Chapter Thirty-Eight Ren
“Me?”
“You,” Ren said, and felt Edward’s eyes on her as she carefully pulled her hair back, securing it at the base of her neck with a rubber band.
“You’re pretty important right now,” he said nervously. “I’m sure they’d be happy to send a professional up to do this.”
“I don’t want a professional to do this. I want you.” She walked to the bed, climbed on, and scooted to the middle, patting the space behind her. “Come here.”
The mattress shifted under his weight. Ren could feel him hesitate, but then came the soft brush of his lips on the back of her neck. “Before I do this, I want you to know that I’m in love with you.”
A tiny firework went off in her chest, electricity sparking through her veins like a summer sky before a storm. She wanted to say it back, could see the words drawn in thick, black calligraphy in her mind, but no sound came out.
“You don’t have to say it,” he said, lips brushing the shell of her ear. “I just wanted you to hear it.”
She nodded. What she felt for him was more profound than anything she’d ever experienced, but right now everything was heightened. Everything was new. And, perhaps most obviously, the whole idea of love was such a scrambled, messy one for Ren. What did that word even mean?
“I want to say it,” she admitted.
“It’s okay. That isn’t why I told you.”
“I know…it’s just…there are so many things I’ve never felt before,” she said. “But I thought I’d known at least one kind of love.”
Edward sat quietly, letting her organize her thoughts.
“I’ve been working through this in therapy,” she continued. “What does love mean? Was love how Gloria and Steve justified kidnapping a little girl who lived across the street?”
From what they’d been able to parse out, Gloria—Deborah, she reminded herself—had seen a single father trying and failing to raise a young daughter alone. She’d seen Ren’s birth mother, Aria, messy and drunk in the neighborhood. In whatever reality she and her husband had created, they thought they were saving Ren.
“How am I supposed to hate them if they truly were doing what they thought was right?” she asked, voice tight. “They never hit me, they never abused me. In their own way, I believe they did love me. But how could they claim to love me while lying to me my entire life?”
“I know,” he said quietly.
“And then there’s the love Chris has for me,” she said. “I can tell when we sit together at lunch every day that he loves me deeply. That he loves me in that consuming, unconditional, instinctive way of parents I’ve only ever read about in books.” Ren closed her eyes, thinking about how Chris listened to her like she was the most fascinating thing in the world. Steve and Gloria had tended to her basic needs, but they were always so focused on their idea of what was right and best for Ren, that they’d never once asked—or possibly considered—what she actually wanted. Now, every day, Ren registered Chris’s amazement at her silliness and her curiosity, his admiration of her strength and grit, his pride in everything she’d managed to accomplish entirely on her own. He listened to her and valued her opinion. His love was as clear as a ringing bell in the crisp morning air.
“But he barely knows me,” she said quietly. “How is that love any more believable? His memory of me is as a towheaded three-year-old whose favorite food was watermelon and favorite song was ‘The Muffin Man.’ His memory of me has been frozen in time, locked on the girl who liked to be read to before bed and who loved getting raspberries blown on her belly.”
It could be a genuine love, she supposed. At least, eventually. The foundation was there; the desire was there to reconnect. He was desperate to build the relationship he’d always imagined. And even in this deepest part of her bewilderment and heartbreak, Ren knew she was also open and hungry for family. As far as fathers went, Chris seemed to be an ideal one. He was calm and measured; he took their therapy sessions very seriously. Outside of that, he was surprisingly funny and self-deprecating; that humor hid what Ren could tell was a uniquely sharp mind, and as she spent time with him every day, she grew to think maybe she got his curiosity, his drive. He was patient with her, warm and loving, and other than Edward, there was no one in Ren’s world who made her feel as cherished and important as Chris did.
“I can understand why you wonder what it all means,” Edward said carefully. “I can’t even imagine what you’re feeling. But I know that I’d do anything for you. I’d sacrifice anything.”
“I’ve been talking about you in therapy with Anne, too,” she said, nodding. “How it’s confusing to be this happy when I feel shredded up inside. About whether at first my feelings for you were real or somehow tangled up in my excitement about being out in the world. About whether I should be starting a new relationship, especially something intimate and complicated, when I’ve never been with anyone romantically before.”
“Yeah?” he said, gently, without judgment. “Those seem like good questions to be asking.”
“Anne reminded me there were no rules,” she said. “I don’t have to be happy just to make sure people aren’t worrying about me, and I don’t have to be sad all the time, either, even though everything is objectively hard.” She looked at him over her shoulder and smiled. “There are beautiful things that came out of this tragedy. The way I feel about you is beautiful to me. It feels like a gift. I want to let my heart stay open, even if it’s scary to trust again.”
And she did. She trusted Edward in ways she wasn’t sure she could totally understand. He’d started calling their nightly conversations “radical transparency,” and he always said it with a laugh, which told her it was a term his own assigned therapist was giving him. But it was working. He’d answered every one of her questions. She knew about his past, and she also knew that he was doing everything he could to figure out a new plan for his future. He’d been given an open calendar to reschedule his internship interview, but his thoughts on what he would do with a law degree were starting to change. He’d realized he wanted to help kids like himself. He knew it wouldn’t pay as well, but for the first time in his life, that didn’t seem to matter.
She shook her hair down her back, taking a deep breath. “Okay. I’m ready.”
Edward gathered her ponytail in his hand and bent to kiss her neck again. “You’re really sure?”
“I am. I’ve done some research and can donate my hair to an organization called Locks of Love.”
He audibly winced at the first cut, but the immediate weight lifted—actually and figuratively—made tears of relief spring to her eyes. In tiny snips, Edward carefully and quietly worked until she was free, and he was left holding the long castoffs in his hand.
He passed the cut ponytail to her, and she stared down at it. It was thick, and at least a foot and a half of soft, blond hair. She ran her fingers through it.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Amazing.” She laughed, and then reached up to cup the back of her neck. “Cold.”
He ruffled her haircut from behind; it fell a few inches above her shoulders. “I don’t want to declare this too early,” he said, picking a stray hair off her shoulder, “but of the single haircut I’ve ever given, this might be the best.”
She laughed, turning to face him, and reached beside him for the other objects in the bag. “And now,” she said, looking down at the box, “looks like I’m going ‘Downtown Brown.’”
He frowned at the box. “No.”
“Yes.”
He flopped back onto the mattress, but he was smiling. They were desperate to get outside, and there was only one way that was going to happen.
Their plan was to duck out in the late morning, during her father’s scheduled press conference in front of the hotel, when every one of the scores of reporters was expected to be congregated at the fountains outside.
Fridge would escort, walking behind them, with another agent in plain clothes walking in front. Even though their destination was an ice cream shop only two blocks away, it was the only way the hulking guard would let Ren out of the building.
Edward stepped up beside her in front of the mirror in their room, waiting for the knock to let them know their security was ready.
“Holy sh—You look hot,” Edward said, smoldering at her.
“Hot?” She covertly sniffed under her arm.
“I mean you look good,” he said, laughing. “Gorgeous. Sexy as hell.”
“Oh.” Never in her life had she been called sexy before meeting Edward, and she felt heat climb up her neck and consume her face. She ran a hand over her hair—which came out much darker than she’d expected, but Edward insisted he loved it, saying it made her eyes seem even greener.
She didn’t know if hair could be sexy, though. Just like she’d never believed that her hair could be meaningful, or hold magical, untold powers. It had always just been hair. And the minute Edward had cut it off, it was no longer even hers.
They stared at their reflections, and she wondered if maybe when he called her sexy he was talking about the fancy sunglasses and pretty white sundress someone brought for her to wear. She’d heard that Dr. Audran refused to hand over the Polaroid of her from his immunology class to the news, and for that she was eternally grateful. It meant that the only pictures circulating of her were the one from her student ID and an old one that Tammy took years ago when Ren was helping out at the five-and-dime, which showed a girl with very long, very blond braided hair, jean shorts, a too-big T-shirt, and sneakers, laughing as she reached for a box on a high shelf. Ren hoped the fancy outfit and radical change in her hair would keep her anonymous, at least until the initial attention let up. She didn’t see herself when she looked in the mirror now, and she didn’t think that was a bad thing.
She’d very much like to be someone else right now.
She looked up to see Edward’s reflection smiling at her.
He’d been given a Yankees baseball hat, dark sunglasses, and a sweatshirt with an NYU graphic. She knew the torso beneath it by heart because she’d spent hours at night memorizing it with her hands and lips. His jeans hung low and slim on his strong hips. The photo circulating of him was one from last fall, midsprint on the soccer pitch. Taken together with all the media accolades that Ren would not have been found if it hadn’t been for him, the bunching muscles visible in the photo made him look like a superhero. She had never wanted something as instinctively as she wanted him.
She wasn’t sure she could say it yet, but she was pretty sure she loved him, too.
“You good, Sunshine?” he asked.
She turned to him, pressing up against his body. “I’m great. I’m about to get ice cream.”
Ren stared out through the spotless front window, letting her feet kick against the legs of the high countertop stool. “I probably can’t go back to Corona, huh?”
Edward took a long lick of his double-decker mint chocolate chip on a sugar cone, then gazed sidelong at her while he swallowed. “I think you can do whatever you want. You want to be a student? Be a student. You want to write a book and sell it for a bazillion dollars? Do that. You want to buy your own farm in New Hampshire?” He waved his hand forward, like You get the idea. “And you want to be Ren, or Grace, or someone entirely new? It’s all up to you.”
She sucked on her spoon, letting the ice cream melt on her tongue. Just outside the shop window, Fridge’s towering form cast a long shadow across the entrance as he casually pretended to read a newspaper. She wasn’t sure whether it was because it wasn’t really ice cream weather today or no one dared cross his hulking path, but she and Edward had the whole place to themselves. “I want to be Ren.”
He nodded. “Good.”
“But…I think Ren Koning.”
“You know Chris will cry when he hears that,” Edward said, eyes twinkling with a grin.
“He’s tenderhearted,” she said, with a sweet defensiveness.
“Now we know where you get it.”
Ren smiled at this, realizing how much she was growing to like being compared to her father.
“What’s your dream future?” she asked.
He pointed to himself in question, quickly swallowing another bite. “I don’t think it’s up to me right now,” he said, adding, “nor should it be.”
“But I mean, if you decide to go off and do your own thing?” she asked, and he swiveled on his stool, turning hers so that his thighs bracketed hers.
With narrowed eyes and a sneaky smile, he studied her. “Why would I go off and do my own thing? Are you trying to get rid of me, Sunshine?”
“Never.”
“So then why are you suggesting I go off on my own?”
“You don’t have to stick around,” she said, lifting a shoulder. “I’ll probably be a mess for a while.” She stuck another bite in her mouth, sucking on the spoon just to have something to do. Her emotions all sat just beneath the surface, and right now, for some stupid reason, she felt like crying.
His eyes softened. “Maybe I like mess.”
“Hmm.”
“Besides,” he said, straightening, “who else is going to help me fix my car? Max needs a lot of work.”
She laughed, pulling the spoon from her mouth. “I’m sure you could find someone.”
“And who else will drive around the country with me, seeing all of the cheesiest tourist destinations?”
She clicked her tongue, digging out another spoonful. “It might only be me, you’re right.”
Edward tossed the rest of his cone into the trash behind him and then turned back to her, reaching up to cup her face in his hands. “What do you want to do?”
“Have another scoop.”
“And then what?”
“Not be special anymore.”
“Unlikely, sorry.” He kissed her softly. “And then what?”
“Go to college,” she said, inhaling wistfully.
“Oh, we’re definitely getting you that college degree. What else?”
“Swim in the ocean,” she said, on a roll now. “Hike the Appalachian Trail. Go to London. See the Parthenon.”
“I assume you don’t mean the one in Nashville.”
She grinned. “Maybe that one first, then the other.”
“Amazing. What else?”
“Spend holidays with my father and his family. Buy food from a vending machine in Tokyo. Sleep in on Saturdays. Drink champagne on the top of the Eiffel Tower.” She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. “I just want to be free.”
“I’m inviting myself along on all of these trips, by the way.”
“That’s a given.” She smiled, but it faded. “I think I have to move somewhere totally new. Somewhere I can start over.”
He nodded, leaning in to kiss her again. “That makes sense,” he said against her lips. “What else?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted into another peck, and then he gave her a dozen tiny, soft kisses. “I think”—kiss—“for now”—kiss—“I really just want to eat ice cream”—kiss—“and wear giant sunglasses”—kiss—“and kiss your cold lips.”
Edward smiled and tilted his head, gently but decisively setting those cold, smiling lips against hers.