Chapter Twenty-Eight Edward
Well.
It was a start. At least he could say that much.
But he could also say that it was only a few tiny truths, and he was left feeling completely depleted afterward. So drained, in fact, that he was tempted to let Ren drive them back into town just so he could close his eyes and not think for half an hour.
Edward wished brains had power-down mode. He wished life had an edit feature. He wished time had a pause button. He would hit it and close the door of their room in Nashville behind them and give them each another week in which they didn’t have to think about everything still coming their way.
He looked up when Ren clapped her sneakers together beside Max’s passenger door, trying to shake out all the mud they’d accumulated over the last bit of their hike. She leaned against the side of the car, her hair damp and loose, and looked up at him in playful despair. “We might need to go back to the secondhand shop and get me some new shoes.”
He nodded in agreement. “Based on your thrifting skills, you’ll go in for Keds and walk out with Prada.”
Ren pointed over his shoulder. “Look.”
It had started to rain on their way back—just a drizzle—and now he turned to find a rainbow arcing brightly overhead, not even trying to be coy. In fact, he’d never seen a rainbow like that, so thick and vivid it looked drawn onto the sky. He could clearly make out each individual color; it felt so sharp, so real, he’d swear that if he walked up the hill behind them, he could reach out and touch it. He briefly wondered if seeing it would make him lucky. Wasn’t that what people said? He’d never thought about luck or wishes before—what was the use, really—but the appearance of Ren in his life had changed a lot of things, he guessed. “That’s insane.”
“Isn’t it?” She dropped her shoes and looked down at them before seeming to give up, peeling off her socks and walking over to him barefoot. “Sometimes I can’t believe that two different people can see the exact same thing.” Her fingers found his and threaded between them. “Of course, maybe your red looks different from my red, and your green different from my green, but I don’t think so.”
“I don’t think so, either.”
“Sensation has to be universal.” She looked at him so squarely, like there wasn’t a thing in the world she needed to hide. God, he wanted to know what that felt like more than anything. “Like when you gave me my first kiss?” He nodded. “It wasn’t your first, but I swear you knew what I was feeling.”
He couldn’t help but watch her mouth while she spoke. “I did.”
She stretched, sliding that mouth over his. He pressed her to the side of the car, kissing her deeply, and fell into the sensation of melting from the inside.
“How’s the birthday so far?” he asked when they finally came up for air.
“Easily in the top three of all time.”
“Top three?” He walked around to the driver’s side. “Okay, that’s it, I’m taking you to my favorite local place for dinner. I’m getting that number one spot before the day is over.”
Ren clapped happily, climbing into the passenger seat. But when Edward turned the key, nothing happened.
He groaned. “Come on, Max. Don’t be jealous.” He tried again. Nothing. “Shit.”
While he pulled his phone out and began searching for Triple A, Ren got back out of the car and walked to the front. He rolled down the window. “What’re you doing, Sunshine?”
“Pop the hood.”
He pulled the latch, and Ren propped it open. He started to climb out. “No, wait,” she said. “Stay there. Put it in neutral and turn the key.”
“Ren, I have Triple A. They’ll come handle it.” And his dad would find out that he was in Nashville, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. He could call Mary for a ride back into town, but she would want to help with whatever repairs Max needed, and Edward would not ask her for a penny, not ever.
“Let me look first.” Ren reached up, tying her hair into a bun atop her head. “It might be something super easy.”
Reluctantly, he sat back and did what she said. The engine remained silent, but he could hear her voice, soft and gentle. “Okay, Max, what’s going on with you, buddy?”
Edward leaned out the window. “He’s pouting, that’s what. I told you not to call him old. Though right now, I might have to agree with you.”
“He didn’t mean that,” she murmured to the engine, and then looked over at Edward. “Do you have a toolbox in the trunk? Maybe a screwdriver?”
Meeting her at the back of the car, he pushed some things aside and pulled out a black emergency tool kit. Inside were a pair of jumper cables, some pliers, an adjustable wrench, a jack, a tire pressure gauge, emergency reflectors, and—he pulled them free—a set of screwdrivers.
“Perfect.”
Passing her the flathead, he followed her back to the open hood. “What’re you doing?”
“This is the solenoid relay”—she used the screwdriver to point to something in the engine—“which is basically an electromagnet and a couple of contact points inside a metal canister. They use a small amount of power to connect to a big amount of power.” She bent, fidgeting with something. “Inside there are two contact points, and they’re spring-loaded so they stay apart. When you apply power to the electromagnet, they close.” She held a hand out to the side, squeezing her thumb and index finger together to illustrate. “When they close, they connect this wire here.” Ren leaned to the side so he could see and pointed to what she meant. “Which is connected to the positive terminal on the battery, this terminal here, which runs down to the starter.”
He laughed, already lost. “You could be making all of this up, but it sounds amazing.”
“Long story short, I’m going to use this screwdriver to bypass the solenoid relay switch.”
“You’re sexy when you’re being a gearhead.” He leaned in closer, whispering, “Please don’t electrocute yourself.”
Ren laughed. “I’m only willing to try this because your screwdriver has a rubber handle.”
“If this works, I’m taking you out for a fancy dinner after.”
“I thought you were doing that anyway.” She grinned over her shoulder, teasing and flirty, and she probably had no idea the power she had over him. When she finally learned how to harness it, he was done for.
“Extra fancy, then,” he answered.
She nodded for him to go back inside the car. “Keep it in neutral and turn the key to the on position, just so everything lights up. Let me know when you do.”
He kissed the top of her head and then ducked into the driver’s seat. “Okay,” he called to her.
“Go ahead and turn it all the way.”
He closed his eyes, hoping he didn’t manage to inadvertently zap his new girlfriend, but he heard her happy whoop when Max’s engine roared to life. Ren closed the hood and bent to kiss it, saying, “Good boy.”
Three hours later, Ren fell back in her chair, clutching her stomach and groaning happily. “That was the best meal I’ve ever had in my entire life.”
Dressed in a new set of secondhand clothes that they picked out on the drive back from the lake—a cream silk skirt and green top that complemented Ren’s eyes, a nice pair of jeans, and a linen button-down that she’d said made Edward’s tanned skin look golden—they’d parked along a quiet street lined with older homes and small businesses and walked to a brick building fronted by a mixed garden of flowers and vegetables. Inside, the decor was as welcoming as being in someone’s home. Heavy dark tables encircled an open kitchen with a wood oven in the center, its copper chimney stretching to the ceiling. Ren had been delighted, fascinated by the staff waiting and busing tables, by the food she could see being prepared and how much organization it took to make something like this look like no work at all. Observing the world through Ren’s eyes made Edward realize how often he didn’t really pay attention to what was going on around him. He moved through life constantly on the offense and went into every interaction with an objective. It meant he missed the details, missed the moments that made life worth living.
Edward gazed at the destruction all around them: crumbs from the world’s best salted butter rolls, only a tiny fatty scrap of an impeccably cooked steak, some stray radicchio from a delicious salad, a few tendrils of linguini, and two empty red wineglasses. There wasn’t birthday cake, but the waitstaff lit a candle in the center of her decadent Bananas Foster bread pudding. He’d pulled out his phone to capture her expression as they’d set the plate in front of her, the candlelight reflected in her wide, tear-rimmed eyes. That was one moment he wasn’t going to miss.
Now she looked at him from across their small table. “You’ve absolutely ruined me.”
That was too tempting a sentence to dwell on. Planting his elbows on the table, he leaned in. “Did I hit number one yet?”
She winced, clucking her tongue. “It’s going to be really hard to beat the year I turned thirteen and Steve let me drive the truck to and from town, and then I saw a meteor shower that night when I was out at the pond.”
“Skinny-dipping, engine victories, and those buttery salted rolls don’t beat that?”
She pressed her lips together, fighting a laugh. “Mm-mm.”
He drummed his fingers on his chin, pretending to think. “Okay, I have one more idea.” He tossed the napkin to the table and reached for her hand. “Let’s go.”
The field was dark and deserted—just like he’d expected. With a tiny, nervous smile, Ren climbed out of Max, but stayed close to the door. “Where are we?”
“It’s called Percy Warner Park,” he explained. “It’s huge, and I knew it would be pretty empty tonight—perfect for what I want to do.”
“Hmm.” She squinted out into the darkness while he grabbed a blanket, a sweatshirt, and her gift from the trunk. “I haven’t seen any, but I’ve read that this is how horror movies begin.”
“I’ll protect you.” He gently tugged her forward, using the flashlight on his phone to lead them to a paved trail and out onto the lawn, where they hiked up a small hill.
Edward spread the blanket on the soft, dewy grass. “Did you bring me out here to see stars?” she asked.
“Not exactly.” It was true that the stars were more visible here than downtown, but excitement rose in him as he pulled her gift from his back pocket and turned to shield it from her view. Opening the box, he pulled one long stick free and slid the purple Bic lighter out of his other pocket to ignite it.
Light popped and sizzled, and he held it up to Ren, witnessing the moment her eyes went round and then immediately filled with tears. She clapped a hand over her mouth, turning to look at him, the sparkler reflected in a million golden flashes in her eyes.
“Happy birthday, Sunshine,” he said quietly.
She reached out, grasping it, and then held it in front of her, staring in awe. Tentatively, she waved it around, drawing a figure eight in the air. It burned down to the end and her expression fell. “That was so beautiful. Thank you so much, Ed—”
He lit a second sparkler and handed it to her.
She gasped. “Another?”
“I got a box of a hundred,” he said, laughing. “It’ll take us an hour to get through all of them.”
And it very nearly did. They lit two at a time and wrote their initials in the sky. He handed her two, one for each hand, and she stood, waving her arms wide, forming perfect circles while he captured the image on his phone: her beatific smile and the two cones of fire on either side of her. They ran streaks of light down the hill and back up again. And every time they were ready to light a new sparkler from an old one, she said, “Let them kiss.”
When they lit the final one, she watched it burn all the way to the end before releasing a tiny, happy cry. “That is absolutely the best present anyone has ever given me.”
“Number one yet?” he asked, and she turned, sliding her arms around his neck, burying her face there.
“Number one, forever,” she said, voice muffled. “Thank you.”
They stretched out on the blanket, staring up at the stars, and Ren pointed out the constellations they could see: Hydra, Leo, Leo Minor, Sextans, and Ursa Major. She told him about the kinds of things she would normally do on a birthday—go for a longer walk than usual around the property, be allowed to nap out in the field without being scolded for missing chores. It occurred to Edward that every time she shared something about herself was an opportunity for him to reciprocate, but he hadn’t taken any of them.
They fell quiet, his brain lighting up with everything he wanted to say. He wanted to tell her about Mary, how close he’d been to having a family and how it had fallen apart, how angry he’d been for so long and how he’d spent the last few years plotting something he wasn’t even sure he wanted to carry through anymore. He’d carried anger and hurt for so long, wrapped himself in them and used them to keep others away. Something about Ren made him want to put it all down.
“Ren—” he began, just as she said, “Do you—?”
She squeezed his hand. “Go ahead.”
“No, you first.”
“I was just going to ask—if it’s even okay to ask this—whether you know who your birth parents are.”
A shadow passed through his chest. “No…all I know is that they relinquished custody of me when I was three, and that’s when I went into the foster system. They handed me over to the Spokane Fire Department.”
“But you have family here?”
He nodded. “In a sense.”
She’d given him an explicit opening, and still, he couldn’t step through the door. How did Ren make opening up to him look so easy?
“Mary,” she guessed.
“She was my foster mother,” he said, relieved at her gentle prompt. “She moved to Nashville a couple years after her oldest son graduated high school—which was right around the time my adoption went through. I have a job interview here on Thursday. I’d set it up forever ago, knowing I eventually wanted to be closer to her.”
“Oh my gosh, Edward, this is so much. We could have spent today with her.”
“No, there’s time for me to see her while I’m here. Seriously, she’s fine. I wouldn’t have wanted to do that when we could be doing this.”
“Do you know where your birth family is now?”
He paused, staring up at the sky. “No. But I was hoping there would be at least some genealogy stuff for me when we did that test in Audran’s class.”
“I’m guessing there wasn’t.”
“No. Nothing.”
She reached over, squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s what I was expecting, too,” she said, laughing wryly. “Nothing. And here we are.”
“I envied you,” he admitted, rolling to his side and propping his head on a hand. “But you know what’s funny?”
“What?”
“Now that I know you better, I’m surprised you did the test at all. I can’t imagine Gloria and Steve would’ve given the green light.”
“I’ve thought about that a lot—why I did it so readily.” She rolled to face him, too. “I never disobeyed my parents before, but with every day I’ve spent away from them at school, I started questioning more and more why so many of those rules were there in the first place. I started pushing, a little at a time. I did the interview with the school paper, I made friends in study groups, I did the test. I’ve wanted to experience everything, because deep down, part of me knows they won’t let me come back next fall. Once I’m home again over the summer, I think they’ll see how much I’ve changed. They definitely won’t let me finish out the semester if they find out about this trip.”
His stomach bottomed out. When he first met Ren, he didn’t think she’d last the week. Then, when she started to show him up, he wished he’d been right. The thought that her parents wouldn’t let her come back felt too real, if he let his thoughts linger on it. Given how controlling they were, Fitz wasn’t sure how she’d manage to keep any of this from them. Whether or not Ren found Christopher Koning, whether or not he was even her father, he knew it didn’t matter. She had already changed from this experience, and there was no universe in which her parents wouldn’t see that.
And another thought landed, and this time, his stomach twisted tightly and he let out a guilty groan. “I made so many rules,” he said quietly.
Ren frowned at him. “What?”
“For the trip. I made those rules. No bowing, no talking, no eating, no singing. All your life you’ve been living under Steve and Gloria’s rules. Then you were sent to college with more rules. And then you leave with me and—again, rules.” He closed his eyes, wincing. “I’m such a dick.”
“It’s okay,” she said immediately, instinctively.
“It isn’t.” He opened his eyes, met her gaze. “It’s shitty. I’m so sorry.”
Ren looked at him, really seemed to be trying to see him. “You do a lot of things to keep people out. The rules were about your boundaries, not about me. I got that.”
Edward stared at her, reeling.
“I would only be mad about them if you were still speaking to me in riddles,” she continued, smiling. “But you’re telling me about yourself. I know how hard that is.”
He let out a soundless laugh of disbelief. “I am so crazy for you.” Edward ran his hand down her arm, feeling the goose bumps there. “Cold?” he asked, reaching for the sweatshirt and draping it over her.
“Cold,” she said, and grinned in the darkness. “And crazy for you, too.”
“Are you nervous?” he asked. “About tomorrow?”
Ren laughed tightly. “Nervous doesn’t even cover it. It’s like I start to imagine it, and then my brain powers down and everything just turns to fog, and I can’t breathe.”
The words rolled out of him, finally. “Can I come with you?”
She went quiet, eyes wide, watching him. “To Atlanta?”
“Yeah.”
“What about your interview?”
“It’s only a four-hour drive. I’d just need to drive back up here Wednesday night.”
“You’d do that for me?”
He laughed because the surprise in her voice was so genuine. “I got naked in a freezing lake for you. You think I won’t drive a few hours to make sure you get to Atlanta sa—”
His words were cut off when she pushed forward, pressing her mouth to his and rolling him to his back so she hovered over him. Her hair had come loose and formed a soft curtain around them as they lay, alone on the hill, kissing and kissing and kissing.
It occurred to him later, when they were in the hotel brushing teeth side by side, that he’d been lucky three times in his life: The day he met Mary. The day he met Judge Iman. And the day he met Ren. Being there with her, he didn’t know how to go back to being Just Fitz. He hadn’t thought about his five-year plan in days. He’d had a whole spiel memorized for his interview on Thursday, but now he didn’t even know what he’d say. All he wanted was to run away with her.
So, in a way, they did.