“Yeah. That’s definitely a big part of it.”
When I don’t elaborate, she asks, “Why’d you stop?”
“I’ll tell you if you tell me why you ran.”
Her hand pulls free of mine, and she pushes it back through her hair then around her throat, and I swear my vision goes red.
“Wren?”
The faraway look in her eyes snaps back to the present, and she frowns at me. A small shake of her head. “He just…showed me what my future would look like if I stayed. And I didn’t look forward to being broken. Like my mom.”
By the genuine fear in her eyes, a lot worse than her mom.
“Did he put his hands on you?”
Her face turns away, and the breath that shudders in her chest makes her upcoming“yes”a bomb in this space between us.
I wait her out, hoping it will get her to open up. Everything inside of me wants to know and screams that I really don’t. Either way, anger is rising in my chest—calm and cold and dangerous.
After a harsh breath, she says, “He made it clear that I’d better be worth how long I made him wait.”
Our gazes meet in a flash before she’s looking across the room.
I bet she saw the anger in my expression, so I take a few seconds to settle it back where it belongs. “You should eat.”
“I’ve got plenty of time to eat.”
“Would it be easier if I fill in some of the details for you?”
Confusion furrows her brows.
I fall back into the bad habit of supplying the details no one else wants to give. “Mom married rich, filled the role expected of her—silent, docile, obedient. She raised you to be the same way so that you would be the perfect bait for some rich asshole to make your daddy a good business deal. So you learned how to stay hidden, avoid attention, be who you had to be when you were in the spotlight. Sound about right?”
She’s trembling, arms wrapping around her elbows. “Sounds too close for comfort.”
“What am I missing?”
Wren sighs. “Just the details. Nothing I want to unpack, specifically.”
A“but”hangs in the air between us. “But?”
Half a shrug has her turning back to me. “I hated when Dad had parties, all those rich, entitled men gathered in one place. I knew the moment they saw me that if I didn’t get away, they’d hurt me.”
She rolls a blueberry against her plate.
“That’s how I felt when Grant showed up at my dressing room. I still put the dress on after that.” Wren shakes her head, disappointment in herself obvious.
“It’s a hard line to walk between what’s expected of you and what’s best for you.” I want to touch her so badly, to wipe away that guilt and self-loathing. But right now is not the best time for that.
Wren slides a blueberry between her lips and crushes it between her molars. She still won’t look at me.
“I was a trauma surgeon for five years. I’ve seen a lot of messed up shit.”
Finally, her gaze jumps back to mine. She’s smart. That small piece of information tells her a lot about me. Which is good. I don’t want to explain a lot of it.
I lick my lips, catching her looking.
“The number of women I had come into the ER, bruised, broken, and scared to say anything bad about their partners. Because when they left, they were going back to those men.” My hands curl into fists, the memory of my rage enough to feed my current anger at Grant Dalton. “One woman came in every month, like clockwork. I couldn’t talk her into pressing charges or into finding a safe place for her to stay.”
