Page 28 of Revelry
I didn’t know why I let him get to me, or why the thought of him getting her high made me want to murder him. I’d been high plenty of times and I had absolutely nothing against her smoking a little weed, but I didn’t want him touching her, and the fact that she’dlethim get her high pissed me off almost as much as the fact that he offered.
Butwhy?
Nothing made sense, which only added to my frustration, so I took it out on the rusted old truck I’d been treating with nothing but TLC for months.
The garage door creaked and I glanced up to see Ron walk in. His long gray hair was tucked under his Navy hat and he lifted it off his head and readjusted it before nodding at me and climbing back under.
Usually working with my hands kept my mind busy, too—but not today. Not after I made a complete fool of myself. Wren didn’t deserve what I’d dumped on her, and I knew that even in the moment I did it. Nothing I said was anything I actually believed about her. If I did, I wouldn’t want to talk to her. I wouldn’t have gone to a bonfire for the first time in years just so I’d run into her. I wouldn’t be overanalyzing every word, wondering how to make it right, realizing I shouldn’t even try.
Because the truth had been buried under my newfound curiosity, but I’d been reminded of its existence last night. I had nothing to give a woman, least of all a woman like Wren, so I did what I do best.
I pushed her away.
She called me an asshole and she was right, so I proved it. I solidified her assumptions. And now she would live out the rest of her summer here without any regard for me and when she left, I’d still be here, and everything would go back to normal.
Every day would be the same.
A foreign feeling rolled through my stomach at that thought, but I didn’t have time to dissect it, because a high-pitched scream carried through the trees and into the garage.
Ron jumped and scrambled out from under the truck as I ripped around, eyes searching for the source of the noise. I knew that scream, and before I could talk myself out of it, my feet were moving, carrying me full speed ahead toward Wren’s cabin.
My heart thumped loud in my ear as I ran, boots crunching first on the gravel of Ron’s driveway before hitting the road. I didn’t stop to think about what I’d just said to her or that I’d probably be the last one she wanted helping her, not until I rounded the trees at the end of her drive and saw her standing there.
She was soaking wet.
I paused for just a second, chest heaving, and watched as she tried very unsuccessfully to stop the water spout on the side her house from spraying everywhere. It had split open under where the garden hose connected and was dousing everything—the firewood, the yard, her car.
Her.
“Shit,” I murmured, kicking back into action and sprinting toward her. She was fighting the water, cranking the knob that was connected to the piece now split off from the rest of the spout.
“It won’t stop!” she screamed when I was next to her, water spraying me as I shielded it with my hands and searched for the source.
My eyes followed the piping up and over her cabin and into the garage, and I took off again, bursting through the garage door and sprinting into the back room where the washer and dryer unit sat. I cut the water and ran back out to Wren just in time to see the last of the water spray out before it shrank in power and eventually stopped.
Wren was breathing heavy, chest strained against the now see-through fabric of her white dress. Her nipples were cold and hard, the dress sticking to them along with her ribs, her slim waist, her thighs. She batted at her hair, still dripping water, and shivered a bit as she looked up at me, mascara running, eyes wide. I watched as they skimmed my body the way mine had just devoured hers, and it was as if only then did she realize who it was who’d helped her. Her cheeks tinged pink and she scowled, and that’s all it took for me to lose it.
I laughed.
The sound was just as foreign as the feeling I’d had before I heard her scream. It almost hurt, laughing after so many years. My throat burned and my ribs cracked, shaking the rust off as I threw my head back and let the feeling consume me.
Wren’s scowl morphed, brows pinching together like she thought I was crazy.
Maybe I was.
And her standing there soaked and shivering and sexy as hell just made me laugh harder.
I bent at the waist, one hand gripping my stomach, and Wren kept on scowling. She swung at me, her tiny fists connecting with apitandpatagainst my wet chest, and then she lost her balance, gripping onto my biceps to steady herself. I grabbed her, too, hands wrapping around her small elbows until she was standing again, her chest pressed against the bottom of my rib cage.
I wasn’t laughing anymore.
She peered up at me through long, dark, wet lashes and swallowed, her body reacting to the proximity of mine. I could have stepped back, let her go, ushered her inside so she could get out of her soaked clothes and into the shower, but instead I just held her there. Something came over me in that moment as the sun peeking through the tops of the trees caught her green eyes, highlighting the gold that spiraled out from her pupils. Maybe I wasn’t good for her, maybe she would tear through me that summer and then leave at the end of it all, and maybe none of that even mattered because she had her own shit to deal with and wouldn’t be fazed by me, anyway.
But I was wrong about one thing.
I did have something to give her.
“I’m sorry,” I said, voice low, eyes still watching hers.
