“You aren’t the only one hurting, Wren. I need to heal, and I know with every fiber of my being that this is where I belong. I just hope you realize it as well before it’s too late.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, Robin?”
His shoulders sag. “Nothing,” he lies, the word rolling off his tongue. “Can we get back to the topic at hand?”
“Sure.” I tuck my hands in my back pockets as the doorbell rings. “I’ve got it.”
He can’t look at me, and I know I’ve hurt him. My feet scuff along the new carpet to the front door, where I can just make out Paris’ head through the distorted window.
“Hey.” I open the door to her smiling face as Kayden holds onto her thigh.
“I just wanted to say thanks to Robin.” She looks around me to Silent Springs’ most eligible bachelor.
“Sure, I was just going.”
“You sure?” Paris whips her head back around. “I don’t want to interrupt a sibling moment.”
“It’s not a problem.” Robin stalks into the room, crouching low as Kayden sees him and runs toward my brother.
“I’ll see you two tomorrow.” Hurt tightens my throat as I push out into the stinging cold, the door slamming behind me with Kayden’s squeals. I don’t know how he did it, but in a matter of days, he didn’t just find a place to live, he found a home.
And I’m…I’m jealous.
Robin has this way with life. He looks at life as though it’s just one big adventure, the same way I tried to teach Lark. He goes with the flow every day and takes each moment in stride. Big or small, I tried to teach her to look at each little situation as though it was from another person’s perspective, and allow herself the moment to simmer in that emotion, that feeling of complete chaos.
Then accept it and move on.
All this time, I was giving her the best advice I could while telling her this trip was an adventure, a way to open up and free the soul and find our home—find where we belonged in this world and where the world wanted us.
All this time, I wasn’t once taking my own advice.
Seeing Robin so easily accept something that has become hard for me to accept… Well, it’s like he slapped me in the face with a brick, then kissed it and shoved me out the door to figure it all out on my own.
I know nothing. In fact, the only thing I’m even remotely aware of right now is that my car broke down in the middle ofnowhere, far off the path I planned to take to Maine, and it sits in Arlo’s garage.
Maybe that’s why I pause there, just out front, staring at the closed sign as though it offends me. Maybe it does. Because I’m a creeper, I walk to the side of the building, looking both ways before darting around to a high wooden fence painted in all black.
Not that I didn’t notice the fence before, but I never previously saw it as an obstacle.
Why do I suddenly feel the absolute need to scale that fence? Well, I will never know. Everything else in my life is spinning out of control, and in this minute, my actions are all I can control. I’m feeling reckless in a way that I haven’t felt since I was a teenager.
That moment led to me peeing on a stick in the pharmacy bathroom, and then I fainted, waking to security pounding on the door.
What possesses me to scale that fence, I will never know. But I do.
I wedge my foot between the slats, and I climb.
This is far easier than I thought it would be.There’s nothing but a creek and a field on my right. Behind me is the school and the library, and both are closed this week for the holiday. No one walks by. No one sees me. So I climb. My wild curls reach the top of the fence first.
I scramble to the top and throw a leg over.
But this isn’t the story of some innocent woman who calls to parakeets in her spare time. This is my story, and I’m a little bit of a hot mess.
My jeans get caught in a rogue nail, and the sound of tears fills the air before a cool breeze drifts up my leg.
This would be perfectly fine if I had worn the heavy winter coat Arlo got me my first week here, but I’m not that lucky. No, Iwore something pretty for Kayden’s birthday celebration—a red leather jacket that made me look like I stomp on my enemies.
Now I can feel the air tickling areas that should not feel air tickling them.
