Chapter 19 #3
She shrugs a little. “It makes me feel like a lot when I’m not trying to be.”
I nod slowly. “Yeah. I get that.”
And I do.
Maybe not the exact thing. But the feeling of being too much when you’re just trying to get through the day?
Yeah. That one I know.
I glance over at her, then back at my plate. “There’s this little Parisian place in Bozeman,” I say. “Tucked back off Main. They’ve got a full dairy-free menu—like, actual meals that taste good, not just sad salads and roasted vegetables and shit.”
Wren perks up, eyes narrowing like I just said the magic words. “Like…Paris?”
I nod. “Yeah. Real French stuff. It’s legit. I went once with a friend who’s vegan, and I swear I didn’t even miss the butter. Which is saying something.”
She leans forward a little, her cheesecake forgotten. “I’ve always wanted to go to Paris.”
I glance at her, surprised. “So why haven’t you?”
She shrugs, fork dragging absently through the edge of the cake. “I’ve just been busy with the horses and stuff. I help a lot around here. Sometimes it’s hard to just…get away.”
I nod. I’ve heard that before—from people with kids, with jobs, with guilt stitched into their skin. And I don’t know if it’s my place to say anything, but I say it anyway.
“Sometimes you’ve gotta make time for yourself,” I tell her, nudging her foot with my elbow. “It’s healthy.”
She snorts softly, like she doesn’t quite believe me but doesn’t fully disagree either.
“You’ve been?” she asks, eyes flicking back to mine. “To Paris?”
“Yeah,” I say. “A couple years ago.”
Her eyes go wide, lashes lifting just a little higher. “Was it as dreamy and beautiful as it looks?”
I think about that for a second. About the fog rolling over the Seine in the morning. The smell of espresso and old paper. The way everything tastes better over there.
“It is,” I say. “The food’s unreal. The buildings are old and tall. You can walk everywhere. And every single waiter makes you feel like you’re mildly inconveniencing them just by existing.”
She laughs, and I can’t help but smile too.
“But it’s beautiful,” I add. “Even with all that.”
She nods, her smile still lingering. Something about her feels softer now. A little undone in the best way.
She’s quiet for a second, then asks, “Why’d you go? To Paris?”
I pause, my fork still in my hand. “A few years ago,” I say, “I just…needed to get the hell out of here. From my job. From Montana. From everything. Escape from everything.”
I don’t add the rest—what I was running from. What I couldn’t outrun in the end.
“I took time off and just…went. Bought a shitty rail pass and figured everything out as I went.” I smile a little. “Paris was the first stop. Then Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen. Took a train through Switzerland that nearly made me believe in God again.”
Her eyes stay on me, steady. Listening in a way that most people don’t.
“I spent a week in this town on the Amalfi Coast where no one spoke English and I ate the same pasta every night because it was the only thing I could pronounce.” I laugh, shaking my head.
“Met a guy in Prague who swore he’d been mugged by a mime.
Pretty sure he just got drunk and lost his wallet, but still. Memorable.”
“That all sounds like a dream,” she says, and her voice has this raw edge to it.
She looks down at her plate, cuts off another bite of cheesecake, and lifts it to her mouth.
“One day,” she murmurs, fork lingering for a beat before disappearing between her lips.
I point my fork at her, the edge of it catching the light from the fire. “Your turn.”
She raises a brow, still chewing. “My turn for what?”
“To play. Two truths and a lie. You guessed mine. Now I get to guess.”
She groans. “But I’m boring.”
I shake my head once. “No chance. I don’t think you could be boring even if you tried.”
That earns me a look. Not sarcastic. Not guarded. Just…surprised.
She sighs like I’ve asked her to do manual labor, then tilts her head, thinking.
“Okay,” she says slowly. “One—I’ve ridden bareback in the middle of a lightning storm. Two—I’ve never had a one-night stand. Three—I once punched a guy in the face because he called me sweetheart after I told him not to.”
My stomach pulls a little tighter with each one.
She says it all so casually, like she’s listing off grocery items. But I can feel something shift in the air between us.
I take a bite of cheesecake, buying myself a second. Then I set the plate down and glance at her.
“The lightning storm thing? Definitely true. You would totally do that.”
She snorts. “Fair.”
I keep my eyes on her. “And I’m gonna say the lie is the one-night stand.”
She watches me. Doesn’t move. Doesn’t smile.
Then, softly, “Wrong.”
Fuck.
I lean back against the couch. “Seriously?”
She nods. “Never punched anyone in the face. Wanted to. Never actually did it.”
I look at her again. Really look.
She’s all bare feet and long legs and firelight, curled into the corner of the couch.
The space between us feels smaller now. Not physically, but in that way where the air shifts and suddenly I’m very aware of every inch of my body, of hers, of how close my we are and how easy it would be to just reach over and—
I blink hard and look away.
Because all I can think about is that someone else has touched her like that.
Someone else has memorized the slope of her shoulder, the way her mouth curves when she’s half a second from smiling. Someone else has kissed her when she’s tasted like firelight and dessert.
And I hate it.
Hate how that thought carves out a hollow in my chest and settles there like it has every right to.
She shifts beside me, oblivious, lifting her legs to tuck them underneath her, and I pretend like I’m still watching the fire.
I nod slowly. “Guess I lost.”
She shrugs. “Only a little.”
I don’t know what makes me ask it. Maybe the way her voice dropped just now.
“Have you ever been in love with someone?”
She looks over at me, surprised. Like she didn’t expect that from me of all people.
I don’t blame her. I didn’t expect it either.
But I want to know. Has Wren Wilding ever let someone close enough to lose them?
She shakes her head, simple and sure. “No. Not even close.”
That answer lands harder than I expect it to.
She picks at her plate, then says, “I don’t really know if I want to be.”
I frown. “To be what?”
“In love.”
That catches me off guard. I try to read her face, but it’s already gone still again.
“Why not?” I ask, genuinely.
She tilts her head again, thinking like she’s rummaging through a drawer full of stuff she doesn’t touch very often.
“I think,” she starts, slow and deliberate, “that love makes you do stupid things. It asks too much of you. All the compromise. The bending. The being soft when you don’t want to be.
” She glances over at me. “And I’ve spent a long time trying to feel solid.
Grounded. Like…myself. I don’t want to lose that for someone else’s version of love, or for someone else’s expectations. ”
That sits with me. Too well.
She keeps going, quieter now. “It just seems like too much risk for a maybe. And I’m not the most likable person on the planet, anyway.”
I shake my head. “That’s not true.”
She raises an eyebrow, skeptical.
“There’s a whole room of people in there who like you,” I tell her.
She snorts. “They’re related to me. They have to like me. It’s in the blood contract.”
I smile, but she doesn’t. Not all the way.
“I’m just…prickly.”
“You are not prickly.”
She gives me a look. Okay. She’s a little prickly. But still.
“Is that why you think you don’t deserve love?”
“It’s not about deserving,” she says quietly, her thumb tracing the rim of her plate like she’s trying to smooth out the words as they leave her mouth. “It’s just harder to love someone like me.”
She doesn’t look at me when she says it. Just keeps her eyes fixed on the cheesecake, like maybe if she stares hard enough, it’ll swallow the truth she just laid between us.
And I feel it—how heavy that belief is. Like it’s been there for years, packed down tight by someone who made her think that being who she is means she has to apologize for it. That she has to accept less. Settle for almosts. Or worse, nothing at all.
It makes my jaw clench. Makes me want to go back in time and find whoever taught her that so I can strangle the shit out of them.
She shifts then, not much—just leans back into the couch, legs stretched out, her heel nudging lightly into my ribs. It’s gentle. Thoughtless, almost. But I feel it everywhere.
“What about you?” she asks, her eyes flicking up to mine. “Have you ever been in love?”
The piece of cheesecake I just swallowed suddenly feels a hell of a lot bigger on the way down.
I look away for a second. Not because I’m hiding—just…trying to get my footing. There’s always a pause before I talk about her. Some internal shift. The way your body braces right before it remembers how much something used to hurt.
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “I have.”
Wren doesn’t say anything. She’s good at that. Not rushing people. Letting silence do what it needs to.
She tips her head slightly. “What’s it like? Being in love?”
“I think being in love feels like…” I pause and frown a little, lost in thought. “You know when you’re half-asleep and your body just knows the person next to you is safe? Like, before your brain even catches up, you’ve already relaxed a little?”
She looks over at me, but I’m not really waiting for a response.
“It’s that. But also…wanting to know how they take their eggs. And what songs they skip on the radio. And the weird stuff, like how they react when they lose their keys or how they say goodbye when they’re in a rush.”
She stays quiet, which makes it easier to keep going.