He’d lost the ability to connect with people because he’d been too busy fixing them. And maybe he liked wounded people because when he was making someone better, if he was focused on their wounds, he didn’t need to deal with his own. Yet, on another level, he’d made friends in H-Town. In particular he’d connected with Hayes and Thom. With them, there was easy banter, male shorthand, grounded conversations. Normality. But Wren was chaos, music, movement. She was unpredictable and vivid and so very alive. A million emotions bubbled beneath her skin, a hundred thoughts, most unexpressed, skittered through her eyes. She was his opposite, impulsive instead of methodical, passionate instead of careful, unfiltered about everything but her deeply guarded emotions. She challenged him to feel…
And God, that fucking terrified him. Because if he lost control, he’d fall apart.
The rational part of his brain thought Alex’s arrival might be a blessing in disguise, a not very welcome but necessary disruption. The guy had interrupted the momentum he’d been building with Wren, and that might not be a bad thing. But the rest of him was hornet-mad. Jesus, this was hard to admit, he’d never felt this threatened and yeah, red-hot jealous.
Some fucker had strolled back into her life—he’d picked up on their familiarity in two seconds—and upended it. The urge to find him—H-Town wasn’t that big—and beat the shit out of him was strong. Dane was also majorly pissed because she looked like she’d had the stuffing knocked out of her—young and oh-so-lost—and nobody was allowed to make Wren feel like shit.
He’d sensed a vibe between them, something old and deep. Something he couldn’t compete with. Not that he should be trying to compete…
Shit.
Dane looked around, taking in the shadows and the dim streetlights, the quarter moon winking in the clear sky. The night air was damp and warm, the sounds of the indefatigable band drifting from the park. Beside him, Wren limped slightly, pretending she was fine, and he pretended not to see it. Theirhands brushed once, then didn’t again. The urge to kiss her burned through him, and he pushed the fire back. She’d had an emotional evening—she didn’t need him making a move on her.
He opened his mouth to ask her what happened, then ground his teeth together to keep the question from leaving his mouth. He was fighting his attraction—it had morphed from being purely physical to slightly emotional—and he knew he needed to stay detached, needed distance. Needed to keep it light. And asking her to explain what had propelled her to dance like a sexy, elegant dervish tonight wasnotkeeping it light.
They stopped in front of Luna’s house, Wren rocking on her heels, her arms folded, and her head drooping. He was about to walk her to the door when she spoke, her soft voice breaking their silence. “Alex was—is—my best friend and my creative and dance partner.”
Did he really want to hear this? Yes.
But also, no.
“Last year, we had a thing…” How big a thing? A sex thing or a not-sex thing? What the fuck was athing?
He thought about her dancing—about how angry she’d looked, how beautiful and raw and unguarded her movements were. He’d never seen her that stripped of control before. Never seen so much emotion on her face… She’d danced like she was trying to survive herself.
And it was all because of another man. The jealousy he was trying to bank swept through him, as hot as the winds feeding an out-of-control wildfire. That another man could raise such hot, wild emotions in her was a dagger through his heart, a kick to his kidneys.
He ran a hand over his jaw, forcing himself to look away. Then he shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans, his eyes on her partly hidden face.
“I thought we had something. He didn’t, and he sort of broke my heart.” Wren rubbed the back of her neck. “Tonight, he told me he made a mistake, that he wants me back, and that he wants us to try again.”
Her words hit like the fist he wanted to slam into Alex’s nose.He wanted her back.Dane felt like he did when he was under immense pressure in a disaster zone, when the earth was trembling with massive aftershocks, and he had a patient on the table. His mind sharpened, and his hand tightened at his sides. His training kicked in, and he pushed down his flare of fury. Anger wouldn’t help the situation, nor would a verbal explosion. He needed to think and process this new information.
Alex. The guy she danced with, spent years with, had a thing—whatever the hell that was—with. The guy who already rejected her once. Was she considering himagain?
Judging by her reaction, she was giving the idea some serious thought.
What the actual fuck?
He clenched his jaw, and his molars ground against each other. His temperature gauge was revving in the red, and he could feel his pulse pounding in his eyeballs. He loathed feeling like this. Despised caring this much.
He needed to separate his thoughts from how much he wanted her; he needed to be the detached surgeon, calm and composed. He didn’t know if he could do it.
“And what do you want?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, honesty bleeding into her voice. “You make me feel like I have a livewire inside me, like I am at the center of a firework display.”
It took everything in him to ask. “And how does Alex make you feel?”
She shrugged. “Known. Seen. He knows my history, my work, my rhythms,me.”
He’d lost her before he even had her. The thought made him feel helpless, like a patient had died on him without him knowing why.
I don’t want her to go to him.
And he was shocked that he was prepared to fight for the chance of her. This wasn’t him; he didn’t compete. Not for a woman, anyhow.He wanted to lie to himself, but couldn’t. Wren wasn’t just another lay, a summer distraction. She… Fuck, shemattered.
“We’re just getting to know each other, and we have that chemistry you mentioned, Wren. It’s rare, not something you trip over every day.” Her shrug annoyed him. “You can’t just pretend it doesn’t exist,” he told her, his voice sharpening.
