Chapter 7 Wren
I’ve always thought it ironic that the thing that makes the world go round is the thing that hurts most.
It hurts when you have it but also when you don’t. Whether you’re searching for it or running from it.
When it ends, it’s devastating.
But when it’s unrequited, it’s flat-out dangerous.
My chest aches as though my heart is missing. A tightly packed ball of emotion clogs my throat, swollen with joy and heavy with the worst part of me: hot, bitter jealousy.
One day, it’ll break me.
“Babe.” An elbow connects with my rib. “Stop crying.”
I glance sideways at Tayce and pat my cheeks. “It’s okay, I’ve got a new mascara,” I whisper. “Totally waterproof.”
She rolls her eyes. “No, you’re just being so loud.”
Oh.
With a sniff, I swallow hard and muffle my next sob with a tissue.
How can I not cry on a day like this? The scene is set for tears.
From the sunlight piercing through the clouds and shimmering on the lake, to the flowers and fairy lights wrapped around the arbor.
Underneath it, a moment so pure and true that even time has stopped to witness it.
In one frosted breath, my best friend utters the two words that’ll tie her to The One forever.
Love hurts. And in this moment, I know with every fiber of my being, it’s worth the pain.
Rory’s lashes flutter as Angelo seals his fate too. When he brushes a gentle thumb over her cheekbone, another sob escapes me, twice as loud as the last.
“Sorry,” I mutter to no one in particular.
The tissue in my palm is soaked through. As I rummage in my purse for another, my heart decides to make a reappearance. It beats like a warning, sending a throb of dread through my veins and raising the hairs on my skin.
I must be a sucker for reliving trauma because I lift my chin and look across the aisle to find the threat.
My lungs squeeze out my next breath.
Everything is scarier in the dark. Everything except Gabriel Visconti. Under the pale winter sun, there’s no trick of the light to cast doubt about his expression, nor shadows to conceal the true breadth of his frame.
It’s been impossible not to look at him today, and not for my lack of trying, and it’s not because me being a bridesmaid and he a groomsman means we’re standing across the aisle from each other. Or that, after last night, I’m viciously aware of his every move.
He’s just hard to miss.
He’s the type of man you’d spot first in a crowded room, and decide to walk back out the way you came in. He’s huge—six-foot-five, a conservative guess—spends all day lifting heavy things and has to have his clothes tailor-made kind of huge.
If one was brave enough to look at him closely, only then would they realize he’s related to Angelo and Rafe.
He has the same green eyes, sharp bone structure, and dark features.
He’s beautiful, in the most objective sense.
Look a little harder, and you can see what I should have seen three years ago.
The evil.
There’s so much darkness inside of him it bleeds through his pores and sits on his skin.
It’s in the fading initials on each of his busted knuckles, in the cross etched onto the side of his neck.
I see it in the angles of his skull under his buzzcut and in the thickness of his beard.
It’s in the hard lines of his face too, from the permanent scowl to the violent scar that cuts across it.
I’m not usually one to judge a book by its cover, but since that book make himself at home in my living room and threatened me, well, I think have every right to assume what that book is about.
Gabriel Visconti is as terrifying as he looks.
Even more terrifying now that he’s staring right at me.
His gaze is filled with cold disdain. As if I’m the one who broke into his house and he’s stewing over the fact I got away with it. The irony twists inside of me like a hot dish rag, but I rather like having a tongue, so I look away.
I stare down at my heels and curse myself with all the letters of the alphabet.
My body is humming from lack of sleep and an unwavering sense of fear.
I’ve done stupid things in my time, but not turning on my heel and running when he crossed my path that night is up there with the worst. Sticking my tongue out at him and not locking my damn front door, battle for second place.
As my new pink peep-toes sink slowly into the muddy grass, injustice flares up my spine.
He won’t get away with what he did last night. A man like him belongs in a cell—probably a padded one—and not on the streets of the coast. I don’t want to wish Rory’s big day away, but the moment it’s all over, I’m marching straight to the Devil’s Dip police station and telling them everything.
A strangled noise comes from my right. “Okay.” Tayce sniffs, ripping the fresh tissue out of my clenched fist. “What mascara are you using?”
I glance up at her. She’s turned a rashy shade of pink, and a wet black line dribbles from her eye to her chin. “Are you crying?” I whisper. “Christ, I didn’t even know you had tear ducts.”
“I’m not crying,” she hisses, dabbing at her cheeks with a shaky hand. “It’s hay fever. From all the trees and shit.”
I’d usually revel in the chance to point out it’s December and in the years I’ve known her, she’s never complained about allergies once, but here I am, staring at Gabriel again.
I’m more subtle this time. I face the arbor and only move my eyes to find him. I’m looking so far to the right that my retinas ache, but even from this angle, I can see he’s not listening to a word of the officiant’s impassioned speech.
It’s crazy to think he’d smiled that night.
Though, now I’m sure it was the dark playing tricks on me.
I could have sworn he’d laughed too, but it must have been a moan distorted by the wind and the passing of time.
Because as he slowly scans the horizon, his expression is stone, and I can’t imagine him being capable of anything else.
Rafe stands beside him, dabbing the corner of his eye, his lips stretched into a small smile as he watches the wedding unfold.
Gabriel looks as though he’s been dragged kicking and screaming to a distant relative’s funeral by his mother.
How can he look so bored on the happiest day of his brother’s life?
It suddenly dawns on me like a new day: he’s not a creepy local legend, the man’s a psychopath.
He has to be.
My mind races as I recall the last therapy session I had before Uncle Finn and I moved out of Seattle.
Camilla was a glam woman with a constant-perfect blowout and a soft voice. She listened more than she talked. After thirty minutes of nodding at my every word, she’d slid a laminated infographic over the table and tapped at the title with a long French tip: Signs of psychopathy.
Each characteristic was its own bullet point, with bolded keywords and cartoon diagrams. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to remember what they were.
Antisocial behavior. Well, duh. Check.
Impulsiveness. I’m no expert, but breezing into my home with a bunch of knives less than three hours after I pissed him off, sounds pretty impulsive to me. Check.
Lack of empathy. Psychopaths don’t feel fear or guilt, and considering he hasn’t gone on the run or fallen to my feet with a groveling apology—which I absolutely would not accept anyway—makes for a definite double check.
Being charming.
Okay, that one doesn’t make sense. I’ve given sponge baths to patients in comas with more charisma than Gabriel Visconti.
Hmm.
He takes a small step to the left, and my eyes move with him. A muscle puckers in his jaw as he glares into the treeline on the other side of the lake, then lifts his beefy fist to his mouth. He mutters something so quietly even Rafe doesn’t notice.
What else?
Well, back in Seattle when the nights were long and loud, I never slept.
I’d bury my head under the covers and watch an endless stream of YouTube videos on my iPad at full volume.
Usually makeup tutorials and Sephora hauls, but since my mother wasn’t the type to care about silly little things like parental controls, I once happened across a true crime documentary.
It was about this serial killer: a fat, smelly trucker who got his kicks from picking up prostitutes and strangling them in the back of his cab.
The host interviewed a sex worker who narrowly missed his wrath, and it was all because she’d learned how to spot a psychopath with one simple trick.
She’d yawned.
He hadn’t yawned back.
Apparently, normal people will yawn in response to being yawned at because they have empathy, so a true, cold-blooded psychopath won’t.
Gabriel shifts his attention from the treeline to the vast open space between Tayce and me. His shoulders tense and his gaze slowly drops to meet mine.
Panic steamrolls over my lungs and stomach. Survival instinct tells me to look away again, but the simmering irritation in his eyes is paralyzing.
Maybe I should smile.
No, definitely not. He’ll probably cut my lips off.
Before I can stop myself, I open my mouth wide, and a long, silent yawn stretches the back of my throat. It comes easier than expected since I’m so damn tired.
“Jesus, Wren, that’s so fucking rude,” Tayce hisses beside me, but she sounds a million miles away, and Gabriel just scowls at me. He doesn’t yawn back.
He. Doesn’t. Yawn. Back.
Oh my God, he really is a psychopath.
The world spins clockwise, and my brain turns in the other direction.
The wind blows hot, burning my face like the brush of death.
I’ve stared it in the face on a dark road, stuck my tongue out at it across a club, and pleaded with it in the reflection of my front door window.
Now, it stands across the aisle from me, and I can’t breathe.
“Tayce,” I bite out, blindly reaching out to grab her arm. “Tayce, there’s something I need to tell you—”
“Shhh, they’re exchanging rings!”
“But it can’t wait, we need to warn Rory—”
“Wren.” The sharpness of Tayce’s tone slices through my panic, so I turn my head and stare at Angelo and Rory. My vision swims and diamond rings glint. I slip my hand into Tayce’s and squeeze it like a lifeline.
This will be a long day.