Chapter 16 WREN
WREN
The third dress is wrong too.
I yank it over my head and throw it on the pile with the other two, then stand in my underwear in front of the mirror for the fourth time in twenty minutes, and the woman looking back at me has clearly lost her mind.
It’s seven forty-five in the morning, and I am standing in my bedroom picking out a dress to go yell at a man in Manhattan.
Yellow, I decide. The yellow sundress that hits mid-thigh, the one I bought in April and haven’t had an excuse to wear yet. Short. Because screw him. And the cork wedges that make my legs look a full inch longer than they are, which is petty, and which I do not care about.
Are wedges a weird call for a Tuesday at the shop? Florists wear impractical things all the time. It’s basically in the job description.
It’s June now, and the city’s been warmer than usual. I’ve been waking up grateful for it—windows open, coffee on the fire escape, everything I wait all winter for.
And he ruined it.
One text. Coverage is in place. You’re safe . Like I’m a job. Like we didn’t happen. Like I’m someone he has to manage, and not the woman he had his hands on forty-eight hours ago.
I zip the dress up the side harder than I need to.
I got over Jace Carrington years ago. I decided at twenty—the summer I came home from school and he was at a barbecue at my parents’ and didn’t look at me twice—that I was done.
I was done. I have been done for six years.
I built a whole business, left a whole relationship, rebuilt a whole life, and none of it had Jace Carrington in it.
And then he walked into my shop—six-foot-whatever of muscle and ink and those goddamn green eyes—looking like every stupid teenage dream I ever had, except worse, because now I’m a grown-ass woman and I know exactly what I’m looking at. And whatever I thought I’d put down, I hadn’t.
Fine. Okay. I kissed him. He kissed me back. And excuse me—is that what they teach them in special ops? How to kiss a girl so thoroughly she nearly comes before anyone’s clothes are off? I wanted more. I would have taken more right there against my door.
And then he stopped. Like he’d flipped a switch and decided I wasn’t worth it.
How dare he think he gets to decide what happens next for both of us.
He doesn’t.
I’m done. Again. For real this time.
I am going to Manhattan to say that to his face in a dress that will ruin his whole morning, and then I am coming home and opening my shop and having the June I was going to have before he decided to ruin it.
My hair took twenty-five minutes and I refuse to feel anything about that. I twist a piece back from my face and let the rest fall. Mascara. The lip thing Sasha gave me for my birthday. Earrings.
I look at myself.
I look good.
Good enough that when Jace Carrington opens his door—or doesn’t open his door, or sends a doorman down, or whatever the hell he plans to do to keep me at arm’s length today—he’s going to have to look at me and know exactly what he walked away from.
He gave me his address three weeks ago. Slid a card across the counter at the shop. In case you ever need me. I’d rolled my eyes at the card and put it in my wallet and pretended I wasn’t going to memorize the address by the end of the day.
I memorized it by the end of the hour.
I grab my keys.
* * *
The lobby of his building is marble and soft lighting and the type of quiet that costs money to maintain.
A concierge desk made of something dark and polished sits across from the elevators. Two men in charcoal suits behind it. One of them is already looking at me.
I walk over like I belong here. Smile.
“Hi. I’m here to see Jace Carrington.”
The man behind the desk is maybe fifty, very put-together, and very good at his job, because he smiles back at me in a way that is not a smile at all.
“Is Mr. Carrington expecting you?”
“Uh.” I glance toward the elevators. “Not exactly.”
“Your name?”
“Wren Ashford.”
He types. I watch his face. His expression doesn’t change and somehow that tells me everything.
“I’m afraid you’re not on the list this morning, Miss Ashford.”
“The list.”
“Mr. Carrington’s visitor list.”
My smile stays exactly where it is. I set my bag down on the counter. “Could you call up?”
“Mr. Carrington’s assistant handles—”
“Please call up.”
He studies me for a second longer than is comfortable. Then he picks up the phone.
I turn so my back is to the desk and I look at the elevators across the lobby like they’ve personally wronged me.
My pulse is doing something stupid in my throat.
I breathe through my nose and stare at the brushed gold of the elevator doors and try not to think about the last time his hands were on me.
Behind me the concierge says something low into the phone. A pause. Then, “Yes, sir.”
He sets the phone down.
“Mr. Carrington is coming down.”
I hear the ding behind me and turn, already armored up, ready to hate him.
My heart stops.
He steps out of the elevator in a suit.
A suit.
Charcoal. White shirt. No tie, top button open, dark shadow along his jaw.
I’ve only ever seen him in jeans and henleys and tactical boots. Shop Jace. Brooklyn Jace. This is the Manhattan version of him. Tailored. Dangerous. So hot it’s actually offensive.
He walks like he owns the building. Confident. Controlled. Sex in a suit, moving across a marble lobby like he doesn’t know half the women in the room have stopped what they’re doing to watch.
He doesn’t.
That’s the worst part. He genuinely doesn’t.
I swallow. Hard.
Pull it together, Wren.
I did not cross a bridge and walk into a marble lobby in cork wedges to jump this man’s bones on sight. I came here to yell at him. I am going to yell at him.
He sees me across the lobby.
His eyes drop. A full once-over, quick but not quick enough—down the dress, down the legs, down to the wedges and back up—and I watch him catch himself doing it and go still.
That’s right. Look at me. Look at exactly what you walked away from.
Then he locks it down, shoulders squaring, and walks toward me like we’re about to have a meeting.
I don’t move. I let him come to me.
He stops just inside arm’s reach. The concierge is six feet away pretending not to watch and Jace doesn’t look at him, doesn’t look at anyone but me, and his voice comes out low and even and very, very controlled.
“Wren.”
“You said to call if anything felt wrong.” I tip my chin up. “Something feels wrong.”
His expression changes instantly.
“What happened?”
His gaze cuts past me toward the street before coming back to my face, sharp and assessing now instead of annoyed.
“Nothing happened,” I say quickly. “I just—”
Some of the tension leaves his shoulders. Just for a second.
Then his gaze drags over me. Down the dress. Back up again, faster this time, like he caught himself.
“Not here,” he says.
“Then where?”
He doesn’t answer. He turns and starts walking, and I follow him across the lobby, past the concierge desk, through a glass door into a small room off to the side—a waiting room maybe, or a meeting space, two armchairs and a low table facing a window overlooking the street.
He shuts the door.
Turns around.
“You can’t be here,” he says.
“Oh, don’t worry. I’m not staying.”
His jaw tightens.
“I came here to tell you something to your face.” I take a step closer. “Because the last thing I’ll ever be is a woman who pretends a man didn’t kiss her the way you kissed me. So I came to say it out loud, and then I’m leaving.”
“Wren.”
“No. I’m not done.”
He shuts his mouth.
“You kissed me like you meant it and then you just left. You walked past me on the sidewalk the next morning like you’d never seen me before. You sent me a text like I was a client file. You don’t get to do that.”
“I was trying to—”
“I know whose sister I am, Jace. I was fourteen twelve years ago. I’m not fourteen now. Stop acting like I am.”
He doesn’t answer.
“So here it is.” My voice shakes anyway. “I was fine before you walked back into my life, and I’ll be fine after. You don’t need to manage me anymore. Stay away from my shop. Stay out of my apartment. And stay the hell away from me.”
His throat moves.
And then I see it—a crack straight through all that control.
His hand lifts slightly at his side like he’s going to reach for me. Then he stops himself.
I watch him do it, and something in my chest twists hard.
“Wren.” His voice is lower now. Rough around the edges where the rest of him refuses to be. “If I put my hands on you in this room I’m not going to be able to put you back.”
I don’t breathe.
For one suspended moment, neither of us moves. Him looking at me like holding himself back is costing him something. Me refusing to look away.
“Okay,” he says.
That’s it.
That’s all he gives me.
I shake my head once. Tears burn behind my eyes and I refuse them—not here, not in this room, not in front of him—and turn for the door.
I walk out of the building with my eyes fixed straight ahead and don’t let myself look back until I hit the sidewalk.
My van is half a block down, wedged between a delivery truck and a BMW.
I get in, shut the door, and grip the steering wheel like it’s the only thing keeping me upright.
Don’t cry.
Not here.
I start the engine and drive.
* * *
I pull up outside Wild Tide, fish my keys out of my bag and let myself in.
Bell over the door. Cool concrete underfoot. The green smell of last night’s stems in the buckets, faint and familiar. It usually resets me.
I stand in the middle of my shop and I breathe.
And then I see it.
On the counter. Right next to the register. Propped up where Sasha leaves the day’s order slips.
A single white rose.
Thorns still on it. Stem cut clean.
No note.
No card.
Just the rose.
And for a second I don’t understand, because I didn’t put it there, and Sasha isn’t in yet, and the door was locked when I walked up—I keyed in the code—
My hand goes to my mouth.
White roses.
Tyler used to bring me white roses.