“No, you’re not.”
She stared at the floor, the wooden planks blurring. “It was a nightmare.”
Grayson tipped her face toward him with a steady finger beneath her chin. “What did I tell you about lying to me?”
Her stomach dropped as she lifted her gaze. He wasn’t angry. Instead, he looked concerned. She wasn’t sure why that bothered her more than him being pissed off.
“It was just a bad dream.” The lie tasted bad, but now that she’d started down this path, it seemed she was going to dig in her heels. She wasn’t a stubborn person by nature. Except for when it came to talking about her past. Whenever faced with dredging all that up, she could be the most obstinate person on the planet.
His eyes narrowed.
“I…I just need time.” She’d been silent on this subject for so long, she didn’t know any other way to be. Yes, she talked to Sophie about it, but for some reason, that felt different.
Maybe because Sophie already knew she was all kinds of fucked up.
Wren didn’t want Grayson to see her as broken. She wanted to just be…normal.
His jaw tightened, and she could practically see the debate raging behind those dark brown eyes of his. He wanted to push her on this. She knew that. Grayson was a straight shooter, and he’d asked the same of her. Something in her face must have convinced him to back down, because after a long silence, he sighed. “Okay.”
Relief flooded her, immediately followed by guilt.
Grayson glanced toward her nightstand, to the clock there. “It’s early.”
Four-thirty a.m. was more than early in her book. It was practically the middle of the night, as far as she was concerned, but given he worked on a farm, she knew this was probably close to the time his alarm went off.
“You should head back to the farm,” she said, hoping it wasn’t too obvious that she needed him to leave.
She’d pulled her shit together, but that was only a temporary thing. There was a mob of emotions gathering just beneath the surface, clamoring to get out with pitchforks and torches. Wren didn’t want him here when all those bad things broke free.
“I can stay a little while longer,” he argued.
“No!” she said, way too loudly. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to make you late for work.”
“Wren,” he said, with a slight grin that was just a shade too off to be natural. “I’m the boss. Nobody will fire me if I’m a few minutes late.”
“Even so,” she said. “I have some stuff to do around here myself, laundry, and um, stuff,” she repeated, when she couldn’t come up with anything else to add to her nonexistent list. “And I was planning to go into work early today to set up for the puppet show story time.”
Wow, the lies were flowing like lava now. Her weekly puppet show for the preschoolers wasn’t until tomorrow. She prayed to God Grayson didn’t know that.
He ran a hand through his sleep-mussed hair. “Okay. I’ll come by after work, and we can make dinner together.”
“No,” she said again.
His eyebrows furrowed. “No?”
She scrambled for an excuse. “I, um, I can’t hang tonight.”
“Why not?” he asked.
She understood his surprise. After all, they’d been inseparable since the night of the Harvest Dance. The problem was, if she saw him again so soon, she knew what would happen.
She’d tell him everything.
Jesus, she should have told him already. But she’d never said the words to anyone who wasn’t related or paid to listen. Not once.
The part of her that had fallen hopelessly, helplessly in love with this man wanted to believe he would wrap her in his arms and tell her everything was okay.
But what if, like with Charlie and Jake…it wasn’t? What if he decided she was too broken, and he didn’t want to stick around with a head case who lost it whenever a man got too close? Sure, he’d been patient so far, but what if?—
