Page 17 of Ruthless Desires: Vol. Two
We enter the room, and the piece comes into view.
“Shit,” Elliot mutters.
“What?” Wren finally turns around, only to stop dead in her tracks. Her body goes rigid as Oliver exchanges a worried glance with me.
“Oh.” Her voice is high-pitched and squeaky. She lets out a nervous laugh. “That’s… that’s a lot of water.”
The ceiling in here is high—three stories, if not more. And in the center of the room is a massive copper heart archway. With water falling from it. Directly into a large, square pool.
“Right,” Wren whispers. She takes a step back, bumping into me. “It’s a water sculpture.”
“We can go around it,” Elliot says, eyebrows furrowed with concern. “There are other ways to get back to the main lobby.”
Slowly, Wren nods. But she doesn’t move. Then, finally, “No. I want to go closer.”
Elliot’s frown deepens. “Love, after earlier—”
“I have to get over the fear,” she says firmly. Well, as firmly as someone who’s so terrified she’s beginning to shake can say anything.
The three of us glance at each other before we look back to Wren. She’s pushing herself too hard. It’s barely been a week. But none of us want to get in the way of her healing, either.
Elliot looks like he’s about to say no, but Oliver speaks first.
“Fine. But if you start to panic, we’re pulling you out of here. No protesting, princess. Got it?”
She nods, her eyes glued to the falling water.
Taking her hand, Oliver pulls her forward. She rolls her shoulders back, walking toward the fountain with as much courage as she can muster. They stop a couple of feet away with me and Ell right behind them.
“It’s pretty,” Wren says, gazing at the skylight above the fountain. “I wonder if it creates rainbows on sunny days.”
“I bet it does.” Oliver squeezes Wren’s hand, watching her carefully. When she tries to take another step toward the water, he tugs her back. “No. This is close enough.”
“I’m fi-”
“You’renotfine. Stop lying to us and stop lying to yourself.”
I raise my eyebrows. I know that tone—the one Oliver is doing his best to hide. There’s a hint of impatience that he’s stowed away just enough that Wren doesn’t notice, but I do. Of course I do. I bet Ell picked up on it, too.
The past couple days, we’ve watched as Wren has tested her limits and gone too far with herself. Elliot finding her in the kitchen earlier is a perfect example. She’s refusing to give herself space to not be okay.
I used to do it all the time—a side effect of my childhood, I suppose. It took a lot of relearning and a lot of self-acceptance to let myself feel things I always thought I wasn’t allowed to feel. While I struggled through it, Elliot and Oliver had to as well. They had to watch me pretend to be okay when all I wanted to do was die, even though they assured me repeatedly that I didn’t have to perform around them.
So it’s no surprise that Oliver is trying to get Wren to pace herself. He doesn’t want to see her put herself through what I did.
Oliver slides an arm around Wren’s waist, anchoring her in place. For the next couple minutes, we gaze at the fountain, watching the water fall and splash into the pool. Wren doesn’t try to get closer, and her hands stop trembling at some point. Elliot notices at the same time I do, and we share a look of relief.
“I think I’m good,” Wren says after a while. She hasn’t taken her eyes off the water at all, almost like she’s afraid it’ll rise up and attack her if she looks away.
Oliver plants a kiss on her temple. “Then let’s get you home.”
Chapter four
Oliver
Our ice cream tradition isn’t as fun and lighthearted as it usually is. Elliot is pacing around the living room, barely even eating his as it melts in his bowl. Rhett is tense as well, and I don’t think it’s because of our earlier interaction.
I suppose I should’ve expected as much. This job is stressing the hell out of all of us. But going to the museum and spending time with these three has filled me with so much happiness, so I was hoping it’d bleed into the rest of the night.
