Chapter 9
Wren changed her mind about what to wear nearly a dozen times.
She is currently wearing it—the navy one, three-quarter sleeves, a hem at her knee—the one she declared in her apartment, in this order, too short, too dark, and too obviously trying.
She has small gold earrings on that accent the dark tint of her slightly curled hair.
She kept the boots she wears every day, because, she said, planting both feet on her own floor like she was prepared to defend the position in court, "I'm not breaking an ankle for these people. I refuse."
It’s a fifteen-minute drive from her apartment to the estate. We're eleven minutes in and she hasn't said anything for the last four.
I let her have the quiet. If I were in her shoes, I can’t even fathom how nervous I’d be.
The road unspools in the long gold light of a Sunday afternoon that has decided, against the forecast, to be beautiful, and I keep my eyes on it and my hands at ten and two and let her sit with whatever she's sitting with.
Wren doesn't like to be asked how she's feeling while she's still feeling it and I can definitely appreciate that.
She's like me that way. She'll get there.
She gets there a mile later.
"...I'm a little nervous." She says it to the window, not to me. Her hands are folded in her lap, and the thumb of one is pressing a slow circle into the palm of the other, over and over. "I know that's obvious. I just thought I'd say it out loud so it stops being a secret."
"It was never a secret. You've tried on four different dresses."
"Three dresses."
"You're wearing the fourth option. That's four."
She huffs—not quite a laugh, but the shape of one—and the thumb stops circling for a second.
"I'm also a little excited," she says. "Which is going to sound stupid."
"It doesn't."
"It does to me." She finally turns her head from the window.
In the gold light coming through the glass she looks younger than usual, the vulnerability on display.
"I feel like I’m not good at meeting new people, Max.
Reeves doesn't count—she's paid to tolerate me.
" She blows out a long breath. "Tonight counts, you know? I don’t want to mess it up.
It just counts, and I wanted you to know I know that. "
I know exactly what she means.
Not the way she'd guess—I have the brothers, I have a whole roaring three-way weather system in my chest that she will never have to navigate unless she finds her own set of alphas—but the other thing.
The walking-into-a-room thing. The being-unsure-whether-you're-allowed-to-be-here thing.
The standing-in-someone-else's-kitchen-rehearsing-your-own-name thing.
I have done all of that. I am, in some quiet permanent way, still doing it.
Wren and I never needed a bond to recognize each other.
We are two twin souls who only know how to be nervous without letting it show, and tonight I can feel hers anyway, plain as weather, because it used to be mine.
"They're going to love you," I tell her.
"Don't." She points a finger at me without heat. "You'll jinx it."
"Wren. They are going to love you."
She doesn't answer that. She looks back out the window. But her thumb has gone still in her palm, and she lets the sentence sit there in the car with us instead of arguing with it, which for Wren is the same as saying thank you.
A half-mile of trees goes by.
"Tell me their names again," she says.
"You know their names."
"Tell me anyway. In order. I do better when I've rehearsed a thing before I have to do it live."
I smile. I can’t help myself.
"Margot," I say. "My mom. She'll get to you first, she always opens the door herself. Dark hair, warm, talks with her hands. She's a hugger. If it's too much you can step back and she will not be hurt, she'll just adjust."
Wren nods slowly, taking it all in .
"Richard. My stepdad. Tall, glasses, a little far away behind the eyes. He's kind. He's stiff. He might ask you something sharp and then back off. He'll probably ask you about a book and then have feelings about your answer."
"Books I can survive."
"I know you can."
"And the brothers." She says it lightly. Her thumb has started the slow circle in her palm again. "Tell me the brothers."
She’s met one of them. Bane has been the steady hand behind every good thing in Wren's life for months—the apartment, the bank account, Reeves parked outside—and the two of them have built a gentle relationship I have only ever seen the edges of.
"Right." I keep my eyes on the road. "So you've got Bane already. That leaves Zero."
"Tell me about Zero."
Jesus. How do I describe the tornado that is Zero…
"He’s the middle brother. Dark. Quick. He'll make you a drink the second you walk in because Margot will have assigned him to, and he'll take the assignment far too seriously. He looks dangerous and he is, a little, but never at you. If he likes you he'll insult you. That's the tell."
"That's the tell."
"If he's polite to you, something's wrong. If he's a menace to you, you're in."
She nods slowly. Then, asks: "And Bane will be there?”
"Bane will be there."
She smiles at me softly. "...okay," she says. "Okay. Then it's only really two new ones. Margot and Richard. And Zero." A breath. "I can do three."
She doesn't ask about Atlas.
I left him off the list on purpose. Margot, Richard, Zero—and a clean gap where the third brother's name should be. Because Atlas isn't going to be at this dinner, and the reason he isn't is a reason I'm not handing Wren tonight.
He's been traveling all week. The work has Talbot's name running through it, and anything that reminds her about the facility makes her face do a thing—a small, bad thing—and I decided on Tuesday, at her kitchen counter, that I wasn't going to put that into her week.
Not before a dinner she's changed her dress over four times for.
She'll notice he isn't there. She'll be a little hurt I didn't warn her. Then she'll pretend she isn't, and I'll let her.
I've made a decision about her, on her behalf, without telling her.
It's the exact thing I hate that the brothers keep doing to me.
I drove past the turn for the estate a few minutes ago and have been pretending I didn't. I make a U-turn.
"What?"
"Took a wrong turn."
"You took a wrong turn? To your own house?" She gives me a dirty look like she sees right through my bullshit.
"Big driveway."
"Mm-hm."
She doesn't push it because she knows I did it for her. We pull onto the long gravel drive of the Graves Estate at six-twelve in the evening.
Her eyes go wide.
"Jeez Louise, Max."
"I know."
"You said house. You let me get dressed four times for what you described, in the car, as a house."
"It is a house."
"It has a tower feature."
"It's not a tower. It's the stair turret."
"Oh, the stair turret." She says it with a slight accent and I bite the inside of my cheek. "Forgive me. The stair turret. Is there a wing?"
I consider lying. "There's a wing."
"For what, Max?"
"It was built for in-laws, I think. Nobody's living in it. Richard uses it for storage."
"Storage." She's still staring through the windshield. "You have an entire architectural wing."
"There's also a gym in the basement"
She shakes her head. “Insane.”
"I didn't build the place, Wren. I just live in a small little corner of it."
That gets her—the corner of her mouth goes, finally, and she looks away from the house and at me, and some of the white-knuckle leaves her hands.
She makes a small sound that is half a laugh and half a wince.
Neither of us get out of the car. We sit for one beat, her hands in her lap, mine still on the steering wheel, both of us looking at the front door.
"Wren."
"...yeah."
"I'm right here."
"...I know."
"You can leave whenever you want. I'll drive you home in the middle of dessert if you ask me."
"Thank you."
She huffs that almost-laugh again. Looks at the front door. Squares her shoulders the way I've watched her square them in waiting rooms.
"...okay. Let's go."
We get out of the car. The gravel is loud under our shoes in the Sunday quiet, and Wren slows her pace to match mine without seeming to decide to, and we are halfway up the front steps when the door opens.
Margot must have been watching for us. She's in a soft blouse and her blingy earrings that match the charm bracelet on her wrist that jingles just right. The sound is like a balm to my soul. Her face light up when she sees us.
"Wren, sweetheart, come in. Look at you."
Wren steps inside. She tips her head back to take in the height of the foyer ceiling, the staircase curving up into the dark, the chandelier.
"...there's a chandelier," she says, mostly to herself. “Thank you so much for having me, Mrs. Graves."
"Margot, please—Mrs. Graves makes me feel a hundred years old." Margot is already drawing her in by one hand. "Come in, come in. Max, get the door for me?"
I close the door behind us.
Margot has Wren by both hands now, holding her out at arm's length to get a proper look at her. Wren lets her. Something in my chest pulls tight and good watching Wren relax into hold and settle into herself.
"Look at you," Margot repeats. "Max told me you were lovely, and Max never tells me anything, so I knew it had to be true."
“Mom that’s not true.” I roll my eyes.
"Oh—" Wren's hand comes up, a little flustered, like she's been caught off guard by the warmth. "He didn't tell me you'd be this nice. I'd have rehearsed something better than standing here staring at your ceiling."
"You don't rehearse for this house, sweetheart. You just arrive in it." Margot squeezes Wren’s hand once and lets it go. "Although—fair warning—there is going to be a small amount of theater later. Over dessert. You'll know it when you see it."
Wren's mouth tips up. "Should I be worried?"
"Not you. Never." Margot's eyes flick, brief and wicked, toward the kitchen. "Max will hate it."