This.
This is what I’ve been searching for.
Chapter 24
Jett
Hey, I’m wrapping up early today. Have you eaten?
Wren
I was going to start dinner in about twenty.
Want some company?
Wren
Got any suggestions?
Me…care if I join you for dinner.
Wren
I’d like that.
TextingWrenhasbecomethe best part of my day. With each vibration of a new text, I feel like the giddy teenage boy who couldn’t get enough of her. We’ve stayed in the flirty and friendly direction in our conversations, but I’ve enjoyed getting to know her again. She still loves Fleetwood Mac, but she’s traded in her tomboy-ish ways for skirts and dresses. Her sass remains the same, butnow she’s unabashedly candid. I’ve smiled more than I have in God knows how long, and I’d like to imagine she’s on the other side of her phone smiling too. Maybe even kicking her feet giddily the way she used to when we were kids.
When I ran into her at the salon the other day, we smiled, flirted, and it felt promising. It’s why I was digging in my phone to ask her to dinner, even though I’m showing up at her house.
But tonight’s different. Tonight is the first time we’ve been alone together since everything came out. Since the letters. Since the baby. Since the truth we both spent ten years not knowing.
So yeah, I’m nervous.
I rap my knuckles against the door a few times before popping it open, even though she told me to just come in.
“Wren?” I call as I step inside. “Don’t throw anything, it’s just me.”
“I don’t throw things,” she shouts from the kitchen.
“I have a scar on my lip that proves otherwise,” I say, shutting the door behind me and adjusting the flowers in my hand.
“It’s not my fault you couldn’t catch a softball.”
I scoff, rolling my eyes. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Whose fault was that?”
Yours,I think to myself, remembering the day she busted my lip open and I should’ve gotten stitches. It was a miserably hot mid-August day. The dog days of summer were in full swing, with temperatures in the one-hundreds and high humidity. We had gone outside at her parents’ farm to toss the softball around so she could work on pitching. We were nearing the end, but she couldn’t take the heat anymore, and without thinking, she stripped out of her tank top and down to her tiny bikini, which had only grown smaller with the changes to her body that summer…mainly her boobs. I was stuck staring—drooling—over the bounce as she pitched and took my eyes off the ball. It was a perfect strike straight to my face. I’m damn lucky she didn’t knock out any teeth.
I walk into the kitchen and take in Wren standing at the stove, hair pulled back in some clip, wearing a big t-shirt that falls off one shoulder and hits mid-thigh, exposing her long, tan legs. My kryptonite.
It smells like home. A life I almost had.
Without thinking, I walk deeper into the kitchen until her back hits my front as I peer over her shoulder. Wren’s busy flipping the steak, and I lean down, pressing a kiss to her cheek as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. She tenses, and I freeze, lips hovering over her cheek. Clearing my throat, I step back, rubbing the back of my neck with the hand not holding flowers.
“I brought you flowers.”
She glances over her shoulder, and a soft smile tugs at her lips as she bites the corner of her mouth. “You shouldn’t have.”
