Chapter 9
Wren
He heard the door close behind him and bent down to lean his palms against his knees as he took mouthfuls of fresh air.
He couldn’t stay in there anymore. Couldn’t keep quiet and keep listening.
Prettier than he is right now.
Wren knew Saint was a beautiful man. He was aware of it. And he knew Teddy had always recognized and appreciated beauty, penning novice odes in his journals for as long as he’d known him. So he was sure Teddy had noticed. He couldn’t have missed it, working with Saint daily for nearly a decade.
But hearing it said out loud, in front of everyone, when the two of them had always been so private, seeing him so open with Saint when Wren had been a secret from their first moment to their last…
It felt like someone had poured salt into an open wound.
“Too much?”
Wren snapped himself upright, turning to find the large, tattooed, bearded man standing in the doorway.
He hadn’t even heard the door open or noticed he wasn’t alone anymore. He was so out of it he had been unaware of his surroundings in an unfamiliar place. It filled him with dread.
“I come in peace.” Trace leaned casually against the door and crossed his legs at the ankles.
He was even taller than Fix. Looming and large, dressed in all black, and decorated with more ink and metal than Cane, which was saying something.
“I’m fine,” Wren said, wishing for nothing more than to be alone.
“Neither of you are fine,” Trace said, rolling his eyes. “But I’ll let the lie slide. For now.”
“I’m not gonna cause trouble; you don’t have to watch over me.” Wren crossed his arms over his chest, scowling.
“I love trouble. In fact, if you and I compared notes, I bet you’d find I’m much more proficient at it than you are.” He winked at Wren after saying it, and Wren frowned.
“Prove it.”
“I don’t exactly carry around a proof file with me at all times that I can whip out of my ass at a moment’s notice.”
Wren snorted. “So you’re a liar.”
Trace narrowed his eyes. “You sure like pushing buttons, don’t you? No wonder he’s so infatuated. You’re probably the only one who can get under his skin.”
The last bit was so quiet that Wren couldn’t be sure he hadn’t just imagined it because he was dying to hear it. “What was that?”
“I spent most of my early life running away from the law before finally joining Nexus and becoming this,” Trace said instead of answering him, which made Wren want to monkey climb his back and hang there annoyingly until he gave in. “They wiped my file clean, but it was…extensive.”
As the words sank in, Wren abruptly froze. “You didn’t grow up in Nexus?”
“Streets. Under bridges sometimes. Squatting. You name it, I tried it.”
“How’d they get you?”
Trace chuckled. “I got them.”
Wren flinched, the reaction so violent he couldn’t have controlled it. “You joined willingly?”
He knew he sounded judgmental, almost disgusted by the mere idea, but he couldn’t help himself. This man…he’d had freedom. He’d had what Wren so desperately craved and he’d thrown it away to become another nameless, faceless cog in the Nexus machine.
“I’m not Nexus’s bootlicker,” Trace said, as if reading his mind. “I went into it because I needed structure and a life away from the destruction I grew up around. They provided that.”
“Good for you.” Wren scoffed.
“I know—”
“I don’t think you do,” Wren said sharply.
He couldn’t know. He was never there. Nexus hadn’t saved Wren. They’d stolen him.
“I don’t know everything, but I know enough to be aware that Nexus isn’t the same for everyone.”
“One way of putting it,” Wren said, turning his back on Trace and looking into the distance, not really seeing anything but blurry shapes and smudged colors.
“Damir, he’s—”
“I don’t really want to talk about it.” Wren interrupted again. The name hurt him to hear, never mind the unwillingness he felt to share with this stranger. “If you don’t mind.”
He heard Trace take a few deep breaths, as if arguing with himself about whether to leave Wren alone or keep pressing. In the end, he decided to let it go.
“If you wanna talk to someone who’s crossed most boundaries, I’m willing to listen.”
With that, he went back inside, leaving Wren alone with his thoughts. He stayed outside for what felt like hours, forcing himself not to spiral, forcing himself to stay. Shutting down the parts of himself that wanted to rage and the ones that wanted to cry in Teddy’s arms.
None of those parts were helpful. He had a case to work.
Animals to save. They had nobody but him to rescue them.
His personal feelings needed to be pushed to the side.
The uncertainty that was left hanging in the air between Teddy and him and the hurt in his heart over his suspicions about the nature of Teddy and Saint’s relationship had to be footnotes.
“Wren?”
Wren whipped around to find Teddy staring at him, half behind the door like he didn’t know whether he would be welcome or not, even though this was his house.
Wren wanted to scream and shake him.
“I know you don’t really get cold out here, but I was worried when Trace came in and you didn’t.” Teddy rubbed the back of his neck.
“I was just clearing my head.”
Teddy smiled slightly, looking around them as he fully stepped out to join him. He radiated heat at his side even though the gap between them felt like a chasm.
“It’s not exactly the best place for that, sorry,” Teddy murmured eventually. “The city had strict rules about landscaping. No trees above fifteen feet, hedges ten feet. They even have rules about which types of flowers you can plant.”
“Don’t you hate that?” Wren blurted out, scared to know the answer.
Teddy glanced around at the perfectly manicured lawn and uniform trees in unnatural rows. “Every day.” He pasted on a smile and looked down at him. “But I doubt you like Slatehollow that much either. We don’t really get a choice in where they put us.”
The relief Wren felt was immeasurable. Some things might have changed, but the person he had grown up with was still in there.
“The house is fine,” Wren said.
Teddy nodded. “I’m happy you found a place to call home.”
“Did you?”
Teddy’s fingers tightened into fists before he visibly relaxed them. To the untrained eye it was as if he had simply flexed them. Teddy was a master at camouflaging. “I didn’t need to look for one.”
Wren frowned. “What kind of answer is that?”
“An answer.”
“I hate when you do that.”
“And I love when you do that.” Teddy laughed, seemingly forgetting himself as he reached out and smoothed a thumb over Wren’s scrunched nose.
He took one look at Wren’s wide eyes and ripped his hand away, looking back toward the door to see if anyone had seen. Was he worried about Saint?
Wren couldn’t contain the hurt in his chest, that fleeting touch like a ghost sent to taunt him.
“I’m sorry, that was inappropriate,” Teddy said, placing his hands behind his back. “I guess it’s hard to forget we’re not teenagers anymore. We should go inside.”
Wren didn’t want to. Inside was worse. Stifling. Full of people he didn’t know and a life of Teddy’s that was foreign and wrong.
“What did you decide to do about the case?” he asked to stretch the moment, wishing that time would stop slipping through their fingers.
“There’s a club Worthingham goes to often. He’ll be there tonight, so we’ll stage a sting operation.”
“Who’s we?”
“Saint as bait, Trace as protection, myself to keep an eye on everything if it goes sideways, and…you.” He looked unsure of himself. “If you want? I know you don’t like to sit on the sidelines.”
“I’m coming,” Wren said definitively. “If Sable can stay here while I’m gone. Nobody is allowed to hurt him.”
Teddy nodded, opening his mouth a couple times to say something before cutting himself off. “Do you want to get some more sleep? It might be a long night.”
“I already slept.”
Teddy seemed flustered at the mention of where he had found him, before he frowned, Wren watching him calculate roughly. “That couldn’t have been more than a few hours.”
More like one.
Wren glanced away. “I don’t sleep much.”
“You don’t?”
Wren knew Teddy must have been shocked. He had wiled away countless hours snoozing in his arms. Which was exactly the problem. Wren didn’t know how to sleep without him and had never learned. Maybe he was simply unwilling.
“Would you like something to eat, then? I could make you something?” Teddy asked.
Wren twitched, feeling an animal urge to accept what Teddy was providing for him. It wasn’t meant like that anymore, but his traitorous heart didn’t care.
Just this once, he promised himself before turning to Teddy and murmuring, “Okay.”
He must have imagined the way Teddy lit up, eager as he led him back into the house and through to the kitchen. It had cleared out by now, thank mother earth, leaving just the two of them in the showroom-style space.
Wren hopped onto a stool at the marble countertop, feeling Sable curl up under his toes. He shoved them into his fur to ground himself. Blu flew up to perch on top of a white cabinet.
Wren watched Teddy move with keen eyes, drinking in every shift of muscle under his simple jumper as he moved, the dip of his waist and line of his spine as he reached into an overhead cabinet for a bowl.
It was painfully domestic. A vision of what could have been if everything wasn’t all wrong.
Wren tried to smother the hurt in his chest so it wasn’t leaking out of his eyes when Teddy turned to meet them.
“Was there something specific you wanted?”
“Whatever is easiest,” Wren said, glad Teddy couldn’t see the nervous crisscrossing of his ankles. “I know you weren’t expecting to have me here, and there probably aren’t a lot of options.”
Teddy walked to the fridge and opened it. “Tofu? Oat or soy milk for cereal? I think we have some vegan sausage in the freezer. I can even make vegan pancakes, or muffins…I think I still have some beet sugar around here. How about…”