5. “Dirty Little Secret”
“DIRTY LITTLE SECRET”
Soren pulled up to his house just as the morning sun peeked through the surrounding trees, but there was an old jeep in his usual parking spot. “Shit.”
Climbing out of the Escalade, he gave a confused smile to his sister-in-law. “Wren, what are you doing here?”
She awkwardly pushed herself up from the porch step and stood, the bottom curve of her rounded belly poking past the hem of her yoga shirt. “You’re out early. Or is it that you’re getting home late?”
He frowned at the not-so-hidden accusation in her voice. “Uh, I didn’t know I had a curfew.”
King barked from inside, and she glanced back at the locked door. “You know, it’s not nice to leave animals unattended for too long. Especially when they’re adjusting to a new home.”
“Hold up. Did I miss something? Why do I feel like I’m in trouble?”
“I don’t know. Guilty conscience?”
He mentally retraced his steps, wondering if he had forgotten something. Her birthday wasn’t for a couple of months, and he was pretty sure she hadn’t asked him for any favors lately.
He moved to the back of his car and popped the tailgate, withdrawing his gym bag and hoisting it over his shoulder. “My conscience is clear.”
Her eyes narrowed on the bag. “Why do you have an overnight bag?”
“It’s my gym bag. I was just there with my trainer. Do you need him to write me a note?”
Her shoulders instantly softened, and her head lowered. “Sorry. I thought… It doesn’t matter. I have no right to question you like that.”
“Yeah, that was weird.” He dug out his keys. “What’s going on, Wren?”
She followed him up the steps and into the house. Soren tossed his bag inside the two-story foyer and set his keys on the table by the champagne wall. Wren had seen his collection before, but she still took a second to admire it.
“Coffee?”
“I can’t.”
“Oh. Right. Water?”
“Sure.” She followed him into the kitchen, where he uncapped a glass bottle of the German stuff he had shipped in.
“Glass?”
“The bottle’s fine.”
He handed it to her and turned on his state-of-the-art espresso machine. While the machine pressure adjusted, he pulled a sausage and egg burrito from the freezer. “Want one?”
“No thanks.”
He tossed it in the microwave. “So, what brings you by?”
She climbed onto a barstool. His furniture was top-of-the-line, but that didn’t always mean it was built for comfort. She looked awkward sitting at the counter with her belly taking up all that space.
“If you want, we can sit outside. I have to put King out anyway.”
“That sounds better.” She shifted off the stool and waddled outside while he went to let King out of his room. The dog seemed to remember Wren immediately and nearly clobbered her the second he saw her.
“King! Down!”
Wren only laughed. “He’s fine. He’s just being a dog.”
He pulled the dog off her and tossed a ball into the yard that sent him loping into the distance. “Sorry.” They settled onto two lounge chairs. “So…”
She took a deep breath and hesitated, but it was clear she had something to say to him.
“Wren—”
“I know about you and Jocelyn,” she blurted.
Soren stilled, taken off guard by her outburst. “For how long?”
“A long time. Since your dad’s funeral.”
He should have known his brother would have told her. “Greyson?”
She shrugged. “We don’t keep secrets from each other.”
All that time and she didn’t say anything? His dad passed away in December. Why now? “Is this about last night?”
“Last night?”
“At the restaurant. Did Jocelyn tell you I ran into them?”
“Them?” She frowned. “Jocelyn was at my house last night.”
“I saw her and Logan outside of Salt & Ember.”
“Oh, walking home from our place.”
They were only walking home. Fuck. “Shit.”
“Soren, what did you do?”
“I might have overreacted. I was on a date.”
She immediately scowled at him.
“Don’t give me that look. I didn’t break any rules. We were coming out of the restaurant, and we ran into Joce and Logan. They were...” His fists tightened as he recalled how close they had been standing, as if they just kissed. “Why the hell was she with my brother?”
“First of all, don’t raise your voice at me.”
“Sorry.”
“Second of all, you were on a date.”
“But my brother? Of all the guys she could have gone out with—”
“Oh, my God, Soren. Will you listen to yourself? Jocelyn is not interested in Logan. He was walking her home. They both had too much wine and left their cars at my house. Jocelyn doesn’t see Logan as anything more than a friend.”
“Then why were they touching?”
“I don’t know. Why were you on a date?”
He bit back any reply and gritted his teeth. Irritated—because she had a point—he tore into his burrito, biting through the tortilla like he wanted to punish it.
Wren studied him for a long moment. “Do you care about her?”
“I barely know her.”
“You’ve known her since the third grade.”
“Oh, I thought you meant Olivia.”
“Do you care about Olivia?”
“I… I don’t know. It’s early, Wren. And I haven’t had coffee.”
“It’s not a hard question, Soren.”
“On paper, Olivia’s the full package. She knows how my world works.”
“And Jocelyn doesn’t?”
“It’s not the same. Olivia knows how to play the game. She was bred to marry a successful man.”
Wren rolled her eyes. “And an egotistical one, apparently.”
“I’m just saying, Jocelyn’s…unfiltered. She says whatever she feels and bulldozes over anyone who stands in her way.”
“So? That’s why she’s successful. Everything she has, she provided for herself.”
“Exactly. Joce likes her independence and doesn’t want anything serious.”
“What if she did?”
He paused, taken off guard by the question. “Did she say something to you?”
“No, but I know my friend. Jocelyn isn’t as tough as everyone thinks she is. Strong, yes—incredibly so. I’d trust her with my life. But strong doesn’t mean unbreakable, and people tend to forget that.”
“Look, I would never purposely hurt Jocelyn. I…care about her. More than I want to admit. But that doesn’t change the fact that she’s her and I’m me. We’d end up killing each other.”
“Does it make it easier to tell yourself that?”
“It’s true.”
“People who hate each other don’t sleep together.”
He looked away and mumbled. “Guess you never had a good hate fuck.” When she didn’t respond, he sighed.
“Look, what do you want me to say, Wren? Sex and arguing are the only ways Jocelyn and I communicate. Even after all these months, she makes me fucking work for it. And I’m not the one chasing her out when it’s over. She’s always the first to pull away.”
“Why do you think that is, Soren?”
“How the hell should I know?”
“You could ask her. You could actually try talking to her, Soren. According to her, you go out on a date every week. I imagine that requires some level of communication skills. If you can talk to other women, why can’t you talk to Jocelyn?”
He rubbed his chest as a weird tightness formed. He must have pulled something at the gym. “I know what I want, Wren.”
“Which is?”
He glanced down at her belly. “In a few months, you’re going to be a mom. And Grey’s going to be a father. I want a family just as much as you guys.”
“Okay. I don’t see how wanting a family somehow removes Jocelyn from your life.”
“Come on. You know her better than anyone, Wren.”
“She’s not as scattered or casual about life as she pretends to be. Jocelyn’s a planner. Nothing she does is truly spontaneous. After all the years you’ve known her, can’t you see that?”
He thought back to the first time they were together.
She was so drunk he should have never laid a hand on her.
He tried to do the right thing, but she kept taking off her clothes and pulling him closer.
He might have been able to resist if she weren’t so goddamn sexy.
Even now, just thinking about that first time got him hot.
He cleared his throat and his mind of the erotic flashbacks. “Can I have a sip of your water?”
“Can I have the rest of your burrito?”
“I knew you were hungry.” He traded with her and took several gulps.
“For the record, I wasn’t hungry, but apparently the baby is.”
He chuckled. “You look good. Pregnancy suits you.”
“Thanks. Greyson’s driving me nuts.”
“As he should.” He finished the water and tossed the bottle aside on the cushion. “How’s the nursery coming—”
“No, no. We’re not done.”
He groaned and fell back, hands covering his face as he growled. “What is it with you women? Men don’t want to talk about their feelings!”
“Greyson loves talking.”
“That’s because he’s in love with you. The most anyone else gets out of him is a growl and a nod.”
“That may be true, but he’s still talking to someone. Who do you talk to?”
“King.”
“You got the dog yesterday.”
“And we bonded. He’s an excellent secret keeper. I told him everything.”
She pursed her lips. “I can see this is going nowhere.” Arching back, she pushed herself off the lounge and stood. “I thought you should know she got hurt last night.”
“What?” He was on his feet and already reaching into his empty pockets searching for his keys. “What happened?”
Wren frowned and sat back down. “I knew it. You do care.”
“What happened to Jocelyn, Wren?”
“She’s fine. She twisted her ankle on the walk home. She told me because she needed someone to drop off her car.”
“Is her ankle okay?”
“She’s going to have it looked at this afternoon. Maybe you could take her to the doctor so she doesn’t have to drive herself.”
He sat down, waiting for relief to settle in, but that didn’t happen. “The doctor can’t see her any sooner? What doctor is it? I can make a call and…” Realizing she’d played him and he was showing his hand, he went silent. “You manipulative little—”
She held up a silencing finger. “Careful.”
“You did that to get a reaction out of me.”
She shrugged, not denying it. “And look how you reacted. You were ready to run to her rescue, Soren. What does that tell you?”
“Not to trust pregnant women.”
“It means you care about her.”
“No shit. I already admitted that.” God, this was getting too much. He didn’t like everyone knowing his business. “This was supposed to be a private thing.”
“For how long? What happens when some rich, blonde Stepford wife finally stakes a claim? Will you still see Jocelyn then? Keep it private like a dirty little secret?”
“I’m not a shmuck. I don’t cheat. Jocelyn and I never put rules on each other.”
“So you would just walk away.”
“I…” His words got stuck in his throat.
Would he? He should have ended things a year ago.
Could he? He’d been trying to quit going back to her for months, but somehow he always found himself at her door.
Wren leaned forward and placed an empathetic hand on his knee. “You can’t have both, Soren. Eventually, you’re going to have to choose.”
He stared down at her wedding ring glinting in the sun. “I know.” The weight of those two words crushed him.
He thought he knew what he wanted. He’d always had a type, and Jocelyn was not it. But he’d never had such a difficult time walking away from a woman.
“I fucked up last night.”
“You’ll fix it.”
“I don’t know. I acted like a complete asshole.”
“You’re a Hawthorne. It happens.”
“I can’t figure out why she has this hold over me.”
“The Universe doesn’t make mistakes, Soren. It tends to give us exactly what we need. Humans have just gotten really good at confusing things.”
“Is that how you finally got Greyson?”
“I like to think so. God knows I manifested it hard enough.”
He smiled, because that was such a Wren thing to say. “Why do you think it took him so long to realize you were perfect for each other?”
“Because he’s a stubborn Hawthorne.”
“You and Grey at least wanted the same things.”
“Not always. Not at the same time. Grey always wanted to protect me, but I needed him to love me. He couldn’t do that until he admitted that true love, love like ours, is bigger than both of us. Once he let nature take its course, everything just fell into place.”
“I like control too much.”
“Then keep control, but let yourself go to Jocelyn. Give yourself permission to care for her out in the open no matter what the outcome might be. I think, more than a wife, you need a friend right now. And I can attest that Jocelyn is a great one to have.”
“What if it gets too complicated? What if it doesn’t work out?”
“You won’t know unless you try. Talk to her. Have a real conversation like a real couple.”
“Say I try, and she throws a flowerpot at my head and tells me to get the hell out? What then?”
“She won’t.”
“I don’t think you know how crazy she can get.”
“I know her better than anyone. If she throws something at your head, you probably deserved it.”
“Gee, thanks. I thought you were on my side.”
“I love you, Soren. But I love Jocelyn, too. She’s family.”
“So am I.”
“But you have your brothers. Jocelyn only has me. If you hurt my friend, I’m hurting you.”
Despite being a foot and a half shorter than him and currently having the build of a beanbag chair, she somehow made that promise threatening.
“Understood.”
After Wren left, Soren took a shower and processed everything she said.
He fed King meal two of seven for the day and put him back in his room.
“I promise to get you more toys today,” he said, backing out of the room as the dog settled onto his enormous bed, paws draped like ham hocks over the edge.
When he reached Jocelyn’s, her car was in the driveway, but when he knocked, she didn’t answer. He lifted the flowerpot and found the hidden key.
Quietly unlocking the door, he called for her, “Joce?”
Cordelia came charging down the steps in a fit of barks and growls, but he was prepared. He’d stolen one of the two-foot bones he bought King yesterday and threw it into the dining room.
“Go get it!”
Cordelia raced after the bone, and Soren quickly shut the pocket doors, locking the little rat-demon inside. When he reached the top of the stairs, he heard the shower running, so he went into her bedroom to wait.