Page 47 of This Wild Heart

“Sowhy not tell the truth? If I could make something like that, I’d tell everyone I’d ever met in my life.”

For some reason, I couldn’t look this woman in the eye, choosing instead to busy myself with the frosting, scraping the sides of the bowl with a small spatula to ensure it was the right consistency.

Anya waited quietly, probably because she had the advantage of being right. My movements got jerkier because this dark kitchen, with the smell of cinnamon rolls surrounding us, reminded me of home so deeply that I could feel it like an ache in my bones. It was something about that ache that loosened my tongue.

“Sheila, my stepmom, is amazing in the kitchen. Loves cooking and baking. Feeding people is … well, it’s her love language, I guess.” I raised the spatula to check the consistency. A little too runny. I reached into the cabinet in front of me to grab some powdered sugar. Once I’d added some to the bowl, I began stirring again. “My sisters can’t bake for shit either. Probably because they’re not very patient. But I was just young enough when my dad married Sheila that I followed her around everywhere. Watched her in the kitchen all the time. Cinnamon rolls were the first thing she taught me how to make, and every time I do, I think about all those years sitting and watching her from a stool by the counter. She felt like … like such a fucking gift after my mom died.”

My throat closed up after that, and I knew if I tried to speak, the only sounds that would escape would be unintelligible. Beneath my ribs, my heart hammered wildly, and I risked a glance at Anya. She stared at the cinnamon rolls, and I was so fucking grateful for that.

“That’s how I felt about Isabel too,” she said quietly. “For me, it was watching her at my dad’s gym. She was fierce. The first time I met her, I thought she was Wonder Woman.” Her eyes met mine. “She wasn’t anything like my mom.” Anya paused. “Not that I remember her much.”

“I don’t either,” I admitted in a rough voice. “Remember mine.”

Anya turned toward me, her arms dropping by her side. The image on her T-shirt came into focus, and my brow furrowed instantly. A great, gaping chasm opened up under my stomach, where it dropped down into my feet.

Boom.

She noticed. “What?” Anya glanced down at her shirt. “What is it?”

The design was clearly vintage, the T-shirt well-worn and loved. “Where’d you get that?”

“Oh. One of my uncles on my dad’s side loves Bob Marley. He found this concert tee in a shop somewhere, and I stole it out of his closet before I moved away to college.” Her eyes searched mine. “Why?”

What the hell was it about this kitchen? Maybe it was because she’d surprised me, and there was no opportunity to fortify my own defenses. Perhaps it was yesterday and the layers of intimacy we’d added to this charade. Maybe it was the fucking cinnamon rolls, and I was already wide open for a sneak attack.

No matter what it was, what caused it, or why I let myself answer, I just didn’t have the energy to lie to her about this.

“When I was little, my favorite song was ‘Three Little Birds.’ You know the one,Don’t worry about a thing?” Anya nodded, watching me carefully. It felt like someone had a steel fist pressing down on my throat. “After my mom died, I had a hard time sleeping. I’d just lay there and … I don’t know, be scared, I guess. Scared about everything. Worried about everything.”

“I had that too,” she whispered.

Her honesty kept me talking, but I kept my eyes focused on the food.

“My dad knew how much I loved that song.” I used a fork to pull the first of the cinnamon rolls out of the pan, wincing when the sides were still incredibly hot. The second came out, then the third. I didn’t speak again until the last of the rolls were out. I picked up the bowl of frosting and slowly drizzled it over each one until they were coated. They were too hot, but I didn’t really feel like waiting. “One night, I was inconsolable. I don’t even know why I was crying that hard, but I couldn’t stop.” I licked the edge of my thumb and set the bowl in the sink. “He started singing that song. Slower, you know. Like it was a lullaby. It worked. I can’t listen to it anymore, though. It makes me feel like someone’s cutting my heart out.”

“The tattoo,” she whispered.

I tapped two fingers to the side of my ribs and nodded. “The tattoo.”

“I used to make my dad measure things in my room,” she said with a hint of a smile. She hadn’t teared up, and she wasn’t going to make a big fuss about what I’d just told her. I breathed a little easier, finishing the process of frosting the cinnamon rolls while she spoke. “Make sure the canopy over my bed was exactly centered. Or I had to have precisely the right number of stuffed animals.” She shrugged one shoulder. “If I didn’t, I was certain that a catastrophe awaited.”

Wordlessly, I pulled down two plates and served up a cinnamon roll for her, then one for myself. I handed her the first plate, then got her a fork.

It had been so long since I’d done anything like this—sharing the sad parts of myself with someone. My siblings were so busy building families and living their own lives that it always felt like unloading a great, giant weight that they weren’t responsible for carrying.

It didn’t feel like that with her.

I thought about what she’d said in the car when we drove home from her parents. Sharing naked truths, and how difficult it was. That in doing it together, it made us both feel just a little bit less exposed.

She smiled at me in the dark, and we ate our cinnamon rolls without saying anything else, but the contented hum she made at the first bite made me feel like I’d won some invisible battle, even if it was a battle against myself.

“Parker Wilder, don’t you run away from me.”

The guys in the weight room laughed because I was doing exactly that, but the scary PR lady caught me before I could disappear into the shower room.

“Oh, I wasn’t running, Milicent. I promise I was going to say hello before I left.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I’ve been texting you all morning. You were supposed to come into my office first thing.”

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