“No, it is me.” Tears pooled in her eyes and desperation rolled off her. “We can’t do this anymore. I can’t do this anymore.”
“Wren, please,” I tried again, reaching out. She let me hold her for just a moment, her eyes squeezing tight before she pulled back again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it—any of it. You scared me, and I was angry but not at you.”
She shook her head, tears marring her cheeks now, blending with the river water until I couldn’t tell the two apart. I was only inches from her, yet it might as well have been miles. She was pulling further away by the second, and nothing I could do would stop her.
Silence slipped over us like a cloak, encasing us for what felt like hours, but it hurt even worse when she broke it.
“I have to go.”
Wren turned, and panic knocked against my chest with enough force to drive me forward after her.
“So, what? We get in our first fight and you’re already done? You won’t even give me a chance to explain?”
“Explain what?” she screamed, turning to face me again. “I’m leaving. You’re staying. I’m still going through a divorce. You’re still mourning the death of your cousin. I ruined the only relationship I’ve ever had and you’ve never even had one to begin with. We’re both walking disasters, Anderson. How are we supposed to do this?”
I opened my mouth, ready to tell her not just how but why and where and when, but the words were lodged in my throat. It was true. I was still mourning Dani. But more than that, Wren was mourning.
And hadn’t Tucker reminded me of that last night?
I’d been so angry, ready to knock the smug smile off his face as he told me I was Wren’s rebound, that there was no way I’d get to keep her, but was I only mad because I knew he was right?
I’d known since the moment Wren opened up to me about Keith that she was still healing, and I’d thought I could help her. Now here she was standing in front of me telling me I was only making it worse.
How could I convince her I could heal her when the last man to touch her was responsible for the scars?
“I’m sorry,” I croaked out.
I tried to tell her more with my eyes, to let her see me, but she just blinked, freeing two more tears to race down her cheeks.
“Me too,” she whispered, and then she turned, and I watched the only woman to ever make me feel alive walk away, taking the last of my breath with her.
ASSUAGE
as·suage
Verb
To lessen the intensity of (something that pains or distresses) : ease
My teeth chattered as I stumbled my way back to my cabin, feet bare and aching on the unpaved road, arms wrapped around my shivering frame trying to find any kind of warmth. The sun had disappeared behind clouds now, making the long walk home a shaded one. By the time I made it inside the cabin, it was all I could do to strip off my freezing cold bathing suit and step into the shower. And as soon as the water turned hot, I hissed, the sting of it against my skin jolting me back to reality.
I was numb, and yet I felt everything.
“Damn it,” I cried out loud, voice bouncing off the shower walls and hitting me with even more force the second time.
My eyes squeezed closed, hands rubbing the goosebumps from my arms as my wet hair fell over my face. I needed to go get my car, I needed to eat something, I needed to calm down, I needed to stop thinking. I was so exhausted, mentally and physically, and I swore I was just one minute away from breaking entirely.
I wrapped myself in a towel and padded straight into the bedroom, pulling on an oversized sweater and leggings and crawling into bed without even brushing my hair. I tucked one arm under my pillow and curled in on myself, wanting nothing but to sleep, to fall away from the world for a while—but my thoughts wouldn’t let me rest.
What had I done?
I was so shocked by all of it. The fall into the river, the terror of not knowing if I’d be able to catch my breath, if I’d surface. The relief when Anderson pulled me into him, the safety I felt there, and then the immediate sadness that followed when he ripped into me.
The man I’d just realized made me the happiest I’d been in years called me out on my biggest fear—that I was selfish. And wasn’t that just proof that it was true?
The longer I’d been there with him, watching as anger and fear danced across his features, the more I’d realized he wasn’t mad about the river. That might have been his excuse to let it free, but the truth was he was scared just like I was.
Because I was leaving, and he was staying, and just like the summer had begun, it would end.
In two weeks, I’d head back to Seattle—back to the boutique, where my team expected me to have a brilliant line designed and ready to be worked on, back to my friends, who would expect me to be the happy go-getter I was before my divorce, and back to the city, where the mountains were only faint ghosts in the distance.
My hand jetted out to where I’d left my phone on my bedside table earlier and I unlocked it quickly, ignoring all the missed texts from earlier and clicking through my favorites to dial Adrian.
“Hey, mountain girl,” he answered, to which I only replied with a pause and a sniff, and then I heard him sigh. “Oh babe, what happened?”
“It’s all ending, Adrian. The summer is almost over, I have to find a place to live, I have to figure everything out and I haven’t done anything. I don’t have a line,” I admitted. “I don’t have anything.”
My hands tightened around the phone and I curled in on myself even more, aching in every way. I’d spent almost three months trying to find myself and I’d come up empty handed.
“Hey, everything’s going to be okay. You can stay with me until you find a place and don’t worry about work. The boutique is just fine, Wren. Everyone still loves you and your work and no one is worried. Plus, the team and I have been working on some designs, too, and if we need them to float us through next year’s summer line we can do that. I think you’re going to love what they’ve come up with.”
I sniffed again, feeling even more like a failure. Adrian and the team had already had to do next year’s spring line all on their own because I’d been too fucked up. Now they would possibly have to float me through another one. Did they even need me anymore, for anything else other than my name? I felt useless, hopeless, completely broken.
“When do you check out of the cabin?”
“Two weeks from today.”
“Okay,” he answered, voice soft and encouraging. “Just come straight here before you go anywhere else. I’ll have wine ready and I’ll help you unload boxes if you want or we can just talk or we can go out. Whatever you need.”
I nodded into my pillow, but another ache rolled through my chest. I wasn’t ready to leave.
“We’re going to get through this. You’re going to get through this. You’re too strong not to.”
I stopped nodding then, silence my only response. I felt a lot of things in that moment—heartbroken, sad, guilty, inadequate, lost, unsure.
There was a long list, but strong wasn’t on it.