Chapter 23
CHAPTER 23
WREN
Well, I lasted a little more than a day.
But then he had to go and stand there explaining himself over this beautiful place on this flawless, pristine night. Had to stand there in a charcoal button-up that matches his eyes, dark jeans clinging to strong legs. Sun-kissed face full of hard lines and angles despite being the softest man I know. I’d noticed a few new graying strands of hair in his cowlick and the way the ends of it flipped out against his neck like duck tails and I just couldn’t help myself anymore. He’s worked so hard. He’s trying and he’s earnest, and I somehow forgot just how disarming and sweet. I don’t know how I could have ever forgotten all these parts of him. I’ve missed him I’ve missed him I’ve missed him looped through my head, and I had to bring my mouth to his.
He’s shocked stiff for a moment, unmoving, and still a quiet whimper escapes me at the feel of his lips. Soft and firm and mine. I taste one with the tip of my tongue, and that breaks him out of his stupor. His hands crash under my hair, and he angles my head, a coarse sound swept out of him when he slots my top lip between his. I nibble at him, and he devours me. I recognize this exact taste. I know when he’s going to adjust the angle of the kiss before he does it. He hasn’t made another noise, but I can feel a million thrumming inside his frame, an undercurrent of electricity ready to spark. I scratch my nails farther up his neck to tug in his hair and there , there’s that sound I love. A gravelly hum I lick at with greedy strokes of my tongue. I feel his whispered fuck like a smack between my legs.
I pry him away by his hair when I catch a glimpse of the little red cable car ascending back up the tracks.
“Ellis—” I say, muffled when he pounces back onto me and gently drags his teeth against my bottom lip. I let out a high, reedy sob. “Ellis, the… the reservation.” He’s on my neck now, sucking at a spot beneath my jaw that makes me squirm. Returns to my lips with an indistinguishable murmur.
“ Ellis— ” I try again. “Dinner. Oh god,” I laugh-moan when he manhandles me, tilts my head back by my hair, and dips to lick a perfect wet stripe up the center of my throat.
“I’ll cut out my own liver and cook it for you myself,” he speaks into my lips. “I’ll fucking forage an onion.”
My laughter makes him wilder. He sips at my mouth like he wants to absorb it.
“I don’t, oh , I don’t—Ellis. Ellis. ” I’m panting. I’m nearly too far gone. “Ellis. Either order us a ride back to the hotel right now or take me to dinner,” I command.
He goes rigid under my palms, prying himself off me with a small wet pop. He’s still cupping my face, glazed eyes wild and searching, one side of his hair thoroughly mussed. I make the critical error of letting my body bow into him and feel how hard he is. How full and thick and big and—
“Dinner,” he rasps. My jaw snaps shut into a pout, and a low noise whisks out of him. “Slow,” he grits.
“Dinner,” I repeat, swallowing forcibly. “And taking it slow,” I say. God, whose shitty idea was that?! “You’ve got a four-minute cable car ride to get that under control,” I tack on, letting my eyes dip to his impressive erection before I thumb some of my lip gloss off his bristled chin and step out of his embrace.
The cable car is big enough for four average-sized people but does not have an ideal amount of space to accommodate our current predicament. He visibly struggles to regain control, his eyes dancing between my lips and neck and chest before they meet my stare and he groans anew.
“Byrd, we’re not going to make it if you keep looking at me like that,” he says, agonized. Almost plaintive.
“How am I looking at you?”
“Like you really might eat me alive. Like you’re devising plans. Like you might let me get under that dress and get my hands full of you and find out if you’re wet.” I bite my lip, and his eyes fall shut, nostrils flaring. “Wren, please, baby, I really need you to turn around or something,” he begs. When I do as he asks, he makes another helpless, throttled sound. “That’s not any better,” he mumbles, his gaze on my ass like a brand.
This is how Ellis ends up spending three silent minutes in a cable car facing away from me with his forehead pressed against the glass.
By the time we’ve descended the hill and reached the broad double-door entry, his condition has resolved itself. His hand is still tentative when he reaches for me, fingertips barely pressing into my lower back like he’s worried if he touches me any further he’ll ignite again.
A host leads us down a grand staircase and into a spacious room he tells us is known as the Redwood Hall. It’s a converted patio with floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides, a coffered ceiling dotted with chandeliers, and unfettered views of the night sky and ocean beyond. We’re seated at a corner table tucked right up against the glass, and it feels like we’re floating. Candlelight flickers across his brutally handsome face. When our stares catch and hold, his eyes fall limpid and warm. Everything goes calm, stretching into something thick and sweet.
“Hi,” he says, a promise in his gaze.
“Hi,” I say, knowing how good it would be between us. Knowing, by exquisite firsthand experience, how he’ll take care of my body and needs. Knowing makes it no less anticipatory, but it does help me scrounge up some patience.
“I thought of some questions on my own,” I tell him. “Things you couldn’t have looked up beforehand.”
His quiet snort and grin are self-effacing. “All right,” he replies. Our server comes by and drops a basket of bread between us before telling us the specials and sliding drink menus onto the white tablecloth. When he leaves again, Ellis picks up where we left off. “Let’s pick out our meals first?”
“Oh, so you’re not getting the liver and onions after all?” I joke incredulously.
He husks out a laugh. “ We are in this magical restaurant, and we are going to order something good.”
“ We also need to learn when to let a joke die, don’t we?”
“Maybe we do,” he says, eyes flicking over his menu before they drift back to me. “It’s always better when you make things last, though.”
There’s a whoosh in my ears, like invisible hands placed invisible seashells up to them. I wriggle in my seat and study my menu with a shaky breath.
“Apparently, this place has some famous orange rolls they reserve for brunches,” he says, trying to ease us into safer territory.
“I made orange rolls a few times last summer,” I say, a little sad that he missed them. “You didn’t have to avoid the bakery for all those years,” I add, even though we both know that before the last few weeks, I wouldn’t have wanted that. “I mean, you could have come in. At least to visit Mom.”
“Wren, I see your mom at least once a month. Usually more.”
I gawk at him. “What?”
“Who do you think mows her lawn still?” he says. “Or took down that tree when it started leaning too close to her place?”
“She didn’t tell me.”
“Because you would have tried to take care of it yourself. And we both know you’ve been busy running Savvy’s pretty much on your own the last few years.” His eyes go warm. “It’s yours, just like you always wanted.”
I study my nails and fidget. “It’s still Mom’s. She started everything.”
“And you grew everything and made everything greater. Which is what you always do. You can take anything and make it into something better, Wren.” He blows out a breath. “And yeah, I am still suspicious, now more than ever, that you dabble in witchcraft and put magic in your baking. But you also create community. Why do you think Martha gives you so much shit?” His grin tilts. “You’re, like, her main competition for head woman in town. I didn’t come in because I didn’t want to take away from that for you.”
My mouth turns down, but I feel myself blush. “You wouldn’t have taken away from it,” I say. It would have been hard to see him more, but maybe I would’ve gotten used to it. Maybe we wouldn’t have lost all this time.
He looks at the table and shakes his head. “Yeah, I would have. Would have made it less relaxing for you, anyway.” He sighs heavily. “You wanted a family, and you made it there,” he says. “I’m amazed by you.”
God, it’s disorienting, how forthcoming and open he’s trying to be. I feel like my lungs are blooming. “It was big of you to never make it feel like I didn’t have you guys, still. Your sister and your brothers. You never cut me off from that family, and I’m grateful.”
“We both know they wouldn’t have allowed it,” he says. “You’re still a Byrd.”
“I am,” I say proudly. His entire body seems to lift in response. “And we both know that they’re as great as they are thanks to you.”
We go easy on each other after that. Eat our bread and order our meals and drinks, sharing polite conversation and speculating on what everyone is up to back at home. We annihilate a baked Brie appetizer with jalapeno jelly and herbed crostini.
When we talk about the influx of tourism in Spunes, I ask, “Do you think Spunes will ever be one of those places that makes people turn seasons into verbs? Like, ‘Well, we summer over in the Oregon headlands, but you can’t beat Aspen in the fall?”
His chuckle makes me feel unjustly clever. Making him laugh is inebriating. “Isn’t Aspen a winter town?” he asks, brow creased.
I shrug. “No idea. Are we boring for not knowing?”
I wonder for a second why something hungry passes over his face when I ask this, but then I realize the implication of that “we”… like we exist beyond this trip in a real and present way rather than in the past or in the hypothetical.
“Because we haven’t traveled?” he says, then answers himself. “No. I don’t think we’re boring just because we’ve had to work for most of our lives and happen to like where we’re from. I don’t think it makes us simple or boring to have been busy being… immersed in our days or our obligations. I know you’re not simple, at least.” A smirk plays at the corner of his mouth.
My cheeks warm. “So…” I work up the courage to ask what I want. “You read it, I’m guessing. The journal?”
He nods. “Thank you for letting me. I liked—loved getting to be in your head.” The candlelight dances again and makes his eyes spark. “I’m sorry about the vows. I should have tried.”
I feel my expression waver. “I didn’t think of that as a bad memory, Ellis. You told me what you were feeling in that moment and it wasn’t something rehearsed or premeditated, and it meant more to me because of it.”
“I know, but… I could have tried. That was the point, right? Finding a compromise. Even if I couldn’t say them publicly, I could have written them to you. I could’ve tried, and I don’t know why I wasn’t willing to back then. Seems so fucking stupid now.” He sits back in his chair, his lashes splaying against his cheeks. “You were my best friend and I still kept shit too close to the chest sometimes.”
“So did I,” I confess.
His eyes move up to mine again before he blows out a long sigh. “The silent treatments. That’s my second thing for the day.”
“Worse than my cryptic musical showers?” I say wryly.
“You avoided fighting with me, and I think I avoided fighting with you, too, Byrd,” he says, his smile turning sad.
He’s right. I never knew how to fight with him. Not only because I didn’t grow up with two parents to witness or learn from, either, but because of everything Ellis had always been to me. How do you tell the man who’s always wanted to take care of you that you resent how much you need him? I never wanted to be a broken mess to the person who’d spent his life managing everyone else’s. I didn’t want to be angry at him, not when I didn’t always understand why I was angry in the first place back then. And no one teaches you what to do when the person hurting you is still good to you. He wasn’t off cheating on me, he was an excellent dad and cared about our home and well-being. It feels silly and selfish to say, I hate that you’re working so much and it feels like you’d rather not be here with me, like you’d rather be anywhere else , when that person’s work consists of saving homes and lives. It was easier to convince myself that the growing distance between us was all in my head. I’d thought we could love each other through our hard times, but maybe we should have fought our way through them, too.
“I promise I’ll fight with you more,” I say. I’ll fight for you more, too. “Even if things don’t . .” I don’t want to finish that sentence.
“I’ll fight with you, too,” he says, grinning genuinely now. “Even if things don’t.”
“We robbed ourselves of makeup sex, didn’t we?” I say. We’ve done our two bad things and spoken some truths. I’m not going to overthink flirting with him the rest of the night.
He coughs on his water a little. “I have heard great things about it, but I never felt robbed in that department.”
I smile into my wine and take another drink.
We take our time savoring our meals after that. I relish watch ing him eat. I let myself luxuriate in the simple pleasure of eating a meal and having a conversation with him again. I remember how I used to look forward to this all day when we’d moved into our house and out of the Byrds’. Sam was a toddler and would get put to bed at an early hour, still, and for a while, it felt like these meals were the only time we got to be us again, rather than Mom or Dad or baker or firefighter or whatever role we played for other people.
“What did you want to ask me earlier?” he says at some point when our plates are cleared. He pours an ice cube from his empty drink into his mouth and crushes it in his back teeth.
“Hmm,” I say, a raspy hum. The alcohol and food have me feeling toasty and brave. “Is there anything we never tried that you wish we would have? Is there anything in particular we did that you think about?”
His pupils dilate in the dim light. I see his pulse hammer at the base of his throat. Watch his Adam’s apple roll. He swirls around his highball glass before he tosses back another cube.
“So that I don’t misread this,” he says, careful and dark, “do you mean sexually?”
“Yes.”
An unsmiling nod. Another crunch. He swallows.
“I just think about making you come,” he says, simple and gruff. And I know that’s exactly how it’d be. Filthy, raw, no-nonsense. “But I think about tying you up, too. Binding you, somehow.”
Air escapes me, my nipples pulling so tight they sting. I can’t make eye contact with the waiter when he drops off the bill a moment later. Can’t even look at Ellis when we leave. We separate in the cable car again, each of us with our hands behind our backs against the glass like we’re keeping them restrained. When he grabs my hand in the Uber back to Santa Cruz, my breath hitches. I feel every circle he traces against my skin like he’s teasing my opening.
It is humbling, how desperately and how quickly I want him this way. How much effort it takes me to walk in an even-measured stride across the lobby when we get back to our hotel.
I am a panting, wanton wreck by the time we make it into the elevator. He slams a fist on our floor number when the doors slide shut, and dives for me. We’re a frenzy of needy sounds and obscenities and desperate, grasping hands. Sloppy, erratic kissing and too-hard bites. I shamelessly grab him by his ass and hook a thigh around his hip so I can grind into him where I need him. He buries a primal grunt into the valley of my chest.
We miss it when the doors open the first time on our floor, and he has to blindly reach around until he slaps the open button again. And then we’re ping-ponging into the hallway until he presses me into the wall between our doors.
“My place—” he says, punctuating it with a hot kiss and a feral grin. “Or yours?”
I growl out an ugly moan and throw my key at him. He eagerly shoves it in and slams it open with a bang before he’s hauling me into my room behind him.
“Fuck, it smells like you in here,” he groans.
I garble something and chase him with my mouth.
“I just gotta make you come. Just once. Please let me,” he says.
“Yes. Yes, that’s the idea.”
“No, but, I just—ah—you said no sex. I’m not breaking that on night one.”
“ What?! ” I’m sure I should feel some sort of embarrassment for how appalled I sound. He makes a sound in the back of his throat and cups my jaw in one hand.
“No… sex. Not this first night. Going to do this right.”
“God, I don’t care. I just need—” A knot that matches the one in my core tangles in my throat, and I’m at once inexplicably confused and desperate and aching.
“I know, baby, shh.” He kisses the corners of my eyes, the high planes of my cheekbones, the tip of my chin. “I know. I need, too. I need you . Let’s… let’s just slow down one notch.”
I will my breathing to even out, let him wind me down with slow, drugging kisses while he sways us side to side. I tremble harder the more tender he is, emotion refusing to abate.
“Are we stupid to do this? Is this a bad idea?” I whisper. Am I stupid to want to risk this so quickly again? Are we doing this right? Where’d we go wrong before?
“No, I don’t think so,” he whispers back. “We’re just us.”
For a second, I think he’s just confirmed our stupidity. We are us. Two small-town nobodies that got knocked up at seventeen and eighteen. It certainly wasn’t the smartest thing anyone’s ever done. But then I realize he’s just right. We’re what we are and what we’ve always been to each other. The alchemy of our bodies and the way my skin still remembers his is a part of that. He said it himself before: he’s altered my very DNA.
“You’re shaking,” he says, heartbreakingly gentle. He cradles my head to his shoulder while one palm pets me from my nape to the base of my spine. I idly recall the same way he comforts Bud and wonder if he’ll pat me on the rump, too. “Are you okay? It’s just me, Wren.” That’s exactly it, though. It’s Ellis. It’s been five years. It’s been too many other men’s arms and not a fraction of this even if you compiled them all together. It’s been disappointment after disappointment and feeling emptier and emptier, wondering if there was something wrong with me. If something broke inside me. Every step I take with him gets me further away from those lofty ideas of comfort I had and closer to this . This overwhelming, gutting, soul-rendering feeling is so dangerous. And I’m watching myself dive for it with so little caution.
“Let me kiss you some more,” he says against my temple. Like he needs it just as much. “Let me take care of you. Please.”
I nod against him, and his stubble scrapes my cheek. He rewards me with more kisses along the line of my jaw, under my ear and down my neck while he walks me backward, until I’m softly pressed to the wall. His tongue dips into the hollow of my throat, and he blows cool air there before he continues across the shelf of my collarbone. When he reaches my shoulder, he swirls his tongue against my skin before he delicately slips the strap of my dress away, inch by painstaking inch. He lets it hang at the top of my breast for a beat, and I hear him swallow, like he’s preparing himself to reveal that part of me. I lift my shoulder and let it fall away before he has the chance.
“Fuck,” he whispers before he runs his lips back and forth across my nipple. “Fuck, I missed you.” The pure emotion in his voice sears through me.
He slides the other strap down, lifts both of my breasts and molds them together, wetly kissing each of them before blowing cold air on them and watching them tighten more. He rubs his whole face across their surfaces, his nose and lips and even his brow, like he’s lost in the sensation. Like he’s utterly fascinated by them, like they’re his every lurid dream come to life. My arms are still trapped against my sides by my straps, and my lower half is still pinned to the wall by his. My hips tilt, searching for something, and he’s there like he knows, pressing his thigh between my legs and lifting me up the wall, perfectly applying pressure where I need it most. I rock slowly at first, until I can feel the edge of what I’m chasing. And then I torque and squirm and grind and gasp and slur helpless, beseeching words when he tugs at my nipples with his teeth. He builds it, stokes it in me until I feel like I’m aflame, desperately and clumsily circling. All while he goes on sucking and flicking me with his tongue.
“You gonna come like this?” he rasps, awed. “Can you get there with just my knee? Fuck, I bet you’re wet. If I touch you, I’m done. I’ll come in my pants like I’m sixteen again.” He’s amused at how needy we both are. Moaning at my whimpering and chuckling at my breathy, high sputter of a laugh. I let out an agonized, teeth-chattering sound when he abandons my chest and grasps at my hips to rock me against him harder. “Yeah, you’re gonna come like this,” he murmurs resolutely. I feel my underwear slip to the side and I’m bare against his jeans. I mutter some nonsense about his pants even as I ride him harder. “Yes. Make a fucking mess,” he says.
He sinks his teeth into my shoulder and works at me, lifting, tilting, dragging me until every sensation coalesces into one blistering, incandescently long release. He takes me through every last pulse, whispering praises into my neck, kissing my breastbone before he deftly plucks my arms out of my dress straps and wraps them around his neck to carry me to the bed.
He lays me down carefully and cups me again, twisting languid kisses into my skin and sending little aftershocks shimmering through me. I let my fingers roam along his scalp and touch his serene face. His eyelashes fan out against his cheeks while he goes on enjoying himself.
“I missed you, too,” I say, chest still rising and falling and sweat cooling on my skin. His eyes open and meet mine. “So much.” When I toy with the top button of his shirt, his hand envelops mine and holds it still. He slides up the bed to kiss my mouth. “Can I touch you?” I ask.
“I’m a feather stroke away from coming already, Wren. I just wanted to— oof —what are you—shit.” His eyes roll back when I palm him through his jeans, and he grabs my wrist again. “No, honey. I’m serious. First time I get to be with you again, I would really like to make it last.”
“How do you think putting this off until tomorrow is gonna help?” I muse.
He exhales a laugh and rolls one of my nipples playfully with his palm. “Because I’m going to go back to my room now where I plan to masturbate furiously,” he informs me.
“Can I at least watch?” I say.
His eyes stutter closed. “ Jesus Christ , you’re trying to kill me,” he groans weakly.
When he extricates himself from my limbs and bolts to his feet, I lean up onto my elbows and pin him with a coquettish look, my dress still tangled down around my waist. His hands bracket his hips before he roughly adjusts himself in a way that makes my mouth go dry. His fingers thread over the back of his head while he stares down at me, visibly enduring a battle within himself, biceps bunching and flexing. I lazily slide a thumb over a nipple, and his plea is downright grief-stricken.
“ No ,” he abruptly says—yells—and I jump a little. Which makes him cycle through a half-worded apology that melts into another mewl when my tits bounce bawdily. “I’m doing this right. We’re taking it slow. I’ll… I’ll see you in the morning. Checkout is at eleven, but we both know we’ll be up before dawn, so just text me when you want to get breakfast. Or come by. Or send a homing pigeon. Tap Morse code against my door.” He bends himself in half to plant a firm kiss to my mouth. “I—”
His eyes widen and his lips pale. Mine do the same when I realize he was about to say I love you . I quickly stretch up to kiss him again and pretend I didn’t notice.
“I’ll talk to you in the morning,” I say, forcing a smile.
Emotions drift over his face like a time lapse of a storm. He leans in for one last kiss. “I’ll talk to you in the morning.”
I try to push it out of my mind when he leaves. I shower, go through an entire skin-care routine, brush my teeth, and admire all the marks he left in places. I tell myself it was an easy slipup. Just because he fell back in time on one routine phrase doesn’t mean we’re doomed to fall back into our darkest time altogether. For the most part, it works. I have genuine butterflies when I finally lie down to go to sleep.
But… they’re heavier than butterflies, with different wingspans and speeds. More like birds.