Chapter 2 - Reed
REED
Ididn’t know what I expected when I told her that I was just making sure she was okay. Maybe I thought she’d shrug it off, maybe shoot back with a sarcastic ‘What are you, my brother?’ Or maybe I was just saying it because it felt like the right thing to do.
The silence that followed was different.
It was heavy. I could feel her eyes on me, searching for something beneath the surface of my words.
It was like she was trying to piece me together and maybe trying to understand why I was at the baseball field too.
I told myself I’d come looking for quiet, for space.
I just needed to think. Instead, I found her breaking in ways she wasn’t trying to show, yet somehow, I still managed to see the cracks.
After seeing her like that, I knew I couldn’t just walk away.
Not without making sure she wouldn’t fall apart the second I did.
I glanced over at her, just a quick look, to see if she was about to say something.
Wren leaned her head on the passenger window and stayed quiet, her gaze fixed on the windshield like she wasn’t even seeing what was in front of her.
Her face was calm, almost unreadable, but there was tension in the way she held herself.
It was as if she were bracing for impact.
Like she expected me to finally ask the question she’d been dreading, or maybe just hoping I would.
Part of me wanted to let it go. Another part of me, some deeper instinct, wanted to ask her why she was out there crying on the bleachers all alone this late at night. I wanted to stay with her even though she hadn’t asked me to.
Why did I care so much? Why did it bother me that she was not okay, or that she was trying so hard to pretend she was?
Maybe I was just tired of pretending everything in my own life was fine.
Maybe I saw something in her that didn’t fit into the polished, predictable version of the people in this town that I’d grown accustomed to.
Maybe it was this strange, unexpected need to understand her, to be the one person who didn’t turn away.
The one who could just sit with her, in this quiet, and let it mean something real.
I knew how much it had meant to Wren when I was there for her after her breakup with her ex-boyfriend, Tyler.
I hadn’t known much about the relationship until then.
He dumped her days before her birthday. I found her on the beach, on a cold evening in November, celebrating her twentieth birthday in tears.
We sat together on the cold sand, shoulder to shoulder, and talked about how she was feeling.
I was there for her years ago, just like I’m here for her now.
The silence stretched between us for far too long.
I shifted in my seat, trying to focus on the shapes in the dark.
The trees, the outline of a mailbox, or the distant flicker of someone else’s porch light, but none of it could hold my attention for long.
She was there, just a few inches away, and every second that passed made me more aware of her presence. And that was the problem.
She was the problem.
Because no matter how much I tried to push the thought down, bury it beneath reason and boundaries and loyalty, it kept rising back to the surface. I cared. More than I should have and more than her brother, my best friend, would ever be okay with.
I ran a hand over my jaw, frustration threading through my chest. This feeling wasn’t supposed to happen again.
She was off-limits. She always had been.
She was the tag-along little sister for years, the one who used to sneak into our marathon gaming sessions and steal the last slice of pizza just to spite us.
The one we were supposed to protect. Wren was the one person I was not supposed to get tangled up with.
But she wasn’t a kid anymore.
Somewhere along the line, she’d grown up, and I hadn’t seen it coming. It hit me in this quiet moment when the world stilled just enough to notice the weight she carried like armor, the way her silence spoke louder than words ever could. It wasn’t just that she looked different. She was different.
Wren was twenty-six now. She was no longer the girl who used to follow Cam, her brother, and me around barefoot in the summers, with wild braids and scraped knees.
Her wavy auburn hair was longer now. The soft strands framed her heart-shaped face and spilled over her shoulders, well past her collarbones.
Her eyes were hazel, but never just one color.
They always shifted with her mood, catching gold in the sunlight and green in the shadows.
Pale freckles dusted the bridge of her nose and cheeks.
They were faint, but always there, like a soft reminder of all the summers that came before.
Her lips were full and expressive. They had a way of curling just before she said something smart or pressing tight when she was trying to hold herself together.
She had that quiet kind of beauty. The kind that knocked the air out of your lungs when you didn’t look away. And God help me, I was always looking.
Shit. Stop it.
This wasn’t the time or the place, and this definitely wasn’t the person. She wasn’t mine to look at like that.
I gripped the steering wheel tightly, knuckles blanching against it as I told myself this was nothing, just a moment.
This was only me being tired or overthinking.
My jaw was closed so tight that I thought I might crack a tooth.
I stole one last glance at her anyway. Her profile was calm and unmoving, but I could see the tension in her jaw and the way her hands were clasped too tightly in her lap.
She wasn’t fine. Not even close. The urge to reach over, or to say anything, to just do something to make it better, was gnawing at me.
But what was I supposed to do? Let her lean on me, just until she doesn’t need to anymore? Pretend I wasn’t already halfway down a road I had no business even looking at?
I thought about her brother, Cameron, and how he’d look at me if he ever knew what was going through my head right now.
He trusted me. I was the one who helped him keep the world off her back when they first moved in together.
What would he do if he found out I wasn’t just protecting her anymore, that I was noticing her?
Hell, I didn’t even know what I wanted from this or her.
It wasn’t like I had some plan, some hidden agenda.
Although this feeling and these thoughts weren’t new.
I let out a breath, quiet and slow, hoping it would settle something inside me.
As usual, it didn’t. So I drove, and I didn’t speak, I just focused on the road.