16. Wren
WREN
A knock jerks me out of sleep.
I groan, pulling the comforter over my head, but it’s no use. The knocking doesn’t stop. It gets louder, more insistent, like whoever’s on the other side of the door doesn’t give a damn about my plans for a Friday morning lie-in.
“I swear to God,” I mumble, throwing the blankets back and blindly feeling for my glasses before sliding them onto my face.
Still half-asleep, I drag myself to the front door in my oversized sleep shirt and fuzzy socks, grumbling under my breath the whole way.
The incessant knocking pauses just as I reach for the handle, and when I pull open the door, I’m convinced this is a dream, and I must still be sound asleep in bed.
“Surprise!”
I blink repeatedly, uncertain if I’m actually seeing Dylan Callahan—my best friend—standing at my door.
“Dylan?”
She grins, standing there in pajama bottoms, a hoodie, and with her hair scraped back, her face free of makeup.
She looks like she rolled straight out of bed, climbed in the car, and drove all the way here.
She’s holding two large coffee cups and a pink box that I recognize from the bakery down the road.
“Well? Are you going to let me in or gawk at me in the hallway all day?”
Still dazed, and not entirely convinced this is real, I launch myself at her, arms winding tight around her neck as the coffee and pastries threaten to topple.
“Careful!” she laughs, juggling the box.
But I don’t let go. I squeeze her tighter, tears pricking at my eyes and clogging my throat. I didn’t realize how badly I needed this—needed her—until she was right here in front of me.
She hugs me just as tightly. “Missed you too, Wren.”
Pulling back, I blink up at her, barely holding myself together. “I thought you weren’t coming until tonight.”
“Changed my mind.” She shrugs. “So you better skip class and cancel any plans you have, because you and I have a pastry date in your bed.”
I scoff. “Like I have any plans.” Stepping back to let her into my apartment, I ask, “Did you drive all the way here in your pajamas?”
Dylan lifts the cups in her hands. “What would the point in getting dressed be when I knew I was getting straight back into your bed?”
“What if you’d broken down or gotten into an accident?”
She gestures at her much-loved, checkered navy pajama bottoms. “It’s not like I’m wearing some skimpy lace nighty. Who am I going to scandalize in these old things?”
A laugh breaks out of me. A real one.
We settle into my bed with the coffee and pastries between us, legs tangled beneath the comforter.
It doesn’t take long before Dylan’s filling me in on everything: campus gossip, how she’s getting on as captain of the Steelhawks this year, plus her guys’ rookie season with the Timberwolves and all the dumb things they’ve already managed to do.
“Finn shaved a mullet into Jax’s hair after losing a bet,” she says, snorting into her coffee. “I had to physically restrain Griffin from jumping in with clippers of his own.”
Leaning in, she shows me a range of photos of the mess, the guys grinning, and Jax looking less than impressed with his new hairstyle.
It’s easy. Effortless. Like no time has passed at all.
It makes me homesick for what was. Even though I feel like I’ve started to find my footing here, and can admit that things aren’t terrible, it’s just…not the same. I don’t have any humorous stories of my own to share. No crazy antics. I don’t even have anything nice to say about my internship.
It’s been the same over texts and phone calls the past few weeks. Dylan talking, and me being as vague as possible, assuring her everything is fine. However, Dylan isn’t stupid. She realizes how one-sided the conversation is, and it isn’t long before the inevitable question arises.
“So...are you going to keep pretending everything’s fine or are you finally going to tell me what the hell is going on with you?”
Pulling at a loose thread on the blanket, I ignore her penetrating stare. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t play dumb, Wren. You’ve been dodging my questions for weeks. You tell me everything’s good, your internship is fine, classes are manageable...but you don’t say anything real. Not like you used to.”
I open my mouth to argue but can’t find the words.
Honestly, I’m tired of pretending everything is okay. I’m tired of keeping all of this in. I don’t have anyone I can truly talk to here, and it didn’t feel right to bring it up over the phone, but now Dylan is here and…I’m so so done.
Dylan shifts closer, placing her coffee on the nightstand. Her voice is softer now, but more serious. “I’m worried about you. Just...talk to me.”
My throat closes over. I stare down at the half-eaten pastry in my hand like it holds all the answers.
When I finally speak, my voice is quiet.
Brittle. A part of me revolts against what I’m about to say.
I’ve gotten so used to keeping everything locked up inside me that it’s a physical effort to have to draw it out.
But I can’t keep it to myself any longer. Not when it’s slowly suffocating me.
It’s time.
“You know how BSU throws those street parties on Athletes Row every year?”
She nods slowly, eyes locked on me, although I still don’t dare to look at her. I’m feeling too vulnerable. Too exposed.
“I went to one my freshman year, after the Steelhawks versus Kings game.” My lips quirk in a ghost of a smile, recalling the start of that night.
It had been one hell of a game—fast-paced, brutal.
The Kings were relentless on offense, but the Steelhawks’ goalie stood on his head, dragging the team into overtime before they finally clinched the win in a shootout.
I’d gone with a couple of girls from my statistics class, and there hadn’t even been a question about attending the street party afterward.
“The party was wild. Not like anything I’d been to before—so different from the uppity private school parties I’d attended.
I remember laughing. Dancing. Drinking…”
I pause, any further words catching in my throat. Dylan doesn’t speak. Doesn’t push. She waits patiently for me to be ready.
“That’s when everything started to get fuzzy.
I’d only had a couple of drinks, so I wasn’t drunk.
Tipsy at best, but even then, it was half alcohol, half adrenaline.
I shouldn’t have been feeling the way I felt.
” I swallow roughly, the confusion and fear from that night creeping to the surface and threatening to pull me beneath the waves.
“I couldn’t find the girls I’d come with.
Couldn’t make out any faces I recognized as familiar to ask for help. ”
Gaze fixed on the duvet cover, I force myself to take a steadying breath. I’m safe.
“I remember thinking I just needed to get back to my dorm room. Lie down, sleep it off.” Tears burn the backs of my eyes, my next words coming out strangled. “But I never made it.”
Dylan’s hand wraps around mine, warm and strong. She shifts on the bed, coming to sit beside me and wrapping an arm around my shoulders, pulling me into her. Her lips press against my temple, the motion soothing. Reassuring. A silent I’ve got you.
She still doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t fire questions at me or ask for information. She just waits. She comforts. She tells me without saying a single word that she’s here for me.
Eventually, I get out, “The next morning, I woke up in a room I didn’t recognize. I felt...wrong. My body hurt, and my clothes were messed up, but I was alone. I took one glance around that room and…I ran.”
“Wren…”
The broken way she says my name has me finally lifting my gaze so I can see her face.
Tears slip quietly down her cheeks, and yet, anger burns in her eyes, providing me with the strength to finish, “I never went to the police. Never told a living soul, but that night I was raped. I was bruised, sore, and bleeding. M-my panties were missing—”
The tears run in an endless stream now, my throat so tight that it’s impossible to get any more words out.
“Shh,” Dylan says, pulling me further into her warm embrace as she rocks us both back and forth. “You don’t have to explain any of it to me.”
“That night broke something in me,” I admit, my voice watery. “I’d spent years just waiting to get out from under my parents’ thumb. To start my own life.” I sniffle, wiping at my cheeks. “Then I go to my first college party and I—”
Pulling my face to hers, tears shine in Dylan’s eyes, but her voice is firm, steady, as she states, “You did nothing wrong. You weren’t wrong for wanting your own life.
For wanting to stretch your wings and find your own way.
A horrible thing happened to you. Someone did a horrendously despicable thing to you, and that is on them. Not you. Never you.”
“I buried it. For years,” I continue, choked. “Convinced myself I was fine, even though I was a shell of my former self. I’d locked myself in my own self-made cage, and I hadn’t even noticed until you came along.”
Squeezing me to her chest, I hear Dylan sigh.
“Last year, I really started to regain pieces of my old self,” I admit to her.
“And then your asshole parents shipped you off to here.” Dylan logically, although incorrectly, pieces together.
I huff a laugh. “That certainly didn’t help.” My tone must tell her there’s more, as she pushes me back just enough to look into my face, her brow furrowed. “Remember that night at The Stanley?” I don’t need to say more. Her eyes instantly widen.
“You freaked out when those Kings’ players came over—I tried to find you after, but you’d just disappeared.
” Her eyes cloud over as she recalls, “One of them—the big guy with dark hair—he recognized you. Did he…did they…were they the ones who hurt you?” Her tone is both confused and enraged as she searches my face for answers I can’t yet give her. Although I am beginning to suspect…
“I remembered Ronan’s voice from that night.”
Dylan goes deathly still beside me, her lips pursed tight and face slightly drained of color. “So he was there.”
I nod slowly. “All three of them were. Coarse, masculine voice. Blue eyes. Tattoo. The three distinct recollections from that night that I was never sure were actually real or figments of my imagination. The voice is Ronan’s. The eyes belong to Silas. And the tattoo is Lucian’s.”
“I don’t…understand,” she says, hesitantly. “Were they the ones who attacked you?”
I laugh humorlessly. “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out.” Scrubbing at my face, I emit a weary sigh. “At first, that’s what I believed. My memories…what I thought I was remembering…” I shake my head, still so confused and uncertain about all of it.
“When I first showed up here, they would try to hunt me down.”
“They what?!” Dylan shrieks in outrage.
“Not like that,” I attempt to reassure her. “I think they just wanted to talk. I don’t know. I avoided them—obviously.” I hesitate, chewing my inner lip. “But then I started getting to know them.”
“And?” Dylan asks, her voice soft and unsure.
“And I think what I thought I was remembering was wrong.”
“What do you mean?” She looks as confused as I feel.
“I mean, at first, in my memories, Ronan’s voice was this harsh thing telling me to shut up, to be quiet, to stay still.
Silas’s eyes were chips of ice, frigid and unfeeling, and Lucian’s grip was bruising, painful, but now…
it’s all different. When I recall that night, Ronan’s voice is soothing as he tells me everything will be okay.
Silas’s eyes are flooded with concern, and Lucian’s grip is comforting. Protective, even.”
Dylan’s quiet for a long beat, her brows drawn low in thought. Then, slowly, as though thinking over each word, she asks, “How are each of them with you now?”
I blink. “What?”
She shifts a little, facing me more directly. “Lucian. Ronan. Silas. How do they treat you? Since you got here. Not in your dreams. Not in your memories. I mean in real life. Day to day.”
“They’ve never made me feel unsafe,” I admit.
“Not really. I mean, Lucian’s intense. And Ronan’s infuriating.
And Silas is just—” I huff a breath, unsure how to explain him.
“He doesn’t talk. Like, at all. He communicates with looks and handwritten notes.
Yet somehow, I feel like he sees right through me.
We connect on this whole other wavelength that doesn’t feel as though it should be possible and doesn’t really make sense; it just… is.”
Dylan nods slowly. “Okay…so no red flags? No weird vibes? No feeling cornered or controlled?”
“Weirdly, no.” I shake my head. “Which is strange in itself because Silas knows what coffee I like and Lucian has a bad habit of cornering me in supply closets, and Ronan weaseled his way onto a work project with me…”
“But?” Dylan asks when I go silent.
I shake my head. “On paper, yes, it sounds like it should be concerning, but I don’t feel concerned, if that makes sense.”
Dylan hums, as if understanding. “It does. I felt the same way around the guys. After everything Lucas did, I couldn’t trust men, and when I found out I’d accidentally been assigned to an entire house with them, I panicked.
But there was something about Jax, Finn, and Ethan that just put me at ease.
Without understanding why, I felt safe with them. ”
I nod. “Yeah, that’s how I feel about Ronan, Silas, and Lucian.” I sigh. “The problem is, I have reason to doubt them.”
“You have drug-induced memories that you can’t rely on,” Dylan spells out, waiting until I meet her gaze before adding. “Trust your gut. What does your gut instinct tell you?”
I chew on my lower lip. Dylan gives me the time to sift through everything I know so far about each of the guys. My memories.
“My gut tells me that there’s more than what my memories recall.”
Dylan’s eyes sharpen. “Then you know what you need to do.”
I nod, already knowing. I’ve known for a while now. I’ve just been too chicken shit to actually ask.
“I’m scared,” I admit aloud for the first time.
“I know.” She moves into me, our bodies pressed together from shoulder to hip. “But this thing—it’s already taken so much from you. Don’t let it take your future too.”
I nod, emotion catching in my chest. A tear slips down my cheek, and she wipes it away with her thumb like it’s nothing. Like I’m not coming undone in her arms.
“I missed you so much,” I whisper.
“I missed you more, Winslow.”
She says it with a soft smile, like it’s an unshakable truth. And in that moment, I let myself believe it.
I let myself believe her.
Believe that I’m not alone.
Not anymore.