She felt him smile against her.
“C’mon. Do it.” And he pulled her closer. “I’m using you as a pillow. Why not?”
Indeed, he now was using her tummy as a pillow, and nothing in her life had ever felt so intimate, so familiar, and… sweet. With her pen still in hand, she ran her fingers gently through his hair, and at her touch, he seemed to melt into her.
Enjoy this, she told herself. It won’t last.
With that painful thought, she forced herself to resume sketching. But the sketching didn’t soothe her like it normally would. Lee was here now, holding her like she’d never been held, and she wanted him to stay. She wanted to count on this feeling for the rest of her life. Wren Blanchard had never wanted something so ridiculous and impossible, and the very act of wanting it hurt like hell.
The egret’s plumage blurred before her, and she bit the inside of her lip to try to regain control. She needed to slip away to the bathroom before she made a fool of herself — again.
“What’s wrong?” Lee asked before she could move.
He wasn’t looking at her. In fact, his head was still resting on her middle. He couldn’t know tears filled her eyes.
Wren swallowed hard and mastered her voice. “Nothing. I’m just trying to finish this.”
“Liar.” Lee palmed her stomach and let his fingers span her belly from navel to ribs. “You tightened up here, and your breath got shallow.”
He tilted his head up to look at her, but Wren glanced away, tossing her sketchbook and pen on the floor. “And you’re crying again. Something’s been upsetting you all night, and you’re going to tell me what it is.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
WREN TURNED OUT the light, plunging the room into darkness.
“I envy you your confidence…” She jerked away from him and settled onto her pillow. “…but this topic is closed.”
Lee could hear the strain in her voice. He heard the distress and — although she tried to hide it — he also sensed fear. What made her afraid? And what could he do to reassure her?
“I think we should reopen it.”
Wren sighed. “Goodnight, Lee.”
Letting her shut him out wasn’t an option. He wasn’t about to lie next to her all night and wonder what was eating her. He pulled her against him, sealing his front to her back, and Lee dropped his lips to her ear. “Do you have any idea how crazy I am about you?”
Wren seemed to shrink in his arms.
“Don’t try to run from me now. I’m not letting go.” He’d never be able to let her go. He’d sure as hell never want to. As he held her, he wondered how long he’d have to wait before she agreed to move in with him. How long he’d have to wait for her to say yes when he offered her a ring. How long until he could tell her he loved her.
Lee dragged a hand up to Wren’s face, brushing the waves of her hair away from her cheek. In the darkness, he could only make out the pale shape of her face. “Being with you is right. We fit together. I know it because it’s never felt this good. You know it too.”
She rolled back, facing him now, though he couldn’t see the look in her eyes.
“You know it,” he repeated.
“No, I don’t.” The bed shook with her sob, and when Lee stroked her cheek again, he felt fresh tears.
Helplessness gutted him. “Wren, you have to tell me what’s bothering you. You have to.”
She sniffled beside him before going still. She didn’t even breathe. “If I tell you, you’ll leave.” She sounded lost, hopeless. Certain.
“No, I won’t.” And then he let her in on the truth. “I never want to leave.”
“Oh God,” she hissed, sobbing again and bringing her hands to her face. “You’re not making this any easier.”
“Baby, just tell me.”
“You’ll freak.”
“I won’t. Tell me.”
He waited. Next to him, her body gave. Like she was in a tug-of-war, and she just let go.
“Okay… I’ll tell you.”
“Good.” Lee waited. And he waited. “Wren?”
“When I was six…” Wren started to speak, but she stopped and pulled in a long breath.
At the tone of her voice, Lee knew fear. By the time her lungs filled, his heart raced.
“One of Laurie’s boyfriends… did things to me. Sexual things…”
No.
Bile rose in his throat. His vision tunneled, and the darkness in the room deepened.
“He would put his fingers inside me. It hurt…”
God, no.
At the thought of her suffering, her helplessness, his gut twisted.
“He made me touch him… and once he put it in my mouth, but I gagged and threw up on—”
Lee shot off the bed and bolted for the bathroom. He managed to lift the toilet seat just in time to empty his stomach. Hamburger steak, mashed potatoes, peas, and brownies roared out of him.
“He would put his fingers inside me. It hurt.”
Lee felt his insides corkscrew at her words, his dinner mocking him. He’d glutted himself in the home where Wren had grown up unprotected. At the thought, he heaved again. How could he have been so careless? So stupid? He knew she’d been hurt. He knew she’d grown up with an addict. How could he have imagined she had been safe?
Lee pictured the frightened wren tattooed above her heart, and his gut turned over one last time.
Shaking, he coughed and spat, fighting for breath. “I’m sorry,” he called. “I’m sorry, Wren.”
Listening for any response from her, Lee washed his face and hands. He grabbed his toothbrush and did violence to his teeth, tongue, and gums as he faced himself in the mirror. His skin was almost green, but the eyes that looked back now held a darkness he didn’t recognize.
Lee returned to Wren’s room and stopped in his tracks. She’d switched on the bedside lamp, and she lay on her side, looking as wounded and small as she had the first time he’d laid eyes on her.
“Just go,” she squeaked, her words drowned in tears.
Lee crossed the room, mounted the bed, and caged her with his arms. His limbs were still shaking. His body was coiled tight, but the sight of her made him forget all that. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said, willing her to look him in the eyes.
She hid her face from him, turning into her pillow, but her words were clear enough. “I told you what happened to me, and it made you puke. I disgust you. Go home.”
Lee cursed his weakness. “No, no. I couldn’t stomach the thought of you being hurt.” He traced a finger over her bare shoulder, touching the blossoms he worshipped.
“You don’t disgust me. Wren, you amaze me.” At his own words, Lee’s shakes settled. “You arrest me. You ignite me.” He leaned down and brushed her cheek with his lips. “You accept me.” He kissed her temple. “You own me.”
At last, she turned her face up from the pillow and watched him with one wide eye. “What?”
He stole the chance to kiss her lips. “You heard me.” Lee swept his thumb over her cheek to wipe away a tear. “You’ve got my heart in your hands. Please don’t let go.”
Her lips trembled, and she trapped them between her teeth. She swallowed her sob and rolled back to look up at him. “There’s more.”
The pain in her eyes felt like a brand against his chest. He sensed the darkness inside him again, the shadow he hadn’t known was there. For the first time in his life, Lee understood he was capable of murder. He’d taken an oath to preserve life, but there was a man out there who deserved to die at his hands. Finding him and choking him to death would be supremely satisfying.
But killing that bastard wouldn’t erase Wren’s fears. Only airing her secrets could do that. So, Lee gathered her in his arms, rolling them both until she rested against him.
“Tell me the rest.”
Wren buried her face into his chest, but the words that followed were all too clear. “He took pictures.”
“Motherfucker,” Lee swore through g
ritted teeth, squeezing her tighter. He was wrong. Killing this man wouldn’t just be satisfying; it was necessary.
“That’s how they caught him, finally,” she said, her voice so soft, his own jagged breath threatened to drown it out. “He was trading them online.”
Lee was grateful his stomach held nothing else. Nothing but a boiling wrath. Before he could respond to this, Wren continued.
“After it started, I used to sneak out at night and hide in the neighbor’s treehouse whenever I could,” she said, sniffling. “I’d wake up in the morning to the sound of the birds in the branches. I’d wish I could be one of them so I could fly away.”
Lee ran a hand down her arm, seeing her hummingbirds with fresh eyes. Was something he loved so much about her really a mark of her pain? “So… all of your birds…?” Agony like a knife blade kept his question in his throat.
Her eyes met his, and they saw his anguish. She reached up a hand and pressed it to his cheek. “They are a number of things. A promise of escape. A reminder of beauty. A shield. A story. They’re whatever I need them to be. And I do need them.”
He gave himself a moment to absorb the truth in her voice before he asked his next question. “How long did he hurt you?” No answer was short enough, but Lee prayed that her nightmare hadn’t stretched on.
“About four months.”
Lee shut his eyes and clenched his jaw. Who was he kidding? Four months was forever to a little kid. Her pain was endless. It stretched on even now.
“What happened when he was caught?” Lee asked through gritted teeth.
Wren pulled back in his arms and looked up at him with an expression he recognized, jaded and world-weary. One, he now realized, she’d probably worn since childhood.
“Laurie fell apart. Worse than before. She knew it was her fault I got hurt,” Wren said, the hollow look in her eyes almost daring him to disappoint her. “Instead of using that guilt to get clean, she gave up. She OD’ed two weeks after I turned seven.”
Lee saw then what he was up against. The person in Wren’s life who was supposed to love her most had failed her. He’d known this already in a vague way, but he’d never dreamed the extent to which she’d been betrayed. Her mother had let her get hurt, but worse than that, the woman had given up on them both. No wonder Wren didn’t trust him. No wonder she didn’t believe in love.
Could that ever change?
Knowing what he wanted, Lee pressed his lips to her forehead and kissed her three times. Whatever it took, he wanted to be the one. He’d have to be patient. They had ground to make up. The first time he had kissed her, he’d belonged to someone else, and she’d made it clear that she didn’t trust him.
But then, she’d let him in. She’d let her guard down and given herself to him. She’d let him into her inner circle by inviting him to her grandmother’s. And she’d trusted him with this — the darkest secret of her heart. If they could come this far, maybe there was hope that she could love him back.
She does love me.
He’d seen it in her eyes at dinner. And he’d felt it long before that. Why else would this be so hard for her? She was afraid he’d hurt her. She’d always been afraid of that, despite his promises.
His course was clear. Do nothing to hurt Wren. This, he knew, would be as easy as breathing. It was so easy he couldn’t keep it to himself.
“I will never hurt you.”
Wren gave a bitter sort of laugh. “Don’t be silly,” she said, the world-weary look still in her eyes. “Of course you will.”
She was baiting him, like she always did. But this time, Lee understood what was behind it, so he just smiled.
“All I’m asking for is time to prove myself.”
Her eyes softened, but they still held defeat. “You might have second thoughts before then.”
Lee shook his head. “No way. I know what I want.”
Her eyes welled again, and Lee thought his heart would tear out of his chest at the sight.
“You deserve better than me,” she whispered.
At her words, he felt his jaw and fists clench. “I want to kill him.”
“What?” Wren asked, frowning up at him.
“The man who did this to you. What’s his name? Where is he now?”
Surprise flickered over her face, but she held the frown, her lip curling in disgust. “His name was Darryl Turner. He was sentenced to eighteen years in federal prison,” she said evenly. “Six years into his sentence, he was found beaten to death in the showers.”
Lee swallowed this information. “I can’t say I’m sorry to hear that.”
Her eyes were guarded, but Lee thought he saw appreciation. “By then, I was fourteen, and I remember wishing I had my license so I could drive to Beaumont to thank the inmates who’d killed him. Mamaw and Papaw wouldn’t take me.”
Lee tried to picture her at fourteen. It was easy to imagine her tiny force, ready to walk into a federal prison as if she owned the place. “What were you like as a teenager?”
This earned him a chuckle and an eye roll. “Total Goth. Black lipstick. Black eye makeup. The whole nine yards. I lived for Evanescence and Mandragora Scream. I was pissed at the world, so I was pretty damn scary.”
Lee ran a hand up and down her back.
“At fourteen, I was pissed at the world, too, but I wasn’t allowed to show it — or I was too chicken-shit to show it,” Lee told her, wanting her to hear the admiration he felt. “You would have worn on the outside what I felt on the inside. If I’d have known you at fourteen, I wouldn’t have been able to stay away then, either.”
With warmth in her eyes, Wren reached up and touched his cheek again. He was supposed to be comforting her, but her gesture healed something in him. He hoped to God he did the same for her. Lee turned into her touch and kissed the palm of her hand.
Her mouth twitched then with a mischievous smile. “Of course, when you were fourteen, I was eight. I was still playing with Furbies.”
Lee laughed. “Fair enough.”
Her smile grew, and she arched a brow. “And when I was fourteen, you were twenty. Following me around would have been highly inappropriate.”
Lee rolled his eyes now. “Okay, rub it in.” But he rallied. “What about when you were twenty? What were you like then? Where were you?”
“I’d upgraded to punk by then,” she said with a laugh. “At twenty I had the half-hawk thing going.” She ran her hand over the left side of her head. “I had the long bang that I dyed a variety of candy colors.”
“Candy colors?” Lee asked, grinning at the delicious thought. “I like that.”
“Well, I was at UL in art school, so, you know,” she said with a shrug.
“Did you have any tattoos back then?” he asked, hungry for every moment of her history. He was jealous of every minute she’d lived before he met her. If he lived to be ninety, it wouldn’t be enough time to know Wren Blanchard.
“I got my first tattoo at twenty.” She nodded proudly. “And I dropped out of UL at the end of that year.”
Lee was about to ask why when he caught himself. She’d used the difference in their educations as a wedge before. He wasn’t about to feed that insecurity.
“What did you do then?”
Her smile grew. “I started apprenticing with Rocky because I wanted to be a tattooist.”
“Apprenticing? Like… you didn’t get paid?”
Pride lit her smile. “Yeah, I waited tables at Agave and apprenticed for three years.”
“Wow, I’m impressed,” he said honestly.
Wren shrugged, ducking her chin. “It’s nothing compared to going to medical school.”
Lee shook his head. “I didn’t put myself through med school. I didn’t have to hold a job while I was learning my profession,” he said with humility. “I had Thomas Hawthorne for that.”
She searched his face. “Is that where you were when I was twenty?”
Her question sent a thrill down his chest. Her body had relaxe
d against his as they’d talked. Her tears had dried, and she seemed unburdened. Lee let go a sigh of relief and nestled them down deeper into her pillows, pulling her quilt over them.
At this, Wren reached back and turned off the light. She rolled back into him and hitched her left leg over his hip.
Lee bit back the moan this triggered and focused on answering her question. “When you were twenty, with half your head shaved and candy colors in your hair,” he said, running his fingers through her untamed waves, “I was in my fourth year of medical school, which is actually the best and easiest year.”
“Why’s that?” she asked in the darkness.
“Third year is the killer. That’s when your brain is about to explode from everything you’re supposed to be learning, and you’re working eighty-hour weeks for the first time and trying to impress everyone in the world so they’ll recommend you for a residency.” He paused to find her face in the dark with his lips. He tasted the softness of her cheeks and kissed the flutter of her eyelashes. “Fourth year is about applying for residencies, but you get to travel and have a social life again. It’s like an oasis.”
Lee felt her fingertip meet his chest, and she began to trace an invisible design on his skin. The sensation made him inhale sharply and close his eyes.
“Were you single then?”
“Y-yes. I mean, I went on dates, but I wasn’t with anyone. Too much going on.”
Her finger circled his left nipple, just under her tattoo, and adorned it with imaginary curlicues.
“That feels amazing, by the way.”
“Does it? I had no idea.”
He could hear the smile in her voice, and he took it as an invitation to let his fingers make their own journey. At her shoulder, he found the ruffles of her sleeveless nightgown and followed them down over the curve of her breast. The tremors in her words served as his reward.
“A-and it’s easier to date someone now?”
“It will be in about a week,” he said, feeling the contour of her waist through the impossibly thin gown.
“What happens then?” Wren sounded almost breathless, and Lee needed to rein them both in.
He’d told her that sleeping in bed next to her was all he needed, and that was the truth. Of course, he wanted more, and perhaps she did too, but his desire could wait for another day.
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