Page 158 of Wild Then Wed
A beat.
Then Wren furrows her brows. She looks…sad. “You don’t talk about them.”
“No.”
She doesn’t say she understands. She doesn’t offer some half-baked comfort about everything happening for a reason. It’s quiet after that. Just the crunch of the tires and Hank snoring somewhere in the back.
Then she asks, gently, “What was her name? Your wife?”
I swallow. “Julia.”
Wren nods. I can feel her looking at me still through my peripheral, even though I haven’t glanced her way.
“I think people forget that grief doesn’t come with some sort of finish line or something,” she says quietly. “They think it’s this thing you survive, like a storm. Like once it’s passed, you’re supposed to stand back up and start mowing the lawn or answering emails or dating again. But it’s not like that. It’s more like…” She pauses, pursing her lips in thought. “It’s more like learning to live with a missing limb. You find ways to compensate, but you never stop reaching for something that isn’t there.”
She turns back toward the window and shrugs, her reflection faint in the glass. “I don’t think that makes you broken. I think it means you loved someone well. And yeah, maybe it wrecked you, but it also taught you what love is supposed to feel like. Most people don’t get that far.”
I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to kiss her more than I do right now.
Which is saying something, considering I’ve spent most nights since our wedding re-living that kiss like it was the only good dream I’ve ever had. Her fingers light on my shoulder and that goddamn slit in her dress—white satin parting at her thigh like it was designed to ruin me. My hand on her waist as weswayed on the balcony. The feel of her mouth opening against mine.
I haven’t stopped thinking about that kiss. Or wanting another.
And now—with her curled up beside me like this, her voice low and her words sharp in that way that soft things sometimes are—it’s not just want. It’s a need. I shift slightly in my seat, the center of my jeans tightening in a way that makes me mentally chantshit shit shitand try to think about literally anything else. Taxes. Horse vaccinations. The last time Hank puked in the truck bed.
Before I can get too deep into damage control, she speaks again.
“What was she like?” Wren asks.
I blink, glancing sideways. “Julia?”
She nods while looking at me, tucking one leg up beneath her and resting her cheek on her knee. Her hair slips forward, catching the dim winter light that spills across the car. She looks…thoughtful. Not small, not fragile. Just like she’s letting her guard down in a way most people don’t get to see her do.
“Tell me about her,” she says.
And fuck if that doesn’t knock the wind right out of me. No one ever asks me to do that. They ask when she died. They ask if I’ve moved on. They ask if I still have her things in the house.
But not about this. Not aboutwhoshe was.
I swallow, the steering wheel cold beneath my fingers despite the heat radiating from it. I glance at Wren again, and she doesn’t move.
She waits.
I blow out a breath, slow and unsteady. Watch it fog the windshield for a second before the defroster wipes it away.
“Trying to describe Julia…” I shake my head, my voice catching just a little. “It’s like trying to explain the sun tosomeone who’s never felt it on their skin. You can say it’s warm, or bright, or life-giving—but none of that really means anything until you’ve stood in it.”
Wren doesn’t say anything, just shifts her head slightly on her knee, her eyes still fixed on me. Listening like it matters. Like Julia matters. LikeIdo.
“She was…big,” I say. “Her personality, I mean. Loud and bold and full of life in a way that just made everyone else around her feel brighter, too. You’d meet her and immediately feel like you’d known her forever. People were drawn to her. Not because she was trying to impress anyone—she didn’t give a shit about that—but because she made you feel like the most interesting person in the room. Even if you weren’t.”
My throat’s tight again, but I keep going.
“She had this laugh,” I say, smiling despite myself. “Loud as hell. You could always tell where Julia was in a crowd because of that damn laugh. It carried. Made everything feel lighter. Better.”
Wren’s watching me like she’s memorizing every word, like she’s collecting pieces of a woman she never got to meet.
“She carried Skittles everywhere—always had a packet in her bag—but she only ate the yellow ones. The rest she’d hand out to whoever was around her. And I don’t know, I guess that kind ofwasher. Always sharing. Always giving. She’d give you the last piece of gum or the shirt off her back, no hesitation. She just…loved people like that.”
