is, I need to know I haven’t been imagining this. Trying to be with other people. Trying to be without him . “I just mean that there has been a lot of life in the last five years.” I sound like I’m trying to convince myself.
He inhales sharply and steps closer to me. “Wren, you remember when you had me read all those baby books when we were younger?” he asks.
My expression folds. “What? Yes?”
“Well, obviously, a lot of shit went out the window the minute he was born and we started running on adrenaline and instinct, but one thing that I thought was particularly amazing was how, no matter what, your anatomy would forever be changed.”
My mouth falls open in indignation, and my cheeks go white hot. What the fuck?! “ Gee , Ellis, what a perfectly flattering reminder that my hips will never bounce back!”
His chuckle warms ten degrees in the face of my ire. “I’m just saying. My DNA mixed with yours, and it altered your very bones, Byrd.” He steps closer still and inhales again, closing his eyes like he’s absorbing my scent. When he opens them, his pupils are blown, something raw and open there, too. Something that strips me to my core. “I don’t give a fuck who you’ve slept with or how many times. I don’t give a fuck if you have a boyfriend right this minute. We belong to each other in ways no one else ever will.” I’m certain he feels my gasp land on his throat. His eyes dip to my mouth and go pained before he takes a step back. “I didn’t mean to push this today. I know it’s Sam’s night and we don’t need to do this right now. I’m sorry.” He blinks at his feet.
“Just tell me plainly,” I say, barely more than a whisper. We were together too long for games, and I need to hear the exact words. “This trip. You… It’d be to see if we should give us a chance again?”
His head jerks up, and his gray gaze turns platinum. Three inhales later, he says, “Yes,” the sound rough-hewn like he needs a drink. “I want to be up front about my intentions. But I also would like to celebrate something that we did together—together. I’d like to go have fun with you, Byrd. Even if you just want to go as friends.” He looks down at his hand as he traces a pattern on the counter surface.
My stomach feels like it’s floating behind my ribs. “Ellis, I couldn’t promise anything. I—” I search the room like I might find the answer. Instead, I get hung up on the industrial mixer, one of our first major purchases together. The butcher block island he spread me wide on once or twice or maybe a hundred times, taking me apart over and over again until I felt like melted chocolate poured across it. I shut my eyes like I can block out the memories.
“I get it,” he says. I can’t help but notice it’s the same tone he’d use on Bud, back when he was easily skittish. “All I know is that I’m not sure we’re through.” He looks off to the side with a frustrated huff. “Or at least I’m not sure I ever got closure, either. And then, after the fact, I just got so used to whatever this is we’ve been doing, separately… that I think it got too hard to figure out where the road back was. Or if there was one at all. We’re too damn careful around each other.”
I feel the astonishment on my face. He’s just echoed what I haven’t been able to articulate, and why I started writing that paper in the first place.
“I wanted to protect Sam, too,” I admit. It’s so hard, worrying about your worthiness over another human being. Especially knowing you were so young yourself. We were so young. We worked so hard at being great parents. After we failed each other, it became easier to put all my focus on being a good mom than spending any of my limited energy regretting or resenting being an ex-wife. Which meant cutting myself off from him as much as possible. “Being careful around each other. Staying… distant. It made it easier to protect Sam.”
“That’s why I’d like to do this now. Why I think it would be a good time, I guess,” he says. “And if at any point you change your mind? We cancel and just come straight home. No matter what, we could make it nine hours in a car together.”
“Or if you change your mind,” I say.
He gives me a sardonic look. “Sure. If I change my mind.” He studies his boots before bringing his gaze back to me and continuing. “But if we don’t, then I’d like to make a couple of stops on the way back together. Just us. We’d be away. No town, no playacting in front of Sam. No pressure from anyone else. Just you and me.” He steps closer. “I think you and I are worth seeing about. Even if all that comes from it is a… a happier ending. Closure.” He runs a hand across his mouth like he’s missing his facial hair.
“You shaved the mustache,” I say a bit dazedly.
He blinks, mildly surprised. “I’ll grow it back if you want. I’m growing it back right now as we speak.” His face fractures into a smile, and I have to white-knuckle the tray to stop myself from reaching up to poke a finger in that dimple on his chin.
I’ve always been weak against this side of him. When he’s intent on something, he’s… he’s overwhelming. Combine that with some concentrated, affable charm? Done for. Once he’s decided something, he’s relentless about it. It used to be one of the things I admired most in him.
An idea takes shape again, and this time, it’s like a recipe—multiple flavors transforming into one multilayered thing. “What if I wanted to work on my project at the same time? What if I made you go through it with me?” I keep a tight leash on the hope in my voice.
His hands hook into his pockets, and his head cocks to the side. “What project? What do you mean?”
“What if I wanted to go through the journaling thing together? What if… what if I wanted to go over us, the parts where we went wrong?” He might be in therapy, but we aren’t. I need to know if he’s trying to pretend the past doesn’t exist or if he’s going to be willing to share the painful stuff, too. Starting over isn’t working, but taking a trip through pretty scenery with nice, romantic plans doesn’t seem like the right setup to gauge a potential future, either. Not when you know exactly how unromantic it is to see forever reduced into shit you have to divide up between you. “I’d keep writing things—I don’t know what exactly, but whatever pieces come to me, I guess.”
“You’d let me read them?” he says.
I wince at that. I think maybe the journaling works because it’s for myself or for an unknown entity. I’m not entirely sure. “Probably not that. But writing will still bring up stuff for me, and… and I’d ask you how you felt about a lot of things. You’d keep me honest about it all, and we could correct each other if we remember things wrong or differently. Either way, we’d have to talk . A lot.” I infuse this statement with an appropriate amount of familiarity, reminding him that I know it’s not exactly his forte.
“I’d like that,” he says simply. Eyes a little wild, like maybe he’s restraining himself from being vehement again.
I feel my jaw loosen before I snap it shut. “I wouldn’t want to plan any of it, either. You’d have to make all the arrangements.” The final few years of our marriage, any time it came to any sort of event outside of our typical day-to-day obligations, I was the one who planned it. Weekend trip? Me. Date night? Me. I bore the mental load of making sure we were on track for so long that the moment I couldn’t anymore, we drifted off the map.
“Done.” He crosses his arms and curls an eyebrow my way in challenge.
“I’d control the playlist,” I say, certain this will elicit some kind of flinch.
“Sounds great,” he says plainly.
“I’m gonna want to listen to a bunch of sad folksy shit that makes it feel like we’re in our own little indie film. So much acoustic guitar. Maybe even a mandolin,” I threaten.
“Perfect.”
I’ve got it. The trump card. “I’m going to bring a list of those prescribed questions along with us. The kind with some title like ‘Twenty-Six Questions to Make You Fall Back in Love’ or something.” I smile triumphantly. He hated those kinds of things. Anything that put him on the spot for something he didn’t have time to think through carefully or consider long. He’d get nervous and agitated and didn’t like conversations that had parameters.
“I’ve been finding that sometimes prompts can be helpful and fun,” he says. “We’d better start loading all this up if you need time to set up?” He gestures at the desserts, but I’m still scrambling.
“We couldn’t have sex!” I blurt.
Both of his brows go up. He pivots away, grabbing a box from where he remembers they’re stashed, then makes quick work of assembling it before sliding the cake inside. “That’s not what this would be about for me,” he finally replies, his voice a thick scrape.
He lifts the cake from the metal island and starts toward the door to the back alley where I park, so I move ahead of him and open it. “You’re telling me you’d have zero expectations as far as that went? You wouldn’t push for any of that on a trip with just you and me?”
His gaze narrows. “I didn’t push for it when we were married.”
“You know what I mean. I didn’t mean push , per se.” I suck my teeth. “You know what I meant,” I repeat.
He stops in the middle of the doorway and looks down his shoulder at me. “I’m not gonna promise I won’t give in if you push for it.”
I scoff from my sinuses. “That won’t be an issue. For me.” It would be far too distracting to partake in that with him. I know better. He continues past me and waits for me to open up the van before he slides the cake into a designated slot.
“I managed to go almost five years without your baking.” This statement is shaded in innuendo. “Don’t underestimate my self-control, Wren.”