Chapter 13
I've been putting off visiting Wren.
Not because I don't want to see her. I do. I want to see how she’s doing and be there for her as much as she needs.
But I’m also scared. The last time I saw her face it was through a narrowing gap in ambulance doors and she was bruised and barely conscious and asking me not to forget.
I'm afraid that walking into her hospital room will crack open a part of my I’ve tightly packed away with the rest of the fucked up things that have happened to me.
Once it’s packed away, it’s safe. At least until something triggers it. And Wren feels like a massive, blinking trigger.
But I promised. And I don't break promises.
Bane drives.
I didn't ask him to. I came downstairs with my keys in my hand and he was already in the foyer. Jacket on, his car keys spinning around one finger.
"I'll take you," he said. Not offering. Informing.
"You don't have to—"
"I know."
So Bane drives. And I sit in the passenger seat of his black Audi and watch the city slide past and try not to think about the last time we were in a car together—the sedan, the loading dock, his head on my shoulder and our fingers laced.
He hasn’t touched me since he dropped my hand like it was on fire.
I haven’t forgotten.
He parks at the hospital. Kills the engine. Reaches into the back seat and pulls out a folder—manila, thin, professional. The kind of thing you'd bring to a meeting.
"What's that?"
"Apartment lease. Furnished one-bedroom in Midtown, month-to-month. An account in her name with enough for six months of expenses." He opens the folder. Shows me the printout. "And a security detail. One person, discreet. In case Kline decides to reclaim lost inventory."
I stare at the folder. At the lease with Wren's name typed neatly at the top. At the bank statement. At the business card for a private security firm I've never heard of.
"Wait. You did all this? When?"
"Yesterday." He closes the folder. Tucks it under his arm. "And the day before."
"Bane, she doesn't—you don't even know her."
He looks at me. The hazel eyes are steady.
"She’s important to you," he says. "What happened to her is fucked up and it’s the least we could do."
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from spilling out all the bittersweet emotions bubbling up.
We walk in together. Sign in, clip badges, take the elevator to the third floor. Bane beside me with the folder under his arm, looking like a man who does this every day—visits hospitals, sets up apartments, arranges security for nineteen-year-old down-on-their-luck girls he's hardly met.
Room 356. The door is open halfway.
Wren is in the bed by the window. Hospital gown, thin blanket, dark hair washed and tucked behind her ears. She's smaller than her voice through the wall suggested. Than I remember. Split lip closed. Bruises fading to yellow-green. An IV in the back of her hand.
She looks up. Sees me. Her whole face opens.
"Max."
"Hey." I pull the chair to her bedside. "Wren, this is Bane."
Bane steps forward. He doesn't extend his hand—reads the room, reads her, knows that a large man reaching toward a girl in a hospital bed is a gesture that needs to be offered, not imposed. Instead he sets the folder on the bedside table.
"We spoke on the loading dock," he says. Voice gentle.
Wren's brow furrows. Her eyes move over his face—searching, pulling at something half-submerged. "You gave me a card," she says slowly. "On the stretcher. I remember your hands. They were bleeding."
"Yeah." Bane glances at his knuckles. The scabs are gone now but the skin is still pink and new. "That was me. I brought some things for you."
He walks her through it. The apartment—photos on his phone, swiping through rooms she's never seen. The account, the amount, her own card. The security detail—a woman named Reeves, former military, who will be available but invisible. He explains it all slowly and clearly.
Wren listens. Her eyes get wider with each detail. By the time he finishes, her hands are gripping the blanket edge so hard her knuckles are white.
"I can't accept this," she whispers. "This is too much. I can't—"
"It's already done." Bane pockets his phone. "The lease is signed. The account is active. Reeves starts tomorrow." He pauses. "You don't owe anyone anything for this, Wren. Not me. Not Max. Not anyone. It's yours. No strings."
Wren's chin trembles. She looks at me. I nod.
"He means it," I say. "The Graves don't do strings. They do..." I search for the word. "Thorough."
Bane's mouth twitches. He straightens up. Buttons his jacket—the mask going back on.
"I'll be in the car," he says. To me. His hand finds my shoulder—squeezes once, warm, brief. "Take your time. Call me when you're ready."
He nods to Wren. She watches him leave with an expression I recognize because I've worn it.
The door clicks shut behind him.
"Max." Wren's voice is barely there. "Who is he?"
"My stepbrother." The word sounds wrong. Sounds right. Sounds like a container too small for what it's holding. "One of them. He was in the facility with me. He volunteered to come in—traded himself so I wouldn't be alone."
She stares at me. "He walked into that place on purpose?"
"Yeah."
"For you?"
"Yeah."
She processes this. I watch her turn it over, checking for the catch.
"There's no catch," I say, because I know what she's looking for. "I looked too. I don’t think there is one."
Her eyes fill. She blinks it back. Twists the blanket edge.
"Okay." Small. Fierce. "Okay."
We talk. About nothing first—hospital food, terrible TV, the nurse who keeps calling her sweetie.
Wren does a devastating impression—drops her voice an octave, rounds her shoulders, purses her lips into a concerned pout.
"'How are we doing today, sweetie? Did we eat our breakfast, sweetie?
'" I laugh so hard my ribs ache. The sound surprises me. I haven't laughed like that in weeks.
She tells me about the view from her window, which is a parking garage, which she's named Gerald. Gerald has a leak on the third level. Wren's been tracking it. "Every time it rains, a little waterfall comes off the northwest corner. It's actually beautiful if you squint."
Finding beauty in a parking garage leak. That's Wren. Someone who sings lullabies in concrete cells and I find comfort in her endless optimism.
We circle the facility without landing on it. She mentions the food there once, wrinkling her nose the same way. I mention the fluorescent hum. Neither of us says the rest. We don't have to. It lives between us the way it always will—shared knowledge, shared walls, shared air.
A trauma bond that potentially brought two people together who desperately needed friends.
"Tell me about your life," she says. Pulling her blanket higher. Settling in. "Your real life. Before."
So I do. I tell her about Margot—the apartment, what life was like before moving in with the Graves. I tell her about community college, the creative writing class I keep falling behind in, the professor who pushes me because he must see some talent. That’s at least what I tell myself.
I tell her about Cornerstone—the bookstore where I shelve and catalog and occasionally read entire novels during slow shifts while my manager pretends not to notice.
Although, after going missing I’m sure my job has been given to someone else.
I don't tell her about the brothers. Not yet.
Not because I'm hiding it—because I don't know how to explain it.
What would I even say? I live with three stepbrothers who are also criminals and also alphas and two of them have had sex with me and the third one put his hand on my neck in the kitchen yesterday while his father poured wine ten feet away.
Yeah. Not yet.
"That sounds nice," Wren says. Quiet. She's looking at her hands on the blanket. The IV tube running across her knuckles. "The bookstore. Having a place like that."
"It's minimum wage and my boss chews with his mouth open. I’m not sure he’ll want to hear from me after a couple of no-call-no-shows."
"Still. A place to go. Something that's yours."
The weight of what she's saying settles over me. Wren doesn't have a place. Didn't, I correct myself. Past tense now. Because now she has me, and through extension, the Graves are taking care of her for now.
"You'll have that," I say, pointing at the folder. "A place. Bane made sure of it."
She nods. Twists the blanket edge. Still processing the folder on her nightstand, the apartment photos, the account balance. The fact that strangers built her a life while she was lying in a hospital bed.
I recognize a piece of myself in her…
That same inclination towards not trusting anyone. To expecting the worst in people and being wary of those who want to help.
I think it’s why things are so easy with her. We’re like mirrors.
"I'm going to be here tomorrow when they discharge you," I say. "I'll drive you to the apartment. You won't walk into an empty room alone."
Her chin does the thing. The tremble. She presses her lips together hard.
"Really?” Her voice trembles a bit on the question. “I mean, you don’t have to. You have already done more than enough.”
I offer her a smile. “I want to. You really don’t know how much of a comfort you were to me in that room before Bane got there. You eased up the fear just enough for me to breathe. I couldn’t just walk away from someone like that.”
Her lips pull into a smile and she wipes a tear.
“Talk about a fucked up meet cute.”
I can’t stop the laugh that erupts from my chest.
Yeah, seriously.
We sit for a while after that. The television murmurs.
Gerald the Garage catches the afternoon light and Wren points out the leak stain, which does look a little bit like a waterfall if you squint.
I hold her hand on top of the blanket and her fingers are warmer than they were on the stretcher. Stronger.