Chapter 10 #2
She looked at him, taken aback by his perceptiveness. She nodded. “Some,” she replied, aiming for as much honesty as she could muster. “Not all.”
Instead of pushing for more, he nodded at her foot. “Can you walk on that? Or do you need a hand?”
Her foot was throbbing, but she’d danced and performed through worse. She could definitely make it back to Luna’s place. And all she wanted was a hot bath, a couple of aspirin, and to sleep for ten or twelve hours. “I can walk.”
Dane nodded. “Tell me if that changes,” he replied, taking her answer at face value. And then he slowly and silently walked her home.
* * *
Dane had gone to the studio to check on her, but the second he opened the door his words evaporated.
Wren was in motion.
The music throbbed through the walls, but what he felt wasn’t the bass—it was her.
She wasn’t dancing for an audience; she was exorcising something.
Every movement looked like it hurt. Sharp turns, hard landings, that reckless leap that made his heart stop when she caught herself just before she went down.
And then that moment—the stumble, the way her ankle rolled and her face twisted, not in fear, but fury.
She didn’t stop. He suspected she never did.
When the music finally died, the silence was soup-thick. She lay there, eyes closed, arms akimbo, hair loose and wild. He just waited until she looked at him, her brittle half-smile telling him not to ask.
So he didn’t.
But her explosion of movement, her working it out through dance, made him realize he’d been avoiding his own shit.
His sleep quality had improved, marginally, but he’d quietly shoved any thoughts about his PTSD into a mental, unopened drawer.
It was far easier to focus on Wren—on their heat and chemistry—than to work on his, God, issues.
Ignoring burnout, and the low, continuous hum of PTSD, was easier. Safer. Less work.
But watching Wren dance—watching her work through her frustration from her earlier conversation—hit him hard. Whatever she’d talked about with that guy, it had obviously been a tough conversation for her, and it made something inside him shift.
If she could face her stuff head-on, then maybe he had to stop pretending he was fine, too.
Maybe it was time to follow her lead and dig into the mess in his head, the stuff he’d ignored for too long.
He needed to find the cause of his burnout, put names to the ghosts visiting him at three in the morning—a couple of nights ago he’d woken up, drenched in sweat, thinking that there was a Civil War soldier standing at the end of his bed—and face the things he preferred to ignore.
Up until earlier, he thought he was fine with being alone, that solitude—interrupted by little bursts of companionship—meant peace.
But he was starting to acknowledge that his quest for calm might actually be, as his psychologist said, burnout that went so deep it rendered him numb.
Sure, maybe he was haunted by the devastation he’d witnessed and the damage it did to the human body, but the quiet of his current life unsettled him.
Nobody needed him, and the silence was crushing.
He’d lost the ability to connect with people because he’d been too busy fixing them.
And maybe he liked wounded people because when he was making someone better, if he was focused on their wounds, he didn’t need to deal with his own.
Yet, on another level, he’d made friends in H-Town.
In particular he’d connected with Hayes and Thom.
With them, there was easy banter, male shorthand, grounded conversations.
Normality. But Wren was chaos, music, movement.
She was unpredictable and vivid and so very alive.
A million emotions bubbled beneath her skin, a hundred thoughts, most unexpressed, skittered through her eyes.
She was his opposite, impulsive instead of methodical, passionate instead of careful, unfiltered about everything but her deeply guarded emotions. She challenged him to feel…
And God, that fucking terrified him. Because if he lost control, he’d fall apart.
The rational part of his brain thought Alex’s arrival might be a blessing in disguise, a not very welcome but necessary disruption.
The guy had interrupted the momentum he’d been building with Wren, and that might not be a bad thing.
But the rest of him was hornet-mad. Jesus, this was hard to admit, he’d never felt this threatened and yeah, red-hot jealous.
Some fucker had strolled back into her life—he’d picked up on their familiarity in two seconds—and upended it.
The urge to find him—H-Town wasn’t that big—and beat the shit out of him was strong.
Dane was also majorly pissed because she looked like she’d had the stuffing knocked out of her—young and oh-so-lost—and nobody was allowed to make Wren feel like shit.
He’d sensed a vibe between them, something old and deep. Something he couldn’t compete with. Not that he should be trying to compete…
Shit.
Dane looked around, taking in the shadows and the dim streetlights, the quarter moon winking in the clear sky.
The night air was damp and warm, the sounds of the indefatigable band drifting from the park.
Beside him, Wren limped slightly, pretending she was fine, and he pretended not to see it.
Their hands brushed once, then didn’t again.
The urge to kiss her burned through him, and he pushed the fire back.
She’d had an emotional evening—she didn’t need him making a move on her.
He opened his mouth to ask her what happened, then ground his teeth together to keep the question from leaving his mouth.
He was fighting his attraction—it had morphed from being purely physical to slightly emotional—and he knew he needed to stay detached, needed distance.
Needed to keep it light. And asking her to explain what had propelled her to dance like a sexy, elegant dervish tonight was not keeping it light.
They stopped in front of Luna’s house, Wren rocking on her heels, her arms folded, and her head drooping. He was about to walk her to the door when she spoke, her soft voice breaking their silence. “Alex was—is—my best friend and my creative and dance partner.”
Did he really want to hear this? Yes.
But also, no.
“Last year, we had a thing…” How big a thing? A sex thing or a not-sex thing? What the fuck was a thing?