33. Wren #2
“As sexy as watching this is, getting hot and heavy in the paint aisle might not be the wisest move,” Ronan remarks, side-eyeing an older lady gaping at us as though we’d started to strip naked in front of her.
Pressing my face into Silas’s chest to hide my embarrassment, my shoulders shake as I silently laugh.
“Ready to get out of here?” Lucian asks.
Looking up, I meet Silas’s gaze before nodding. “Yeah. Let’s go make my apartment a home.”
Paint rollers squeak softly against the walls while music hums through the apartment speakers, low enough to blend into the sound of laughter and shifting furniture.
For the first time since moving to Valehurst, this place actually feels alive.
The harsh white walls are disappearing beneath rich color, one careful stroke at a time.
The muted green we picked for the living room wraps warmth around the space instantly, softening the sharp edges of the apartment until it no longer looks like some sterile show home my mother decorated because she’s got the emotional bandwidth of a psychopath.
It looks lived in.
More importantly, it feels like mine. My space. My sanctuary.
Dressed in a pair of old, worn jean shorts and a white top I clearly haven’t worn since before I started college, based on how tight it is across the chest, I stand barefoot on the drop cloth near the center of the room holding a paint roller while staring at the wall.
I still can’t fully believe it. The change that is currently unfolding before my eyes.
The color changes everything.
And I’m not just talking about the walls or the vibe of the room. I’m talking about how I perceive it. How I think about this place. It’s no longer my mother’s apartment that she’s forcing me to live in. No longer a place I’m just ‘staying’. Somewhere I don’t want to be.
Sunlight spills through the windows, catching against the wet paint and making the green glow softly.
The shelves Ronan insisted I buy before we left the store are stacked near the hallway, waiting to be assembled later.
A pile of mismatched throw pillows sits abandoned near the couch after Lucian declared half of them “ugly as sin” before immediately getting distracted and using them to start a wrestling match with Silas.
The apartment is chaos.
Warm, loud, messy chaos.
Somehow that makes it feel more like home than anything else ever has. Even my BSU apartment, where I was mostly by myself. The only other person to ever be there was Dylan.
“You’ve been staring at that wall for five straight minutes,” Ronan observes from where he’s rolling paint onto the far side of the room. “Changing your mind about the color?”
“On the contrary, I’m admiring my excellent taste.”
Lucian hums from atop the stepladder near the corner trim. “It is good taste.”
Silas scoffs, giving Lucian a look as Ronan gives voice to his thoughts. “Like you have any idea what good taste is. You once wore a yellow top with cargo pants. I’d have thought you were high if you hadn’t passed your drug test the week before.”
Lucian makes a noise of protest. “That speaks more to your poor taste than to mine.”
Fully caught up in their easy bickering, born from decades of knowing one another, a laugh erupts from me.
God. When was the last time laughing felt this easy?
The thought catches me off guard enough that I still slightly, roller lowering slowly toward the paint tray at my feet.
Because it isn’t just the apartment changing.
It’s me.
I glance around the room again, really taking it in this time.
Ronan in gray sweats with paint streaked across his forearms while he methodically works along the wall with frustrating competence.
Silas kneeling near the baseboards, touching up the edges as his blond hair falls into his eyes every few seconds.
Lucian balanced recklessly on the ladder despite repeated threats from Ronan about how he won’t be playing in next week’s game if he breaks his leg.
And somehow, seeing them here feels…right. Real.
“My mother would absolutely hate this color,” I blurt, lips hitching in a grin that slowly spreads to encompass my entire face.
Ronan’s mouth curves slightly as he glances over at me. “You seem pretty happy about that.”
“I am.” I recognize I’m grinning like an idiot, and I don’t give a single fuck. “Anything that goes against my mother is a win in my book.”
“Let me guess,” Lucian begins, turning from his perch on the ladder to look down at me. “Everything was her way or no way growing up.”
“My brother and I…we were expected to fit into certain boxes. In fairness, that goes for everything in her life. We had to get good grades. Wear certain clothes. Only specific hairstyles were appropriate.” Rolling my eyes, I gripe, “God forbid I consider getting pink stripes in my hair.”
With a twist of his lips, Ronan gestures to the now brightly colored room. “Hence the bright colors?”
I nod. “The more she tried to shove me in that box, the louder I tried to live.” I gesture toward today’s lime-green frames. “Bold glasses. Bright colored walls. Going to a university not of their choosing.”
Everything you did was a rebellion, Silas writes.
“Did you ever get the pink streaks?” Ronan asks, head tilted in curiosity.
I grimace. “Even when living life loud, there were certain lines I knew not to cross. Facial piercings, visible tattoos, and dying my hair were the main ones.”
“Are any of those things you’d want to do?” Lucian asks. “And I mean, what you want to do. For yourself. Not to get back at your mom.”
Tilting my head, I give his question the consideration it deserves before answering.
“Facial piercings, no. Not my thing. But I’ve always thought a small tattoo on my wrist would look cute, and pink streaks in my hair?
Maybe. I’d like to do it to see if I like it.
Whether I’d keep them long-term or not, I don’t know. ”
“You’d look sexy as hell with a tattoo,” Lucian says flirtatiously, wagging his eyebrows when I look his way and making me smile.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from parents who have your entire life planned out before you’re born,” Ronan muses, “It’s that their expectations don’t matter. This is your life, and you only get one. Why waste it fulfilling your parents’ dreams when you could be fulfilling your own?”
Ronan’s words stun me into silence because the truth is, he’s right.
“How do you get that across to them, though?”
He makes a frustrated sound. “It’s definitely not easy. I struggled with it until I found something worth pissing them off for. Something that was worth the arguments and endless discussions.”
“Hockey.”
He nods. “That was a dream I wasn’t willing to bench for them.”
I sigh. “But I don’t have a dream like that.”
“Don’t you?” he questions. Lucian and Silas are both watching me closely now.
“What do you mean?”
“We see the way you light up when you’re barking orders at the rink,” Ronan points out.
“Hell, even when you’re doing super boring admin work, you’ve got this little smile on your face,” Lucian chimes in.
Don’t tell us you didn’t love organizing the charity weekend and watching it all come to life.
“I did…” I hedge, looking between the three of them.
“So perhaps your problem isn’t so much that your dream conflicts with your parents’,” Ronan begins. “It’s that it’s the same.”
I simply blink at Ronan.
“You’re so used to rebelling against them that you can’t accept that when it comes to this one thing, what they want for you is the same thing you want too.”
“You think it’s my secret dream to take on the ownership of my family’s hockey team?”
“Maybe you don’t want to own it,” Lucian says with a shrug, “But you want to be a part of a team like that. Organizing schedules. Managing players. Participating in family days and charity events. The point is, you clearly enjoy working with a team, and I think you’re letting your parents prevent you from realizing that. ”
Huh.
My brother essentially said the same thing last week.
“Wow, this painting session got heavy quick.” I laugh awkwardly, trying to make light of it all, but the truth is, their words go round on a loop in my head, making me question everything.
“Sorry,” Ronan quickly apologizes, grimacing.
I shake my head. “Don’t be.”
The truth is, he—they—have nothing to apologize for.
They aren’t wrong. They’ve just got me thinking.
Around them, I feel like my eyes are slowly being peeled open.
I’m starting to see things in a new light.
I’m healing. I’m finding myself. And I’m starting to question what I seriously want out of my life—even if that is the same as what my parents have been pushing.
Before I can say anything dangerously emotional, Lucian hops down from the ladder.
The drop cloth slides beneath his feet.
“Oh shit—”
He crashes directly into Ronan.
The paint roller in Ronan’s hand smacks sideways.
And a thick streak of green paint splatters across my face.
I gasp, lips parting in shock. Silence descends as three male faces slowly turn toward me.
Lifting my hand, I swipe at the paint, taking in the green on my fingertips before looking up at them.
Lucian winces. “...Run?”
“Yeah, you better run.”
I grab the nearest paintbrush before he can escape. Lucian yelps as I swipe green paint across the closest body part I can get—his jaw and neck.
“Little Moth!” he shouts, stumbling backward, laughing while Ronan groans something about “children” under his breath.
Distracted, I don’t notice Silas creeping closer until a cool hand suddenly wraps around my wrist from behind, while wet paint streaks slowly across my collarbone.
I gasp sharply.
Silas’s mouth brushes my ear, and I swear I hear the whisper of a word before he moves away.
“Oh, that’s cheating,” I accuse breathlessly as I twist toward him.
His only response is dragging another streak of green paint down the center of my throat with deliberate slowness.
My breathing hitches, eyes snapping to his, which are blown wide as they take me in.
Lucian makes a strangled noise somewhere behind me.