Page 115 of Break The Ice

“What happened?”

I ignore him, walk back, and throw myself on the couch. Wanting nothing more than to be anywhere else but here.

Raider, who has followed me, veers off, listening intently to the conversation going in the kitchen.

“You answered that bitch?” he snarls.

“Don’t call her a bitch.”

“The shoe fits, Wren! But you did it now? While we were preparing-”

Kit has come out from his spot and sits beside me on the couch, taking my hand.

“What do you want to do?”

I look at him. “I don’t want anything from you guys.”

Kit gets this horribly bruised expression, he reaches for my hand, but I flinch away. It's not that I’m afraid of his touch, it's more that I think if I get a single moment of kindness, I will shatter into a million pieces and fall apart.

“Wren, what the fuck are you doing?” Raider howls.

Wren pauses, I can see him out of the corner of my eye staring at me.

“I have to go.”

It’s like an axe to my heart. Of all the things that could go wrong, losing Wren was the last on the list.

He takes a step, and Raider flies at him, throwing him into a wall. Wren bounces off it, but before he can defend himself, Raider has him pinned.

“No! You don’t get to walk out on us like this. We needed you.”

“Tiff needs me.”

“Bullshit.”

“Raider, let me sort this out, and then I’ll come back.”

“If you leave, you won’t be welcome back!” Raider says in an icy voice. “If you abandon us now, if you go to that whore, you don’t get to come back.”

I stiffen, horrified by Raider’s ultimatum, but unable to speak.

Wren sags. “I have to go, Raider, this is really important.”

“If you leave-”

“Raider!” Callan cuts in. “No, we can’t say that. We need to hear what he has to say.”

“I don’t care what he has to say, he put all of us at risk, he put Ryann at risk. Now he wants to go to the bitch who was using him to get to his dad and break up their family? Fuck no!”

Wren stares for a long minute.

Don’t leave. Don’t leave.

He turns and walks out the door.

Raider swears, picks up a vase, and hurls it at the wall. His chest is heaving in violent, almost desperate pants.

I abruptly remember Raider’s history and how people always leave him. I get up and glide on shaky legs towards him, taking his hand in mine.

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