Page 34 of Off the Beaten Path

It makes that cold piece inside me warm, even if ever so slightly. As if there’s a splash of sunshine breaking through the layers of grime, sending sparks of light dancing in the dark corners.

“Mia makes me crazy,” I say finally, a little surprised at the words. Despite everything, I’ve always tried to respect Mia in front of my family, if only for June’s sake. It’s not like I don’t feel the way my mom and Finley and even Grey feel about her. It’s just that I don’t want to sour June’s idea of her mom. She may constantly fall through on her promises, but June still holds her on a pedestal, bragging to all her first-grade friends about how her mom lives in Paris, working as an artist.

So I normally don’t allow myself to say the things I think about Mia out loud. But Wren feels…safe. And I haven’t felt safe with a woman outside my family in a very long time.

Wren nods, just a slight dip of her chin, waiting for me to continue.

I grip the back of my neck once more, hard enough to feel pain. “She makes all these promises to June and never follows through, and then June is heartbroken and sobbing and I don’t know how to make it better for her.” My voice catches. “Itdestroysme to see her like that.”

“I’m sorry, Holden,” Wren says, and I think her voice sounds thicker too.

I swallow against the lump forming in my throat, unable to look her in the eyes that have gone soft and misty, seeing way too much. “So when she called on Saturday and promised to come to June’s recital…”

“You freaked?” Wren asks.

My gaze snags on hers. “I freaked. And I took it out on you. I shouldn’t have. I’m still,” I pause, “getting used to this whole friend thing.”

One corner of her mouth twitches upward, making the faintest dimple pop in her cheek. “Take all the time you need.”

A breath heaves out of me, a weight being lifted off my shoulders. “I’m probably going to be an ass sometimes.”

“Eh,” she says, shrugging, her collar slipping even more with the movement, exposing creamy, freckled skin. “What else is new?”

I watch her as she looks away from me, taking in the changes to the space. I spent last week hanging up drywall and installing baseboards. It’s amazing how much just that can change the look of a room. Now, it feels smaller, more intimate and cozy.

“It looks really good,” Wren says, her gaze returning to mine. For some reason, this makes an unfamiliar sensation bloom in my chest.

“Thanks,” I say, clearing my throat. “I’ll install the new doors next. Those are on hold at the hardware store, right?” At her nod, I continue. “Then we’ll have to choose flooring and countertops to go down next. Did you ever decide on floors?”

Twin splashes of red appear on Wren’s cheeks, and she pushes off the wall, heading into the galley kitchen, where I’ve been attempting to install the builder-grade cabinets, although I kept getting distracted and ended up spending most of the morning pacing, waiting for her to arrive.

I follow her in, leaning a hip on the one cabinet I did get attached to the wall.

“You know,” Wren says, spinning around to face me, her fingers trailing along the rough edge of one of the cabinets. “Jimmy was going to let me shadow him while he worked. Teach me how to do some of this stuff so I could do a lot of it on my own in the next flip.”

My eyes snag on hers and hold. “Is that so?”

“It was going to be a lot of help to me,” she says, letting the words hang in the space between us.

I know what she’s getting at, wanting me to do the same that Jimmy was going to do for her, but for some reason, I can’t bring myself to offer it so easily. On one hand, it would be thefriendlything to do, and I probably owe her for snapping on Saturday. On the other, the thought of her here, spending all day alone with me…doesn’t sound as unappealing as it should, and I don’t know what to make of that.

I’m not sure when my feelings for Wren became so jumbled, but I do know that when I look at her now, my first response isn’t irritation. It’s almost…affection. Sure, it’s the same kind of eye-rolling affection I feel toward June when she trades her carrots for gummy worms at lunch, but it’s affection, nonetheless. And then there are the feelings that are nothing like what I feel for my daughter, something warmer and more electric, a buzzing beneath my skin and a pulsing awareness that hasn’t been on my radar in so long it’s practically alien.

Instead of offering to let her shadow me, I choose to focus on that splash of cherry red on her cheeks from earlier, the reason I trailed her in here. “So why haven’t you picked out flooring? Or countertops?” We spent the second half of our trip to the hardware store looking at samples of countertops that Oliver either had in stock or said he could get in quickly, knowing Wren’s short timeline.

The flush returns, brighter this time, making her freckles pop against her skin, and she avoids my gaze. “I guess if we’re being honest, then there’s something I should tell you too.”

Her voice is soft and almost dejected, barely above a whisper. It makes something in my chest twist and ache, enough that I have to press my fingers there and rub.

“I exhausted my savings buying the cabin, and renovations have been more costly than I expected. I can afford it.” She says this last part quickly, meeting my eyes for the briefest instant before returning to a spot on the floor. “But I have to be frugal, and I’ll probably need to choose the cheapest materials.”

I think of the warm oak flooring I picked out at the hardware store and the way she turned it down without even really considering it. At the time, I thought she was being difficult, trying to push my buttons like usual, but now I can see the slight panic and embarrassment she was trying to hide. I can’t help but wonder how many times I’ve misunderstood her. I want to sit down and examine every interaction we’ve had over the last four years in a new light.

“We can work with that,” I tell her, and her eyes swing up to meet mine.

“Really?” She sounds hopeful and a little desperate, and it makes that ache in my chest a little more prominent.

“Yeah, of course. We have to work inside your budget, Wren.” I say this with a softness I’ve always held back from her, and she looks surprised. “How about I go back to the hardware store and look at some cheaper samples and send you what I think would work?”

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