40. Wren
WREN
The silence in the conference room has stretched so long it feels alive. My thoughts spin in a constant loop. I don’t know what to say. None of us do. It’s clear the guys are as shocked as I am.
I stare at the floor. At the cheap industrial carpet. The black scuff marks near the wall.
“We should go.” Ronan’s voice is quiet.
I lift my head. His expression hasn’t changed much since everything exploded, but I know him well enough to see the strain beneath the surface.
“This isn’t the place for this conversation.”
Nobody argues. He’s right, after all.
Each of us lost in our own thoughts, we make our way through the BSU arena, leaving through a side exit to avoid the crowds still pouring out after the game. We start toward the hotel where the team is staying. It’s the same hotel the guys stayed in on that fateful night when they found me.
That thought has me stopping in my tracks.
Three heads immediately turn toward me.
“Wren?”
I look toward the dark stretch of road disappearing beyond campus.
A different date…
A different night…
“Where did you find me?”
I don’t need to be more specific. Their postures stiffen, understanding exactly what I’m asking.
“Why do you wanna know?” Lucian hedges warily.
I give it a final moment of consideration before making my decision. “I want you to take me there.”
“I don’t know…” Ronan starts, looking unsure. “Tonight doesn’t feel like the night. Maybe in the morning, when everything isn’t so raw and—”
“No.” I cut him off. Not forcefully, but my tone is sharp enough to make it clear that this is what I want. It’s what I need. “I want you to show me now.”
Lucian’s jaw flexes.
Silas watches me, head slightly tilted. Unlike Lucian, who I can tell wants to flat-out say no, and Ronan, who is worried about what seeing that place will do to me, Silas can see the truth. He understands.
“I need to see it,” I explain. “I don’t remember enough to know where it was or what it looks like, so I’ve never been.”
“Why?” Lucian growls. He’s angry, but looking into his eyes, I can tell it comes from a place of fear. “Why would you want to go there? What can possibly be gained from that?”
The reassuring smile I give him is soft…
hesitant, because I don’t know if I’m making the right call.
Maybe it will be too much for me. Maybe it’ll send me over the edge.
Either way, while we’re here and they know where to take me, I feel like it’s something I have to do.
A final confrontation, perhaps? Closure?
“I honestly don’t know,” I tell him. Stepping forward, I place my hand on his chest, right over his heart. “But please, just show me.”
Looking down at me, his face is ravaged. Tonight has taken its toll on him.
I can tell he wants to argue, but I don’t think he’s got any more fight left in him. His shoulders drop in defeat, and he blows out a weary breath. “Fine. If it’s what you feel you need to do.”
I nod. “It is.”
Ronan leads the way as they direct me down residential streets until we come to one on the outskirts of town. It’s far enough away from campus that very few students live out this way. It’s mostly locals, and even then, more than a few houses appear to be abandoned altogether.
“It’s this one here,” Ronan eventually says, pointing toward the next house up.
It’s smaller than I imagined, and even more rundown.
The boarded windows are half-rotten, and paint peels from the siding.
Grass pushes through cracked concrete. There’s an air of sadness around it.
Of neglect. Like the place has been abandoned for so long that its existence has been entirely forgotten.
The guys stop on the stretch of sidewalk at the edge of the property, the three of them surrounding me as we stare at the rundown house. Nothing looks familiar. Nothing feels familiar.
Forcing the words past my dry throat, I croak, “Where?”
Lucian sighs like I’m testing his last limit.
Silas points toward the side of the house, overgrown with bushes and tall grass.
“Over here,” Ronan says, almost reluctant as he moves toward the spot. I follow, the others behind me. The grass brushes my ankles, and the night air stirs my hair. Goosebumps pebble my skin.
At the side of the house, he stops. “Right there.” He points toward the spot in the grass directly in front of him. There’s no sign that a body ever lay there. The grass is no longer flattened.
I crouch, trying to picture what it must have looked like when they found me. My body lying there, unconscious.
“You were out cold,” Ronan says, voice distant as though he’s been pulled back to that night.
“It was clear something had happened to you,” Lucian adds. “But it was also clear that you fought back.”
“I did?” I glance up at him. I don’t remember that.
“Oh yeah.” He smirks, pride lining his expression as he stares at the spot in the grass. “Your nails were broken, and I remember seeing bruises on your knuckles like you’d tried to punch your attacker.”
Didn’t Isaac have scratches on him when he came to practice the week after? Silas writes.
Ronan and Lucian need to think for a moment before Lucian’s brows jump. “He did!”
Ronan frowns. “Didn’t he tell everyone his mom’s cat scratched him?”
“That fucking asshole!” Lucian sneers. “Fuck I should have tackled him harder. He deserves to be pissing blood for the next month.”
“I think you did more than enough damage,” I drawl. “To him and to yourself.”
He makes a noise of protest, which he quickly cuts off with one look from me.
Focusing back on the spot where Isaac left me, I run my fingers through the grass. It’s cold…damp.
For a second, nothing happens.
Then—
A fragment of…something…tugs at the back of my mind.
I grasp onto it, wrenching it forward.
Darkness. Fear.
Broken fragments of a scuffle.
“You bitch!” A male voice, hot and angry. “You scratched me!”
I’m shoved so hard that my knees hit the ground with a sickening crack.
My hand jerks away from the grass. Startled, I fall back onto my ass.
“Are you okay?” Lucian quickly reaches for me, pulling me to my feet and tucking me in against his chest.
“Y-yeah. Yes. I’m fine.”
I frown, staring unseeingly at the spot in the grass where the worst experience of my life took place, but all I hear is that voice.
Isaac’s voice.
Perhaps I inserted his voice into that memory because of what happened tonight. What we discovered…
…But I don’t think so.
That felt real.
More real than any other memory from that night.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Ronan asks.
Silas is in my face, his hands on my cheeks.
“Yes.” I infuse more certainty into my voice. “I’m fine.” Giving Silas a reassuring smile, I look toward Ronan. “I’m ready to go now.”
Although his brow is creased with concern, he nods, and I ignore the glances repeatedly cast my way as we make our way back to the hotel.
As we walk, I replay that memory over in my head. It’s not only the fact that I heard Isaac’s voice. It’s the fact that I fought.
I fought him. I fought back.
For years, there had always been a small, ugly voice buried somewhere deep inside me. The one who wondered. The one who blamed. The one who asked impossible questions.
Why didn’t you stop it?
Why didn’t you do more?
Now I know.
I did. I fought.
And somehow that knowledge loosens something inside my chest.
Not enough. Not nearly enough.
But something.
Back at the hotel, nobody wants to sleep, but none of us knows what else to do either. The guys hover, protective and worried. I get asked so many variations of “Are you okay?” and “Do you want to talk about it?” that I have to tell them to stop asking.
What is there to talk about?
What is there to do?
I don’t have answers. I don’t even have a clear mind. I’m exhausted and too wired to sleep. I’m…
Honestly?
I don’t even know what I am.
I’m just done.
I don’t have it in me to take on any more today.
Eventually, Ronan convinces all of us to get into bed.
The four of us squished into one king-size bed is a tight fit, but we make it work.
Lucian is at my back, curled around me protectively, while I rest my head on Silas’s chest. Ronan is on his other side, arm crooked so his hand is behind his head as he stares at the ceiling.
Eventually, one by one, they drift off.
Lucian is the first to go, likely exhausted from his fight earlier. His snores are soft in my ear. Ronan goes next. I watch him fight it, his eyelids drooping before snapping open. After several minutes, they close and don’t open again.
Silas falls asleep last. I only know he’s asleep because of the rhythmic rising and falling of his chest.
I lie there, content and warm between them, but unable to fall asleep.
My thoughts are loud in the quiet room. Wide awake, I stare at the wall opposite. When one hour bleeds into two, I carefully extract myself from between Silas and Lucian and grab my phone from the nightstand.
Me
Are you awake?
Dylan
Of course.
Me
Mind if I come over?
Dylan
You know you don’t have to ask.
As quietly as I can so as not to wake them, I pull on a pair of sweats and grab a discarded T-shirt and hoodie that belong to one of the guys. Based on the smell, the T-shirt is Silas’s and the hoodie is Lucian’s.
With my sneakers in hand, I creep out of the room, closing the door soundlessly behind me.
It’s a quick walk to my old apartment, where Dylan now lives.
She took over the lease when I moved to Valehurst. I get a strange sense of déjà vu as I stand outside my old building.
Part of me is excited to be back here; I had so many happy times in that apartment.
And yet, a part of me is strangely disconnected, like I’ve moved on from this place.
Dylan opens the door wearing sweatpants and a Steelhawks hoodie. Her hair is a disaster. She takes one look at my face.
“Movie and hot chocolate?”
“Movie and hot chocolate.”
Half an hour later, we’re curled up on opposite ends of the couch while an older romcom that I’ve seen a hundred times plays out across the TV. As is usual for us, neither of us is watching it.