33. Wren
WREN
The gunshot rips me hard out of sleep, but for a couple of disorienting seconds, I don’t know where I am.
Before it fully registers that I’m in the mountains at the Wilders’ cabin, I’m already scrambling out of bed and reaching for my sidearm on the nightstand.
Another shot cracks outside, louder than the first, and I’m fully awake, everything in me cold with fear.
The room is still dark, but there’s light coming in from the hall. The bedroom door opens before I reach it, and Rhett is there in dark sweats and a black T-shirt, a rifle in his hands.
“Let’s go,” he says as his eyes scan me.
It’s an order, and for once, I don’t question it. I’m not wearing anything except underwear and one of Boone’s shirts, but Rhett doesn’t care.
He moves back into the hall far enough to glance toward the front of the cabin, then he gestures for me to follow. “Cade has contact on the west slope,” he says. “Boone’s on the north side.”
My stomach drops. Contact.
A third shot sounds, farther away this time, and my entire body flinches.
“Safe room,” Rhett says, reaching for my arm and leading me to the end of the hall and into the small storage room. “Stay in here until we come for you.”
He starts to close the door, but I reach for him. “Is Cade hit?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he just told me to tell you to stay put before he called out their movement. There are two men. Cade’s handling it.”
I can only imagine what my face looks like, but whatever it’s doing, it compels Rhett to take pity on me. He steps closer, and slides a hand around the back of my neck, this thumb pressing just beneath my ear, grounding me. “He’s doing his job. Let him.”
I nod once, because I don’t trust my voice. His eyes hold me for one more second, then he releases me.
Rhett looks down at where I’m gripping my gun. “Keep your safety on. Set it on the shelf.”
Before he can say anything else, a voice comes through the radio. “Clear on north.”
It sounds like Cade’s voice, but Rhett answers, “Hold, Mouth,” and I realize it’s Boone.
Instead of closing me into the small space, Rhett leaves the door open and moves down the hall to where he can see the cabin’s front door.
Each second that passes feels like a day, until a voice comes again, and this time I’m certain it’s Cade. “Two retreating west.” His voice is calm and alive, and a breath I didn’t realize I was holding whooshes out of me.
“Any injuries?” Rhett asks him.
“Not mine.”
My eyes widen as I imagine what might be happening out there, and what will happen next. Before my mind can get too carried away, the back door opens, and Boone calls out to us.
As I take in the sight of him, his hair rumpled as if from sleep and his eyes free of their usual easy charm, Rhett demands more information from Cade.
“Clipped one,” Cade says through the crackle of the radio. “They’re moving fast. Not coming back without more men.”
“Hold position until I reach you,” Rhett answers.
“Negative,” Cade says. “Stay with the cabin.”
Rhett’s mouth flattens into a silent argument as he grips the radio in his fist.
Boone makes his way toward me, his eyes sweeping over my face, then down to my bare legs below his shirt. “Sweetheart.”
“I’m okay,” I say, but his face tells me he either doesn’t believe me or doesn’t care, because he’s going to put his hands on me anyway. When he reaches me, he wraps one arm around me hard enough to lift my feet off the floor.
Rhett’s gaze passes over us, then away, as he continues to scan windows and doors, converting fear into action, because that’s what he does.
It takes nineteen minutes for Cade to come back, and I know because I count every one.
When he finally appears at the back door, his hair is damp at his temples, there’s mud on his knee, and a narrow scrape along his cheekbone.
I wait only long enough for him to set his rifle down before I throw myself into his arms, and he absorbs me without a sound, one arm going around my back and the other locking over my shoulders.
He’s solid under my hands, and alive. His heart beats hard against my cheek. I stretch onto my toes to kiss him, then touch his cheek, just beside the scrape.
“Are you bleeding anywhere else?”
He frowns, then says, “It’s just a scratch. No. I’m fine.”
I look him over anyway, knowing he’d deflect even if a body part were missing. “They came here,” I say, part question, part statement.
“Two-man team,” Cade says.
“For me?”
“For us,” Rhett says behind me.
“They were probing,” Cade says.
“They weren’t here to grab you,” Boone says. “Too light for that. Too few men. They were testing our response.”
Cade strokes the back of my neck with his thumb. “They found out Turner doesn’t have a clean angle on this cabin.”
“And that we shoot back,” Boone says.
The words are comforting, but they also make my stomach twist in an icy knot. Harlan Turner sent armed men to the cabin at dawn. Any thoughts I’ve had that he’s only trying to scare me are long gone.
“Come here,” Rhett says.
It’s a command, but I go anyway.
Rhett sets his phone on the table and cups my face in both hands. “They came onto our mountain,” he says. “They approached our home, and they ran when Cade engaged. That’s the full extent of what they accomplished.”
My breath catches, and I realize I’m shaking. Not hard, but enough that he notices, too.
“Being scared doesn’t make you weak, Wren.” His thumbs stroke my cheeks.
“I didn’t say it did.”
“No, but you looked like you were about to punish yourself for it.”
He’s right. One hundred percent. “I’m used to handling things.”
“You are handling this.”
“I stood in a closet while you all—”
Boone cuts in. “You held position. That’s important. People get killed because they can’t do what they’re told when rounds start moving.”
“I’m not one of your soldiers.”
Rhett swipes his thumb down my lower lip. “No, you’re harder.”
“Amen,” Boone mutters, and Rhett almost grins.
A laugh breaks out of me. It’s shaky, and I’m close to tears, but the knot in my stomach loosens enough for me to breathe.
The rest of the day is filled with phone calls, maps, defensive revisions, and patrols. I make sandwiches around noon after I realize we all forgot breakfast. At dinner, I eat a quiet meal with Boone and Cade while Rhett takes a sentry shift outside.
They’ve been rotating patrols all day, and for me, it’s like a hamster wheel of worry.
When Rhett returns at ten, Boone’s ready to head out into the dark, but I stop him with a touch on his arm.
“Before you go, I need to talk to you.” I raise my voice. “To all of you. Together.” My heart’s pounding wildly, and it only gets worse when three sets of dark eyes immediately land on me with laser focus.
“What’s wrong?” Rhett demands.
“Nothing’s wrong. I mean … that’s not why I want to talk to you. I just—” I stop and decide to just say it before my nerves derail me. “I love you. All of you.”
The three Wilder brothers freeze so fully, the room turns into a photo, a moment frozen in time.
“I love all three of you,” I say. “And I’m not just saying it because someone shot at the cabin this morning. I’m saying it because I’ve known for a while, and I want you to know it, too.”
Boone’s the first to unfreeze. Cade’s breath leaves him in a rough exhale. Rhett’s chest expands, but the rest of him remains still. Even his face is stripped bare like I’ve never seen.
I’ve shaken them deeply.
“Wren,” Rhett says finally. Just my name.
I look back at him.
“Are you always this brave?” he asks.
“No.”
Boone takes hold of my wrist. “Liar.”
I turn to look at him, and he twines his fingers with mine. “I love you, too, sweetheart. So much I don’t know what to do with all of it.” Then he kisses me, soft and slow, showing me how much he means it.
Cade steps in next and takes my other hand. He’s silent for nearly half a minute as he stands there stroking the back of my hand with his thumb. “I’ve been in love with you since the ridge,” he says.
“When you followed me?”
“When you ran for safety while two armed men came up the slope behind you. You were scared, but you kept moving. Smart, stubborn, fast enough to piss me off.”
I squeeze his palm and step closer. “That’s what did it for you?”
“That’s when I realized it had already happened.” He brings my hand to his mouth, kisses my knuckles, then kisses my lips with the same devastating focus.
While I’m kissing Cade, another hand settles on my back. When Cade pulls back, Rhett turns me toward him.
“I love you,” he says plainly. Then he strokes my cheek with his thumb. “Permanently.”
That word hits harder than the first three he said, and my throat closes.
Not until the threat passes, not until the novelty wears off, not until reality becomes inconvenient. Permanently.
“You don’t have to sound so serious,” I whisper, because I might cry if I don’t lighten the moment.
Rhett’s brow lifts. “I am serious.”
“I didn’t need a guarantee,” I say. “Your actions have been showing me how you feel. All of you. Every day, in all the ways you care for me.” The words come easier now that the biggest part is out. “I said it because I wanted to make sure you know how I feel.”
Boone no longer looks eager to go out to his guard shift. “You’re killing me,” he mumbles as he leans in to nuzzle my neck.
“Former Ranger taken out by emotional honesty,” Cade says.
Boone blindly reaches out and shoves at him without taking his mouth off of me. Cade catches his wrist, and for a second, they’re like boys under the men. Brothers tangled around the woman they love, grief and fear and danger momentarily pushed away by something older and stronger than all of it.
Then Rhett covers their hands with his and brings the whole group of them to my waist, and the playfulness quiets.
I look around at the three of them, their faces all the same, and all so different.
Three men who’ve spent their lives together, and who’ve decided I’m not a wedge between them, but a missing piece.
The three of them look back at me like I’m both precious and powerful.
Rhett presses a kiss to my forehead. “This is your home now.”
“Good,” I say, “because I’m not leaving.”
“Damn right,” Rhett says, and I don’t argue with that, either.