Page 34 of Wild Then Wed
She rolls her eyes, but I catch the faintest twitch at the corner of her mouth.Almosta smile.
“Fine,” she says, gesturing toward the exit. “Since you’re already holding the damn things. Let’s go.”
I follow her, hiding my own smirk.
Because yeah, she’s stubborn as fuck. Yeah, she’d rather chew on barbed wire than ask for my help. But she hasn’t told me to leave yet.
And that? That feels like progress.
It occurs to me then, as I stand there holding these feed bags between us, that this is the longest conversation I’ve had with a woman in four years that wasn’t my family.
It’s been four years, ten months, and seven days since I lost my wife. Since my world split open. Since I became a man defined by his loss—the young widower, the grieving father-to-be. People look at me and they see what’s missing before they really see me.
But Wren? Wren looks at me like I’m just a guy in her way. Like my tragedy isn’t the most interesting thing about me. There’s something startling about that. Liberating, maybe.
There’s a particular way she holds herself—shoulders squared like she’s bracing for impact, arms folded tight across her ribs like she’s physically keeping her heart contained. I know this posture intimately. I’ve spent years perfecting it myself.
She looks at people with her chin slightly lifted, eyes carefully blank. It’s not arrogance. It’s the look of someone who’s decided it’s safer to be misunderstood than truly seen. I recognize it because I’ve worn that expression in every mirror since Julia died. These are the tells of someone who’s learned to disappear while remaining perfectly visible.
We’re more alike than different, Wren and I. Both of us have built fortresses around ourselves, stone by painful stone. The only difference is the materials we’ve used. Where I chosesilence, she chose sarcasm. Where I disappeared into my grief, she’s made herself unapproachable.
But here’s what no one tells you about fortresses: after a while, you forget which side of the walls you’re supposed to be on. The defenses meant to protect you become the bars that cage you. And one day you wake up realizing you’re not keeping the pain out—you’re just keeping yourself in.
Snow swirls around us as we step into the parking lot, flakes catching in Wren’s hair like tiny, glittering stars. She leads me to a sunshine-yellow VW Bug parked crookedly between the lines, the color so obnoxiously bright it looks like a fucking bumblebee stuck in a snowstorm.
I stop dead. “This…thisis your car?”
She turns, snowflakes catching in her dark lashes. “What’s wrong with my car?”
I shrug, fighting a grin. “Nothing. It’s just…cheery. Like its owner.”
Her glare could freeze hell over. “Right. Because I’m justsocheery.”
“I mean, you said it. Not me.”
Her mouth tightens, but I catch the faintest twitch at the corner. Another almost-smile. “It gets me where I need to go.”
“Yeah? Where’s that? To kindergarten class?”
She exhales sharply through her nose—not quite a laugh, but close. “Fuck off, Sawyer.”
I grin and haul the feed bag toward the trunk. The thing barely fits, wedged awkwardly behind a folded tarp and what looks like a pair of muddy riding boots.
“Thanks,” she mutters, crossing her arms. “For being somewhat of a gentleman.”
“Somewhat?” I press a hand to my chest like she’s wounded me. “I carried fifty pounds of your horse’s breakfast, didn’t dropit, and kept you from biting the dust. I’m basically a knight in shining armor.”
She slams the trunk shut. “Should I swoon now or later?”
“Now’s good.”
She rolls her eyes so hard I’m surprised they don’t stick. “When are you coming back to work with the new horse?” I ask.
“Bright and early tomorrow.”
She lifts a hand against the falling snow, but not before a few flakes catch on her mouth—those lips that shouldn’t fascinate me as much as they do. Full and soft-looking, the kind of lips that make a man think about things he shouldn’t. They’re slick, the pink of them almost too sweet against the sharp edges of her. Like finding a rose growing wild in a briar patch.
A snowflake melts against the curve of her bottom lip, and for one second, I wonder what it would be like if I leaned in and caught it with my own, tasting the winter and whatever strawberry-sweet balm she’s used.
