CHAPTER 36

WREN

We hold hands the entire way back to camp, then past it when we decide to go grab breakfast at the restaurant. We’re both starving after only focusing on our other appetites last night. I think I can’t let go because, just like he said, the thought that we could’ve missed out on this makes me feel a bit unsteady.

Ellis and I share a platter of waffles and split a hearty omelet between us, swapping plates or cutting pieces and forking them onto the other’s. It’s like remembering the steps to an old dance.

“So, I’ve been wondering,” he asks me. He automatically cuts the perfect corner off his waffle and puts it onto my plate. “Did you ever talk to anyone about the letters?”

I offer a melancholy smile and a shrug. “No. It wasn’t like they were romantic or something, but… I don’t know, I guess they felt intimate still?”

“Hinting that you looked like a goblin was pretty racy,” he snorts.

“Ha.” I pour him some fresh coffee from the press at our table. “But again, no. Even if she could sometimes pry a little bit out of me, I was pretty careful with what I talked about with Sage. And yeah, Silas is just downright nosy, so he had no qualms about asking if I had date plans and stuff, but… I don’t know. They always put on a good face about things, but I couldn’t talk to them about much without feeling like I was making them disloyal to you or something,” I say. “Plus, you know Sage. If I’d mentioned a pair of horses potentially caught in a fire, she’d have gone and looked for them herself or something.” I laugh but look back up at him when I notice he doesn’t.

“I’m sorry you felt like you didn’t have people you could talk to,” he says. He drags my hand over and kisses the base of my palm.

I shake my head, not sure if the tears springing up are happy or sad. “What about you?” I say. “Did you have people you could talk to?”

“I let it slip to Kirby, and that helped. Her cousin was the one who found out about the horses. But as far as the rest of them… my family.” He sighs wearily. “All these years, I just… I just assumed they were closer to you than they were to me.”

It’s my turn to sigh. “In a way, maybe. But mostly, I couldn’t do that to you. You hardly ever got the chance to just be their brother, let alone their friend.”

He continuously massages circles into my hand with his thumb. “I’m trying more with them. To loosen up, worry less. Be their friend instead of managing them and hovering, I guess. Sometimes I feel like the least fun brother.” He chuckles wryly.

“Ehh. You are,” I say, my shoulders jumping in a small shrug. “But you’re the most fun for me.”

“Yeah, well. I provide a different sort of amusement for you,” he says, mouth tilting in a crooked smirk. “They don’t always share things with me like they did with you, and then I find myself not sharing things, too, and it makes me wonder why we don’t all trust one another more. And sometimes I just think I put a damper on their fun.” He adjusts in his seat uncomfortably. “Even the bride at the winery thought I was an old man after taking one look at me.”

“She was on her fourth winery of the day and hammered, Ellis. Your brothers and sister don’t have any less fun with you. And it’s not that they don’t trust you, either. I think they just…” I try to find the words. “You’ve always taken on anything for any of them. For any of us . It can be hard to feel like you deserve that kind of love. It gets hard to share your burdens, especially with the one person who’s always tried to relieve you of them. It happened with me and you, too.” I kiss his big knuckles and touch his empty ring finger. “I bet if you confide in them more, they’ll meet you in the middle,” I say, which is when something occurs to me. “Do they know about your tattoos?” He shakes his head, and a happy sound pops out of me. “Silas is going to lose his shit.” They all will, I’m sure.

We finish breakfast and stroll hand in hand back to our site before we pack up the few things we’d unpacked. I feel on the edge of giggling the whole morning. He sprawls in a wooden chair in the corner of the tent, legs braced wide as he watches me get ready, his gaze heady. I throw on a midlength sundress and strappy, comfortable sandals for the day. When his eyes heat and his jaw starts to tick, I decide to ask him to take everything off again, which ends up costing us an hour and leads me to have to start the process all over.

“Ready?” he asks. This time, after I’ve strapped on my sandals. “Just one more stop.”

“All right. I’m ready.”

The little town of McArthur-Burney is painted green and orange and teeming with music, tourists, and merriment of all sorts. Food trucks and bar carts line the streets, every old brick building covered in Irish regalia and signs that advertise their annual festival. There’s an outdoor stage in a nearby park with a band playing on it and a trio of young girls river dancing.

“This is so random,” I say delightedly to Ellis. “But great. I love it.”

“Is it random?” he asks, suspiciously nonchalant, hands sliding into the pockets of his jeans. When he looks down at his boots, I notice the color flagging his cheeks.

“Oh my god,” I whisper, coming to a stop and staring around me before I look back up at him. “You… the letters. When I talked about traveling?” The warm beach in Santa Cruz. The Italian villa; a replica of one and in California, sure, but as close as I’ve ever been to drinking wine on an Italian villa. And now he’s brought me to an Irish festival full of dancing.

He smiles shyly. “Sorry I couldn’t get you to Europe, Byrd, but even if this didn’t go the way I hoped, I wanted to give you what I could,” he says. “Even if you never put it together, at least I’d have known.”

I curl my hands in his shirt and tug him down into a desperate kiss. Tongue and teeth, short whimpers and low hums, oblivious to the crowd walking around us on the sidewalk. A few people whistle and clap until we break away, softly gasping in the space between us, his forehead pressed into mine.

“This was better. All of it was better,” I eke out. That hope, hope, hope that’s been beating in my chest blares into a symphony of love and joy.

“I have mixed feelings about the pepper burn,” he says, thumbing my cheek. “But of course it was. It’s us.”

The sun starts to fade, and we slip into a bar, aptly called the Burney Stone, overflowing with music. The walls are all brick and fieldstone, with wood-beamed ceilings, a raised stage at the back of the room holding a different band from the one outside, and a sizable dance floor packed with people spinning around, linking arms, skipping and stomping to the beat.

Ellis pulls me out onto it immediately, and I have a fit watching him hop his big body around. We only take breaks to collect water from the bar and catch our breath when we’re both sweaty and disheveled. I catch him staring at me as he crunches down on a piece of ice, and he looks as invigorated as I feel. Bright stare, bright smile, flushed face. Young and alive and real. His bottom lip glistens with melted ice, and I push up onto my toes and lick it off. He smiles, and I lick at that, too, just as the band takes their bows and filters off the stage.

The lights go dim, and different music starts to play from whatever sound system they’ve got in here. Popular, mainstream hits combined with oldies in modern arrangements. Ellis and I watch as the dancing starts to change. There’s no more skipping. All that quick jouncing rolls into smooth waves.

“One more dance before we head out?” I ask, already beckoning him over my shoulder and walking that way. He comes willingly, more people ebbing onto the floor around us. The temperature lifts until it’s just short of stifling, but the crush of undulating bodies makes me feel braver, like there are too many other people for the spotlight to be on us this way. I hardly recognize any of the crowd members from earlier, faces all a puzzle of shadowed hollows in the dappled lights. The red glow of the room matches the warmth in my veins, feels like it might even be emanating from me as this beat moves through me, too. It’s a slow swat punctuated by a grinding twang, a vibrating thrum in my core that matches the one I feel in his chest when I drag my hands down it. I can’t make out his expression, just see the muscle flex in his jaw when I slide and press myself into him, his hands tightening on my hips and his fingertips digging into my ass. I turn in his grip, ring my arms around the back of his neck. Watch his hands glide down the front of my waist to clutch at my hips again. His chin tucks into my neck, and I know the view down my dress is making him wild, can feel it when I circle and arch against where he’s stiffening.

“Be good, Byrd,” comes his deep timbre in my ear. He presses against me again like he can’t help himself.

I let my head fall farther to the side and catch the ends of his sweat-dampened hair in my fingers. Feel a throaty hum crawl up from my chest when his lips skim back and forth over the curve of my shoulder. I smile at his hiss when I grind back and catch his hard cock in a perfect tug, right between my cheeks.

“You’re killing me, baby,” he groans. God, I’m totally sober and entirely too drunk on this. I can’t believe I’m dry-humping my ex-husband on a dance floor like we’re at junior prom. He’s killing me right back. A low, needy tug starts to pulse between my legs. My heart kicks up when he lets his big palms drift down to the tops of my thighs, galloping when he teases me, and brings them right back up. Down, spread, squeeze again, heat unfurling in the same rhythm. The moment his fingertips finally touch my bare skin, I snap. I spin and bring my mouth to his for one hot, wet kiss. Hook my fingers through his belt loops to keep him close and drag him off the dance floor into the dark hallway.

His lips are back on mine in a second, eating at my sounds. “You’re so goddamn beautiful, Wren,” he says, half growling, half panting before he forgoes air and steals mine in a kiss again. “You sound like you fucking ache, huh? Need my help?” he asks.

“Yeah. Make it better.”

He walks us deeper into the alcove and props me up against the wall. His eyes are black, his hair a mess. He’s glimmering with sweat and deliciously out of sorts. “Take it out, baby, see what you did to me,” he says. He’s impossibly hard and hot in my palm. “Wrap your legs around me—yeah, fuck, I love your thighs.” He pets them up and down before he tucks my underwear aside and buries himself into me in one long, hard thrust. I can’t stop a tight whine of surprise, the breath plucked right from my lungs. “Too much?” he asks. “You okay?”

“Yes,” I sigh. Yes, too much, and I’ve never felt more right. “It’s… good.” Having some part of him embedded in me is so inconveniently essential.

I feel his grin against my neck. “Good. I’ll make it so good for you if you’re quiet. Think you can do that for me?” I nod incoherently and moan when his hips tip up impossibly more, my feet dangling helplessly behind his strong thighs. “Dirty girl, that wasn’t very quiet.”

I plant a kiss into his jaw. The infuriating man lifts me so slowly I feel him hit every nerve. What I’d thought would be fast and rough turns slow and… still rough. But desperate and tender, too. He finds a steady pace, his forehead against my temple and his bruising grip around my thighs. The only sounds are the music filtering in from the other room and my quick puff of breath each time he nudges into me. I let myself feel every part of him I can with every part of me. The bunch and flex of his powerful shoulders and biceps under my hands. Hard thighs and hips beneath mine, keeping me where he needs me while he fucks me into the wall. The mile-wide chest I feel wholly protected by, like anyone could come around this corner and I’d still be safe. My orgasm spills through me, something molten and quick and consuming, and I have to bury my strangled noise against his collarbone. His rhythm stutters.

“Wren, shit, can I—”

“It’s okay, it’s okay. Yes, I want you to.” A fresh wave of heat blooms at the idea of walking around full of him. Him knowing I’m a mess of us both beneath my dress.

That pulls a deep, bitten-off groan from him, and then I feel him coming, everything going taut before he relaxes in degrees, hips still occasionally thrusting even after he starts to soften inside me.

He pulls himself out, agonizingly slow, then keeps me braced against the wall while he slips my underwear back in place with a loving pat.

His arms are still shaking under my hands, and his breathing is still labored. I hug him against me like I’m reminding myself that this is real again, that we’ve really come back to one another. He lays a kiss to my temple.

“I love you, Byrd.”

I kiss his chin, then his lips. “I love you.”