Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Wren woke with a scream trapped in her throat and for one awful second, she couldn’t breathe.
She was drowning, just as she had so many nights before. Only she didn’t drown in water. But in memories.
The darkness of her bedroom twisted around her. Sweat soaked through her T-shirt. Her hair stuck to her temples and the side of her face, and her heart slammed against her ribs so hard, it hurt.
She tried to move but couldn’t.
Panic exploded through her when she realized a weight was pinning her to the mattress. An arm. A man.
No. No, no, no!
He’s back. He’s here.
A tiny voice in the back of her head tried to reassure her that wasn’t possible, but it was too quiet to penetrate over the current roaring in her ears.
She shoved against the body beside her with every ounce of strength she had.
“Wren?”
The deep voice barely registered as she scrambled backward, tumbling to the floor. She didn’t let the fall slow her down. Instead, she scooted on her ass, crab-crawling away until she was stopped by her bedroom wall.
“Wren,” the voice said again, quiet, calm, steady, as the lamp on the nightstand flickered on.
The room came into focus and she let herself take it all in so that she could reassure herself she was home and safe.
She was sitting on the floor next to her dresser, her gaze taking in the scratch down the side from where she and her dad had almost dropped it carrying it upstairs when she’d moved into the apartment.
They fumbled it because they’d been laughing too hard, thanks to Lark standing at the top of the stairs shouting, “Pivot! Pivot!” in true Ross from Friends style.
She felt her navy-blue curtains brushing against her shoulder. The color had always been her favorite, despite her baby sister Piper’s assertions that blue was a boy’s color.
Then she forced her eyes toward the light, letting it land on the lamp first, simply because she wasn’t brave enough to face the man in the bed yet.
She’d been an idiot to invite Grayson to stay, and then she had compounded that mistake by forgetting to turn on her nightlight. The dark always triggered the nightmares, which was why she was militant about turning that damn light on.
In her defense, it had been hard to think, considering her brain was swimming in a sea of oxytocin, dopamine, endorphins, and all the other happy hormones following that orgasm.
“Look at me, little bird,” Grayson said so gently, tears formed, wetting her lashes.
Wren tried to blink them away, turning her head in hopes he wouldn’t see them.
“Wren,” he said again, his tone deeper this time. “Look at me.”
She responded instantly, unable to refuse him when he issued one of those commands. The man had hypnotized her. She wasn’t sure when or how, but she was totally under his spell.
Hence the reason she’d made the mother of all fuckups by inviting him to sleep over.
He was sitting upright on the side of the bed she’d just exited with all the grace of a newborn foal. He was shirtless, wearing only his boxer briefs, concern etched across every line of his face.
His hands clenched the mattress by his thick thighs, and she got the sense that grip was keeping him from crossing the room to go to her. Like he needed it to hold himself back.
Thank God he was. Because if he came any closer…
She took an uneasy breath and realized it had been his arm.
She hadn’t been trapped or pinned down. It was simply his arm around her waist, holding her as they slept.
“Who—” he started, but she couldn’t let him finish that question.
“Sorry,” she blurted. “I’m sorry.”
Grayson frowned, then started to rise.
She flinched before she could stop herself. The movement seemed to hit him like a physical blow. Grayson froze for a moment, then sank back down on the bed.
“Wren,” he said softly.
“Don’t ask me,” she said in a manic voice so loud, it was practically a yell. “Not…not yet.”
He paused, then nodded. Just once. “Tell me what you need.”
She shook her head, scrambling for something she could say to save this. “Nothing. I’m fine,” she said, aware she was a million miles away from fine. “I’m okay,” she said again, wishing her voice didn’t sound so damn frantic. “Honest.”
“You’re not okay,” he said.
“It was just a nightmare. I, um…” She glanced around, her eyes landing on the stupid nightlight she’d forgotten to turn on.
Gesturing to it, she fought to give him what she hoped passed as a sheepish grin.
“I’m afraid of the dark. Silly, I know. I forgot to turn on the nightlight before we went to sleep. ”
She scrambled off the floor but her legs were unsteady, so she leaned heavily against the wall, her hand resting on the dresser for support.
Grayson studied her far too closely, rising slowly, like she was a wounded animal who might jolt if spooked.
“Little bird,” he said, slowly approaching her.
“I’m fine,” she said, a little too insistently.
“No, you’re not.”
She stared at the floor, the wooden planks blurring. “It was a nightmare.”
Grayson tipped her face toward him with a steady finger beneath her chin. “What did I tell you about lying to me?”
Her stomach dropped as she lifted her gaze. He wasn’t angry. Instead, he looked concerned. She wasn’t sure why that bothered her more than him being pissed off.
“It was just a bad dream.” The lie tasted bad, but now that she’d started down this path, it seemed she was going to dig in her heels.
She wasn’t a stubborn person by nature. Except for when it came to talking about her past. Whenever faced with dredging all that up, she could be the most obstinate person on the planet.
His eyes narrowed.
“I…I just need time.” She’d been silent on this subject for so long, she didn’t know any other way to be. Yes, she talked to Sophie about it, but for some reason, that felt different.
Maybe because Sophie already knew she was all kinds of fucked up.
Wren didn’t want Grayson to see her as broken. She wanted to just be…normal.
His jaw tightened, and she could practically see the debate raging behind those dark brown eyes of his.
He wanted to push her on this. She knew that.
Grayson was a straight shooter, and he’d asked the same of her.
Something in her face must have convinced him to back down, because after a long silence, he sighed. “Okay.”
Relief flooded her, immediately followed by guilt.
Grayson glanced toward her nightstand, to the clock there. “It’s early.”
Four-thirty a.m. was more than early in her book. It was practically the middle of the night, as far as she was concerned, but given he worked on a farm, she knew this was probably close to the time his alarm went off.
“You should head back to the farm,” she said, hoping it wasn’t too obvious that she needed him to leave.
She’d pulled her shit together, but that was only a temporary thing. There was a mob of emotions gathering just beneath the surface, clamoring to get out with pitchforks and torches. Wren didn’t want him here when all those bad things broke free.
“I can stay a little while longer,” he argued.
“No!” she said, way too loudly. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to make you late for work.”
“Wren,” he said, with a slight grin that was just a shade too off to be natural. “I’m the boss. Nobody will fire me if I’m a few minutes late.”
“Even so,” she said. “I have some stuff to do around here myself, laundry, and um, stuff,” she repeated, when she couldn’t come up with anything else to add to her nonexistent list. “And I was planning to go into work early today to set up for the puppet show story time.”
Wow, the lies were flowing like lava now. Her weekly puppet show for the preschoolers wasn’t until tomorrow. She prayed to God Grayson didn’t know that.
He ran a hand through his sleep-mussed hair. “Okay. I’ll come by after work, and we can make dinner together.”
“No,” she said again.
His eyebrows furrowed. “No?”
She scrambled for an excuse. “I, um, I can’t hang tonight.”
“Why not?” he asked.
She understood his surprise. After all, they’d been inseparable since the night of the Harvest Dance. The problem was, if she saw him again so soon, she knew what would happen.
She’d tell him everything.
Jesus, she should have told him already. But she’d never said the words to anyone who wasn’t related or paid to listen. Not once.
The part of her that had fallen hopelessly, helplessly in love with this man wanted to believe he would wrap her in his arms and tell her everything was okay.
But what if, like with Charlie and Jake…it wasn’t? What if he decided she was too broken, and he didn’t want to stick around with a head case who lost it whenever a man got too close? Sure, he’d been patient so far, but what if—
She shut down that line of thinking.
Grayson didn’t even belong in the same category as Charlie and Jake.
Her feelings had never progressed beyond “like” with those previous two suitors.
And when she looked back, she wondered if she’d picked them not because of attraction, but because they’d been sort of small, awkward, and nonthreatening.
Grayson was the complete opposite of what she’d previously sought out in men.
He was strong, big, confident, and, considering some of the things he’d said last night, extremely alpha.
She’d always assumed a man like that would scare her spitless, so she steered clear.
But unlike Jake and Charlie, who’d vanished the second things went sideways, Grayson had stuck by her, swearing he would “never” leave.
Those words had meant more to her than she could ever express to him, because no one had ever looked at broken Wren and seen something worth sticking around for. She’d freaked out on Jake and Charlie, and they’d both run for the hills.
It was wrong for her to assume Grayson would do the same thing. Because so far, he’d given her no reason to doubt him.
No. The person she doubted in this relationship was herself. So she needed time to sort that out. Somehow.