23. Wrenley
TWENTY-THREE
WRENLEY
S aint is terrifying to look at for anyone who’s not me. The relief of seeing him is so vast that I want to weep.
Even though I hate that he sees me like this. With my mascara running and my arms clamped around my knees, my chest spasming in shallow, useless breaths.
But Saint doesn’t hesitate. He kneels, crowding into my small, tile-bound world.
The close-up sight of him, fierce and bloodless with worry, does the impossible. It jars me loose, just enough for my lungs to drag in a ragged, scraping inhale.
“Wrenley.”
I shake my head, nails digging into my shins.
“Look at me.”
He moves closer, so close I can feel the heat of him, the scent of smoke and basil and char surrounding me.
“You’re safe. Hear me?” His voice is a rasp, so rough it could sand down steel. “No one’s going to touch you. Not in my house. ”
I squeeze my eyes shut and nod, but the images keep coming: hands around my throat, the weight of a body pinning me to the bed.
Saint’s hand settles on my back, warm and steady, not moving except for the pressure of his palm.
He doesn’t try to haul me up. Doesn’t say anything more.
He stays with me in the silence, his thumb tracing slow, hypnotic circles through the fabric of my dress.
I try to match my breathing to his. In, out.
In, out. The rhythm is clumsy at first, but then his hand slides to the nape of my neck, grounding me. I cling to his wrist like a lifeline.
“Good,” he murmurs. “You’re okay.”
I want to tell him I’m sorry that I ruined dinner, that I’m an embarrassment, but all I can do is swallow air.
He crouches closer, his knees bracketing mine.
“That’s it,” he says, and I realize he’s cradling my head to his chest, using his own heartbeat as the metronome. “Again.”
I breathe. I shake. I breathe again.
My phone buzzes on the tile.
Saint snatches it up and glances at the screen. His entire body goes still.
I watch his face change as he reads. Watch as the controlled chef transforms into something else entirely.
When his eyes meet mine, they’re nearly black.
“Who is this?”
The question is deceptively quiet.
“He’s—” The words stick. “Someone who?—”
“Your attacker.” Not a question. Saint’s pieced it together. “The one who hurt you. Who’s supposed to be locked up.”
I nod, mute.
Saint’s lips flatten to a line so thin it could slice through atoms. He lifts my quaking body in a single smooth motion, arms locked strong around me, and for a second, I think he might actually barrel through the wall with his rage alone.
Instead, he pivots and carries me down the back hall, away from the kitchen. Away from the eyes of line cooks and managers and servers with phone cameras.
He sets me gently onto a prep table behind walk-in doors, then crowds the space in front of me, blocking out everything but the pulse of heat between our bodies and the white tile behind his shoulder.
Saint flicks through the phone, scrolling, reading. Every few seconds, his thumb pauses, the muscle in his jaw ticking like a bomb. I want to tell him to stop, that there’s no point, that it will only make it worse. But the pleas are stuck somewhere behind my teeth.
“He’s not supposed to have any access to the internet,” I say with a shaking voice. “He shouldn’t even be able to comment, let alone create new accounts.”
Saint’s eyes snap to mine. “When’s the last time you checked your DMs?”
“I … I don’t. My agent screens them.” The confession tastes like blood. I’ve been hiding behind Brenda and the buffer of two different social media managers for a few weeks now.
“It’s not just the comments,” Saint mutters.
My hands shake just thinking about what he might’ve uncovered.
There are videos saved on my account, ones held as potential evidence instead of deleted.
I wonder if Saints found the video that was sent to me by my attacker, which included a still frame of my own face in the preview.
Not a recent one. It was a screen grab from a year ago, taken from a live Q&A I did for a lipstick launch.
My mouth is open mid-sentence. My hair is platinum then, no pink, just wild and loose .
The video was silent. It’s me, looking into the camera, smiling and talking, but with the sound removed.
The effect is eerie, like watching a puppet version of myself.
A steady, slow zoom closes in on my lipsticked mouth.
Then, abruptly, the video cuts to a photograph of my face, my mouth circled in red: love how your mouth trembles when you don’t know what to say.
Saint’s thumb moves with fast swipes, opening apps, switching screens. He’s logged out of my Instagram and locked my phone before I can even see what he’s doing.
“Why are you still on this fucking thing?”
He sets the phone on the table with the screen facing down.
“My therapist calls it controlled exposure. I’m sorry,” I say again, voice scraped raw. “I didn’t mean to ruin dinner.”
Saint makes a noise that’s almost a laugh, but there’s nothing amused in it. “You didn’t ruin anything. You did scare the shit out of me, though.”
He’s close enough now that I spot a faint nick on his chin from a razor, the fluttering pulse in his throat.
I want to crawl under the stainless steel and never come out. Instead, I reach for my phone, but Saint beats me to it, holding it out of reach.
“Abso-fucking-lutely not,” he says, voice like a slammed door.
“I’m not a child,” I snap, and immediately regret how shrill I sound. “Give it back.”
“You’re not thinking straight.”
“Neither are you. You can’t take away my phone like I’m your rebellious daughter?—”
“I don’t care about your goddamn phone. I care about you. ”
He’s so matter-of-fact that I almost laugh, but my body is still fighting for air. The adrenaline comes in aftershocks, waves that leave me limp. Saint softens, just a fraction. He sits beside me on the prep table, forearms across his knees.
“Did you know,” he says, “that every time Ivy so much as coughs, I lose two years off my life? That when she fell off the monkey bars and split her chin last year, I nearly threw up on the playground?”
I shake my head.
“I’ve never been so scared,” he says, “as I was when I got that call from the school today. Unless you count the ten minutes just now, standing outside that bathroom, listening to you not be able to breathe.”
I want to tell him that my panic attacks aren’t voluntary.
That he can’t possibly understand what it’s like to live in a body that betrays you every time you think you’re safe.
Maybe he does, in his own way. Maybe that’s why I can’t stop coming back to him, why I crave the cold burn of his attention like a drug I know is going to kill me.
But for the first time since coming to Falcon Haven, I’m not thinking about the next panic attack or how to apologize for my existence. I’m just listening.
Saint rubs his palms together, the friction loud in the hush. “I’m intense. I know I am. But I’m not going to let this happen to you again. Not here, not ever.”
He’s silent for a long time, and I don’t dare break it. The kitchen beyond the walk-in is a muted roar, the world’s volume dialed down to just the two of us and the thump of my heartbeat in my ears. He stares at the wall for so long I wonder if I’ve broken him.
“My wife died because I chose work over her,” he says quietly. “Did you know that?”
I can only shake my head again.
“Celine used to do this thing. She’d get anxious about dumb shit, like whether she left the iron plugged in or if Ivy’s pajamas were warm enough.
I’d listen, but I never actually heard her.
Not really. I was always thinking about work, about the next menu, the next step.
” He scrapes a hand over his face. “One night, she called, asked if I could pick her up from some charity event. I said no. Too busy. Told her to call a car or drive herself. She never made it home. Black ice, two miles from the house.”
His voice goes so flat I almost miss the tremor in it. “I told myself it was bad luck. That I couldn’t have changed anything. But the truth is, she was calling because she was scared to drive in the dark. She just wanted someone to say she’d be okay.”
I can’t look at him. My chest aches so fiercely that it steals my voice. I know this isn’t about me, not really, but the weight of his confession presses me into the chair.
“Ivy was two. She doesn’t remember her mother, not really. But every time she wakes up from a nightmare, she calls for her. Not me. Her mother.”
Saint rubs his palms against his thighs, tattoos shifting.
“I’ve spent the last three years making sure nothing like that ever happens again.
No surprises. No fuckups. No distractions.
” He inspects his hands, the callused knuckles, the ragged half-moons of his nails.
“I thought if I just stayed in control, I could keep everyone safe. But that’s not how it works, is it? ”
“Unfortunately not.”
“You’re coming home with me tonight.”
I laugh, but it’s not a sound so much as a breath expelled in disbelief. “Is that your solution? Kidnap me?”
Saint stands, blocking the prep room door with his entire body. “You think I’m joking? ”
“You’re not actually going to shove me in the trunk of your car, are you?”
He shrugs, a dangerous tilt to his mouth. “You wanna test me?”
I want to argue, to throw up a boundary just to see if I still can, but the truth is, the idea of being alone in my apartment tonight terrifies me. Even with Ralph, even with the triple locks. Even with the lights on.
The last time fear burrowed this deep, it took three days to stop the shakes.
Saint doesn’t even wait for the protest. He stands and offers his hand. I take it, and the steadiness of his warm, dry palm is enough to make my knees work again. He doesn’t let go, just leads me through the kitchen, ignoring the gossamer hush that falls over the line as we pass.