Page 18 of Wren's Winter

The bartender glanced between me and Adrian, a smirk on her face. “I like this one.”

“No one asked you, Jordan.” Adrian scowled, shaking his head good-naturedly.

The bartender laughed at him, turning her back to the register.

I lean forward, knowing that I have the bartender’s approval. “Hey, do you like cookies?”

Jordan turned back to face me. “Sure, who doesn’t?”

“Don’t...” Adrian started, but I already had the two different bags of cookies out of my purse. “How did you fit them in there?”

I shot a warning glare at Adrian. “A girl’s purse is full of mysteries.” Turning back to Jordan, I set one cookie from each package on a napkin. “Taste these and tell us which one is better.”

“You don’t have to.” Adrian made a move to take the cookies away, and Jordan batted his hand.

“Get off my cookies, you fiend.” She picked up the first one, taking a nibble on the edge, then tilted her head to the side and swallowed. “A little crumbly, but the chocolate is smooth and thick.”

Picking up the other cookie, she took a bigger bite. “Now, this one has a denser cookie, but the chocolate is a little too thin.” She popped the rest of the cookie in her mouth, then added the other.

I leaned in closer. “Well, which one is better?”

Taking her time chewing, she cocked her head to the side. By the time she swallowed, we leaned forward, our eyes on her. In my peripheral vision, I saw Adrian motioning to himself and mouthing to Jordan.

“No cheating!” I scowled at him.

Putting his hands up in mock surrender, he adopted an innocent expression. “I wasn’t cheating. I was only reminding her who brought her a can of gas a few years ago when she ran out on the side of the road.”

My stool swiveling to the right, I poked a finger into his arm. “No. None of that. This is a clear cookie-tasting competition, and if you say another word, you’ll forfeit to me. Remember, duel’s at dawn.”

With wide eyes on the other side of the bar, Jordan covered her mouth to hide her smile. “Like I said, I like this one.”

“Pick your damn cookie, Jordan,” he grumbled.

Jordan pondered the choices, asking for two more of each before she could make her final choice, finally landing on his cookie. I admitted defeat with as much class as I could muster, acknowledging that he had the superior taste in cookies. The smile he gave me made my ribs too tight, and I had to glance away.

We grabbed our drinks off the faded bar top and turned away. “Come on.” With his free hand, Adrian touched the small of my back. Leading me away from the bar and to a small round table in the corner. A heater sat a few feet away, warm air blowing toward us. Adrian set his beer down on the table and grabbed the back of the peeling pleather chair to pull it out for me.

“I can pull out my own chair, you know,” I remarked as I sat down.

“But why should you?” He sat across from me, taking a long drink. His eyes on me as I tried to come up with an answer.

It wasn’t as if I had never had my chair pulled out or doors opened for me. What I wasn’t used to was his effortless way of it. I didn’t get the sense this was because he wanted something from me or was trying to impress me. It was his natural inclination.

To admit how foreign the act was to me felt too raw. I had already told him about Buck. How much more pathetic was I willing myself to look in his eyes?

He must have sensed my warring emotions because he started asking me questions about myself. My hometown, if I went to college, my friends. I gave him the basics, telling him about friends the most. Beautiful and a little mean, Summer, who had befriended me as a new girl in a small town. Her cousin, Autumn, who was the opposite in every way, blissfully naive and a bleeding heart who would go through the trash at parties to pull out the glass and plastic for recycling. Devin, the artist who was always lost in her own world.

I would have expected him to interrupt me, to have his eyes to glaze over as I talked. But, instead, he leaned forward, watching me. Realizing I had been babbling for far too long, I changed the subject. “I liked Marta. She reminded me of Autumn’s mom. Growing up, she was like a second mom to me.”

Adrian’s eyes softened. “She’s great. She and my Gran were friends for a long time. I spent a bit of time at her house with my grandparents.”

“Were you raised by them, then?”

He blinked a few times at the question. “No—well, kind of. If you want to get technical, my parents raised me. That was my official address and all, but I spent more time at my grandparents’ than at home.” He paused, his words careful. “I was a surprise for my parents. They weren’t planning on having kids in the first place and were in their forties when I came around.”

A pang hurt my chest at what was underneath his words. A long silent moment passed, as if he were considering my question. “But my grandparents were always there. So, physically and financially, yeah, I had parents. But it’s my grandparents I was closest to.”

“Are they still around?”

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