“Tonight, yeah. For a longer term solution—you know, until she gets back on her feet—Cait suggested she stay with Cait’s mom and Carter, in her old room because it’s empty. She said Wren wanted no part of it, and she got really agitated when she suggested Danny and Ashley’s, because they have a kid.”
Grant connected the dots. “She’s scared of something.”
“Or somebody.”
A new emotion coursed through Grant, so intense he sucked in a breath. Somebody wanted to hurt Wren. Somebody had hurt Wren, badly enough so she’d run.
She’d run from him.
“Okay, now he might hit something,” Chris said, taking a step out of his arm’s reach.
“I’m not going to hit anything.” The person he wanted to hit wasn’t here. He couldn’t even be sure there was a person, though it felt like he’d found the missing piece of the Wren puzzle.
It made sense. Her reserve when they’d met. How reluctant she’d been to let him in. Why she’d felt the need to run.
There could never be an explanation for why she’d run from him, though, other than Wren not trusting him to keep her safe. To take care of her. That was never going to make sense to him.
“She can come stay with us,” Derek said. “We live a little further from the neighborhood, so maybe far enough away from whatever the problem is. She and Julia really hit it off at the Labor Day barbecue. I know Olivia wouldn’t mind.”
Memories of Wren, her blonde hair shining in the sun as she laughed with Derek’s daughter in Aidan’s backyard, slammed into Grant’s mind and they hurt. That day had been one of the happiest days of his life—watching the woman he was going to marry fitting right in with the people who were like family to him—and a week later she’d dumped him and taken off.
Rick was washing his bowl, but he looked over his shoulder. “If she wouldn’t stay with Danny and Ashley because of Jackson, she’s probably not going to stay with you. Especially since she did hit it off so well with your daughter.”
“We need to find out what she’s afraid of and take care of it,” Scott said, and Aidan nodded.
“If she wanted our help,” Grant said, “she would have asked me for it when I was her boyfriend. Obviously she doesn’t.”
Rick dried his hands and leaned against the counter. “Until we know what’s going on, we don’t know why she’s doing anything she does. But we do know she needs help. You know we have your back, Cutter. If you want nothing to do with her, then Cait can set her up with the agencies who’ll help her out and that’ll be the end of it. It’s your call.”
“She’s lost everything,” Gavin said quietly. “And I’m guessing she didn’t have much to begin with.”
Grant wasn’t surprised Gavin was the one pushing him toward helping her. Because they were best friends, he was the guy who’d spent the most time with Wren.
“If any of you can get her to stay with you while she finds a new place, I’m cool with that. And I have some of her stuff.” He shrugged. “Not much, but there were some things she’d left at my apartment and since she didn’t tell anybody where she was going, I couldn’t give it back. And I couldn’t just throw it away.”
“She’d probably like to have it,” Gavin said. “Even if it’s not much, it’s something. Because that fire was such a bitch, with the ice and all, there’s not gonna be much to save in that building.”
“It’s in a bag. I can run home and grab it and...” He could give it to Gavin or leave it on the damn doorstep. There was no reason he had to see her. He waited, hoping his friend would offer to swing by and pick it up, but Gavin said nothing. “I’ll stop by with it after shift. See how she’s doing.”
It would hurt. There was no doubt about that. But he hadn’t been able to get her out of his head since he saw her sitting in the back of Cait’s ambulance, and he knew it would only get worse when he went home to his empty apartment and tried to close his eyes.
So he’d see her. He’d give Wren her stuff and see with his own eyes that she was okay. And then he’d walk away.
* * *
Wren sat on the edge of a couch that wasn’t hers, wearing borrowed clothes after taking a shower and cleaning up with the spare toiletries Cait had given her. The leggings were a little baggy on her and the lightweight sweatshirt hung almost to her knees, but she was thankful for them.
Cait brought her a blanket and a pillow, which she put on top of several throw pillows to keep Wren elevated a little. “Can I ask you something?”
She couldn’t really say no, considering how generous the other woman was being with her hospitality. “Sure.”
“You were obviously running away from something, so why did you stay in Boston?”
It was probably the last question Wren wanted to hear because she didn’t want to face the honest answer. “It costs a lot of money to move.”
Cait sighed and gave a slight shake of her head, as if she knew Wren was lying to her. “Yeah, it does. Unless you’re just packing what little you own in a car and disappearing. One tank of gas could have gotten you someplace a hell of a lot cheaper to live.”
And someplace a hell of a lot farther from Grant. It had been stupid to stay in the city and she knew it. But she hadn’t been able to bring herself to fill that gas tank and drive until she ran out of gas money. Her little car got good mileage and she would have gotten far enough away so she’d never see him again.
