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CHAPTER SEVEN
Ananda was staring at him with a look in her eye, and Wren started to shift uncomfortably. After a short forever, he finally sighed. “What?”
She grinned at him and didn’t reply, instead tucking her curled fist under her chin, leaning on the pastry counter.
Wren felt like there were ants crawling under his skin. “What?” he demanded again.
She smiled.
“I’m going to fire you right now.”
She stood up straight with a laugh and walked over, setting one hand on his shoulder, using the other to say, “You will never fire me.”
She was right, of course. Wren was as attached to her as he was to everyone else in the café, and if Caleb tried to cut costs by letting people go, Wren would be the first person to start organizing a protest. Not that it would ever happen, but Wren was the kind of guy who always quietly planned for the worst-case scenario.
Wren just rolled his eyes at her and went back to organizing the pastry case. He saw her waving at him in his periphery, but he ignored her until all the cookies were just so.
“You’re a dick,” she told him when he finally turned around.
He shrugged. “You love me.”
Her face told different, but he knew she wasn’t going to contradict that statement. She jerked her head toward the server station, and Wren gave a last cursory glance around the empty lobby. They weren’t open for another half hour, so it was the perfect time to finish caffeinating and eat a bagel Jori had brought in from one of Khai’s downtown runs.
“You’re acting weird today,” Ananda finally said as she hopped up on a stool. She was short, so her legs immediately started swinging.
Wren propped his hip up against the counter, and he pulled the box of bagels toward him before shrugging. “It’s nothing big.”
She gave him a look that told him she didn’t believe a word he was signing. “Sell me another one.”
Wren felt his irritation growing. He loved everyone in the café with every fiber of his being, but sometimes they really did feel entitled to every facet of everyone else’s life. And Wren didn’t function that way. He’d spent all of his childhood and a good part of his young adult years learning to self-soothe.
He didn’t have a support system growing up, and while he appreciated it now, he preferred to have his shit together before he started involving other people.
Taking a slow breath, he dug the little container of smoked salmon from the bag and dressed his bagel before finally looking up at her. “It’s personal. And I really don’t want to talk about it.”
Ananda looked taken aback. “So, it’s serious.”
Wren started to shrug, then changed his mind and nodded his right fist while taking a massive bite. “Yeah.”
He could see Ananda working through that—like maybe she was trying to find a way to get him to open up. After a long beat, her shoulders sagged. “Okay.”
He frowned, feeling suspicion crawling up his spine. “Okay?”
“I can tell this is bothering you—whatever it is. I’ve been told I can be a little…intense.”
Wren almost choked on his bagel with the effort it took not to laugh. “A little?”
She flipped him off. “I’m just saying, I’m trying to be better about respecting what other people want.”
He wasn’t quite sure what to say to that. He hadn’t wanted to make her feel like she needed to change something about herself. And he was pretty damn sure everyone else at the café appreciated her meddling. She was kind of the shop mom, and Wren knew a lot of the people at BrewBiz didn’t have blood family to rely on.
Like him and Caleb. Like Bodhi and Ravi. And while Jori’s mom had been a good person, she was no longer around.
“That’s not what I’m saying,” he told her, then set the bagel down, wiping his hands on his apron before taking a few steps closer to her stool. “I love you.”
She rolled her eyes but shot him an ILY back.
“I appreciate you for everything you do. I just…got myself into a weird situation, and there’s nothing anyone else can do to help me get out of it.”
