Wren looked at Freddie, briefly—some communication in it that he couldn't fully translate, possiblyI have no idea what's happening—and then allowed herself to be led by Maggie, who was asking questions about the craft booths with the focused interest of a woman who was very deliberately not looking back over her shoulder.
Dylan watched them go. He turned to Freddie. "Walk with me," he said.
It was not a question.
They walked north, away from the women, to the quieter end of the street where the morning foot traffic was thinner. Dylan walked at the pace of a man who was deciding where to begin, and Freddie matched it, and for half a minute neither of them said anything.
"My sister," he said.
"Yes," Freddie said.
"She's been through it." Dylan's voice was level. Not threatening. "She moved here to start over. She didn't come tostart over and then land in something that's going to set her back."
"I have feelings for your sister. Big ones." Freddie sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose and searched the deep of his soul to give Wren's brother more words. It was difficult to talk about emotions as a man. It was even more difficult to speak that language with another man.
"I've had feelings for Wren since before she moved to town—since I saw her at the ranch, when she first came to visit you and Maggie. I set up the cart where I did because she was there." He paused. "I want a serious relationship with her. Not a passing thing. Something real." He held Dylan's gaze. "I should have said this sooner. To her. I'm working on that."
The words had come out with a directness that surprised him. He had rehearsed versions of this confession for weeks—for Wren—and here on a quiet corner of the main street, to her brother, they had simply arrived.
Dylan had the expression of a man running a thorough process, checking things off against some internal list. Checking the answers against the questions, the words against the quality of the man saying them. It took long enough that Freddie was aware of the cold at his collar, the wind moving through the bunting above them, the distant sound of Wren's voice carrying down the street on the air.
Dylan clapped him on the back. A single, definitive clap—the kind that had weight behind it.
"Welcome to the family," he said.
Freddie blinked.
Dylan's expression had shifted into something that was almost—not quite—a smile. "She's going to give you hell." He looked back down the street, in the direction they'd come. "Don't make her wait much longer to tell her how you feel."
Freddie followed his gaze.
Wren was visible at the far end of the market layout, pointing at something on her clipboard. Maggie nodded with the focused attention of someone who was genuinely interested and also watching Wren's face in the way that people who loved you watched you when they thought you weren't paying attention. Even at this distance—the rust of her coat, the escaped piece of hair, her hand moving through the cold air as she explained something—she was entirely herself, entirely vivid, entirely the specific and irreplaceable person he had been watching from the wrong side of a pane of glass for too long.
"Tonight," Freddie said. Not to Dylan. Mostly to himself.
"Tonight," Dylan agreed, with the satisfaction of a man who had conducted his interview and received the answers he needed.
