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The room went quiet. Because I knew she wasn’t talking about motorcycles anymore. Neither of us said anything.
She smiled softly. “Show me.”
“No.”
She frowned. “Why?”
“Because you’ll touch everything.”
“I won’t.”
I smiled. “You will.”
“I’m very respectful.”
I looked at her.
She looked offended. “I am.”
“You’re curious.”
“That’s not a crime.”
“It is in my garage.”
She laughed. And before I knew it, I was standing and leading her toward the back of the garage. I stopped in front of the old bike covered with a sheet.
Wren looked at it like I had shown her something important. “What is it?”
“My first bike.”
Her eyes softened. “You kept it?”
I shrugged. “Couldn’t get rid of it.”
“Why?”
I looked at the bike. Because it was the first thing I ever fixed myself. Because it was proof that something broken could still run. Because I understood broken things better than I understood people. Because I couldn't fix my sister and she'd died anyway.
But I didn’t say any of that.
“Because it’s mine.”
She smiled. “You’re terrible at admitting you care about things.”
I looked at her. “You’re terrible at pretending you don’t.”
That shut her up for once. And when she looked away, cheeks slightly pink, I felt something unfamiliar settle in my chest. Something I couldn’t fight. Wren was becoming something I wanted to protect. Someone I was finding it hard to stay away from.
Not because she needed saving. And that was a problem.
Chapter Eight
Wren
The strange thing about Knox was that every time I thought I had him figured out, he proved me wrong. This hulk of a man who responded in monosyllables or almost grumpily looked like he was close to tears or going ballistic on me when he'd found me in the garage with the books that belonged to his sister.
It had been a few days since that event, and I still couldn't get that scene out of my mind. Curiosity was eating away at me. I was dying to know more. To understand what had happened—the shadow that had fallen over his face was dark. With a protective instinct akin to none, I wanted to take it away and pull him into a safety web where it could never haunt him again.
