* * *
The ambulance lights painted the stage, the pavilion, and the park in red and blue, making the woods behind the meadow look more sinister than usual.
Then it was gone—its sirens fading into the night. There was just air now. And silence.
Wren looked at Dane, who still stood where he’d been kneeling, hands on his hips, head bowed. She placed her hand on his wrist and frowned. His pulse was still hammering even though the crisis was over, as if he didn’t seem to know how to power down.
Then he exhaled hard and slowly. Counted it out.
One. Two. Three.
She knew he’d seen and dealt with much worse than Tad’s injury, so why was he as shellshocked as if he’d performed life-saving surgery on the grass of Blackweather Green? She tipped her head, thinking fast. He always said he was in H-Town for a break, and she easily understood why he felt like he needed to step away from his high-pressure job. Hell, she’d needed a break from her career and hers didn’t involve injured people, operations, and the pressure of saving lives.
But she hadn’t probed any deeper, hadn’t looked beyond the obvious. Judging by Dane’s white face and the fine tremors passing through his body—leftover adrenaline—there was more to him being here than needing a vacation. It was so obvious that he was brilliant at his job, so calm, so competent, and she knew this was what he was put on earth to do. But he’d walked away from his work to hang out in H-Town.
Why hadn’t she asked more questions, delved deeper, gotten to know him better? Had she been trying to keep some emotional distance to dilute the hurt when they finally, inevitably parted, or was she simply too self-involved? Either way, she felt ashamed.
After collecting a bottle of water from her gym bag, she offered it to him. He took it, twisted the cap, and drank.
“You were … very impressive back there,” she murmured.
He shrugged. “Just muscle memory.”
His words came out too flat, and she frowned. Why did he sound robotic?
“That’s not simple muscle memory, Dane. You were calm when everyone else was losing it. You knew exactly what to do.”
“It was, thank God, a simple situation.” He looked down at his hands—still smeared faintly with Tad’s blood, and just visible beneath it, the white lines of an old scar on two knuckles. “And knowing what to do isn’t the same as being okay with doing it.”
She frowned, stepping closer. “What does that mean?”
He tried to smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “It means sometimes you fake steady until the shaking stops.”
He grimaced, as if he’d let slip a truth before he could reel it back. What was going on here?
“You probably saved Tad’s life, Dane.”
Dane released a mocking half-laugh. “Please, it wasn’t even close. I just provided emergency treatment. Kept him stable. Didn’t panic.” He stared past her at the space where the ambulance had been. “I didn’t know if I could do this anymore.” He released a short, humorless laugh. “Apparently, I can. So why aren’t I happy?”
So much pain. Wren didn’t try to fill the silence, but she did reach out and touch his arm. He stepped back. Instead of allowing him the space, she closed the distance between them again, a silent demand for him to let her in.
She watched as his jaw tightened and his fingers twitched. He jammed his bunched fists into the front pockets of his jeans, and she knew he was trying to shove his rollicking emotions behind his layer of stoicism, but she sensed his armor-like calm was in danger of cracking.
She reached up and lightly touched his jaw. “So, your calm is a mask, Dane?”
He shut his eyes as though fighting some invisible force.
“Right now, to me, you feel like a raging river trying not to burst its banks,” Wren softly said, her hand lightly brushing his sleeve, keeping her voice warm but insistent. “You said that Tad’s injury was a simple situation, but you are not acting like it was. Why?”
They’d talked about his work before, but now judging by the shock in his eyes, she saw his responses for what they had been—edited stories, the full horror kept from her, and the impact it had on him hidden.
Wren knew that something had happened to him. That something had changed him. Guilt sliced and diced. Why hadn’t she pushed? Why had she been so content to take the snippets he gave her and think it was enough? Her stomach knotted and twisted, the way it always did before a performance. Only now, the risk wasn’t success or failure on a stage—it was a battle to know him, to know his heart.
Because this—this moment—felt like a watershed. She could feel it in the air, in the way the world narrowed, in the tension between them.
He could let her in, or he could keep himself locked away forever. Wren knew that if he chose to trust her, then everything between them would change. If he opened up, they couldn’t pretend they were simply having fun together, nor were they simply passing time. If he talked, they’d start the process of building something real, something stable and steady, something that would help them survive whatever life threw at them in the future.
But if he retreated, if he locked that part of himself away again, then this—whatever they were—would remain surface deep. She’d never felt this way with Alex, her heart pounding, her mouth dry, caught between fear and love. Alex, she now knew, was an easy option. Maybe, subconsciously, she hadn’t ended things with him for a reason. Because, as long as she kept Alex in the picture, she had the perfect excuse—if Alex was still a factor, then she couldn’t get too close to Dane.
