Page 25 of Goose's Wren

Goose is here.He’s in the same house.He’s seen me.Not just with his eyes, but really seeing me.

Not as Sparrow’s little sister.Not as the kid who scribbled in the margins of her notebook and never said what she felt out loud.

But me.The woman.The survivor.

And I can’t stop the way my body responds just thinking about him.

The way his voice sounded in the dark.Deep and low, like he was finally speaking from a place he’d kept locked away.

The way his shoulders moved beneath that tight black tee he wears when he’s relaxing, how his jaw flexed when he looked at me tonight with something I couldn’t quite name.Want, maybe.Or maybe something deeper.

God, I want his hands on me.

The thought alone sends a shiver through me.Heat blooms low in my belly, spreading like wildfire.It’s not just lust.It’s everything.

All those years of wanting him from a distance.Of watching him smile at Sparrow with my words in his hand.

Of wishing I had the courage to step into the light and say, "It was always me.I wrote those.I loved you first."

I move to the bed, sitting on the edge, and run my hand over the blanket he gave me the first night I stayed here.It still smells faintly like him.Of clean soap, leather, and motor oil.

I want more.Not just his protection.Not just his pity.

I want his hands on my skin.His mouth on mine.His body pressing me into the mattress while I finally, finally, stop pretending I don’t burn for him every time he walks into the room.

I press my knees together, exhaling a shaky breath as I try to get ahold of myself.

Just because he now knows those words were mine, doesn’t mean he wants anything more from me.

Chapter 7

Wren

It’s been two weekssince that night on the porch.Since I finally let go of the weight I’d carried for so long, I dropped it in his lap with a single sentence.

Something shifted after that.Not in a loud, dramatic way.Just a subtle tilt in the air between us.A soft unraveling of years we’d spent pretending the other didn’t exist beyond polite nods and buried memories.

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