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Once, at Venom Virtues, she’d stepped up to a pole while Handful and Austen were there. I’d watched her do a turn, heard them laugh, and thought I’d seen enough to know what Blondie was. I hadn’t. That had been Wren showing people she trusted a little of what she could do. Tonight the music was hers, and she had come out to make strangers watch.

She took hold of the pole and waited through the first notes of the song. Nobody moved. I hadn’t known she could make a crowd hold still just by doing nothing. Then she climbed, stopped high above the floor and made them wait again. Fuck, she was good. Wren had told me how she paid for college. I’d been proud of her for it. I should have asked her what it felt like to be up there. Watching her tonight, I could see she loved every second.

I had spent the afternoon wanting to kiss her while she held Sparrow. At The Hot House I wanted my hands on her, wanted to pull her against me and feel her laugh when I told her what that mask was doing to me. I remembered my songbird in our bed, filthy and smiling while she made me beg her to stop teasing. Now she was on a stage, not shy at all, giving a room full of strangers a part of herself I’d never seen.

The whiskey burned going down. I set the glass beside the phone.

The woman at the front table had got to her feet when Wren dropped. So had I, or near enough. Wren caught herself inches from the floor and grinned when the woman shouted. She’d known where she’d land. I could still see that grin. If I’d told her she scared me, she’d have laughed and told me she’d planned it that way.

At the cottage, I could laugh about that drop. In the club, my heart had been hammering. I’d wanted to go to her when she came offstage, tell her she’d nearly killed me and listen to her tell me I knew nothing about pole dancing. Then I’d have kissed the grin off her face. Knowing I couldn’t go backstage and do any of that hurt more than watching other men look at her.

A man near me had whistled. Another had leaned forward to look. I hated them for a second. I wanted to empty the place and have her dance for me alone. Then Wren turned toward the crowd, saw the woman still on her feet and gave her another move. She wasn’t putting up with their attention. She wanted it. This was her room to work.

I wanted her to have every bit of that room. I still wished the men in it would look somewhere else.

I couldn’t pretend I was worried about her safety. Simon was by the bar, Dion at the side door, and Moff would have the cameras. These were the men who’d kept her safe when she first danced. I knew what she meant now when she’d called them the best security in the business. She trusted them.

I thought about what I’d told Handful when he brought me the lead.

She retired. My eyes only.

She’d stopped dancing when she finished college, before we met. I’d known that. It hadn’t stopped me talking as if she’d made the decision for me. The poster outside said BLONDIE because she’d chosen to put that name out there again. I had no say in it, however much I wanted to be the man she came home to after a set.

I wanted to hear her talking too fast on the way home because the set had gone well. I wanted to be the man she told when she got a move right for the first time. I wanted to hear her talk about all the things that mattered to her.

I looked down at my phone. Sparrow had my nose in one hand. Wren had stood close enough to catch the moment, close enough that I could have reached out and touched her while she took the picture. Four hours later she’d been high above a club floor, four months after giving birth, holding the weight of her body in her hands. She was fucking extraordinary. I wished I’d told her that when I’d had the chance.

She had seen me at the back of the club. I couldn’t make out her eyes through the mask, but her face had turned my way and her hand had shifted on the pole. For one ugly second I was glad I’d affected her. I wanted proof that I still could. Then she caught the next turn cleanly, and all I wanted was for her to finish well.

I had stayed until she was off the stage. Simon followed me outside. We stood on the sidewalk, close enough to speak, and neither of us did. On the pier he’d told me Wren was with him. I still didn’t know if he’d meant it or if he’d been trying to get me back on my bike. The thought of him driving her home tonight made me want to ask. I wanted to tell him she’d been brilliant too. He’d been there for her all year. He’d probably watched every Wednesday.

I hadn’t watched her do a single one of them. I’d never seen her dance as Blondie until tonight. Simon could walk back inside, find her when she was ready to leave and ask how it had felt up there. If I went back through that door, I’d be asking her to deal with me when she ought to have been enjoying herself. I left before he had to say it.

Back at the cottage, I kept seeing her hand move on the pole when she spotted me. I’d given her every reason to want me gone.

On Monday she’d told me why she hadn’t come to me about Sparrow. Would I have believed the baby was mine? And even if I had, she’d seen me change records and build evidence for Venom in custody fights. After I accused her of lying and sent her away, she couldn’t know I wouldn’t use those same skills against her. I would never.

I’d missed her pregnancy. I’d missed Sparrow’s birth and every day after it. I hated what I’d lost. But Wren had lived those months believing I might try to take our child from her.

Today she’d put Sparrow in my arms anyway.

I picked up my phone and opened the thread with the three photographs. I typed, You were fucking incredible tonight. My thumb hovered over send. She’d already know I’d watched her; she didn’t need a report from me, and I couldn’t tell whether a message would please her or make her wish I’d stayed away. I deleted it.

Friday was two days away. She’d invited me to see our daughter again but she hadn’t promised anything else. I wanted Wren back as badly as I’d ever wanted her, but I could show up for Sparrow without asking her mom to give me more than she was ready to give.

I went back to Portland’s renewal. A certificate had been issued under the wrong site name. I corrected it and checked the rest of the file. I’d done this work through worse than a sleepless night, but I read the final email twice before I sent it. By then it was after one.

The whiskey sat where I’d left it. I took the shirt Sparrow had chewed off the chair and folded it. For a minute I held it in both hands, remembering her fist in my hair and Wren’s face when she said, Sparrow, this is your daddy.

Then I set it on the dresser where I’d see it in the morning.

Chapter 13

❧

— Wren —

Sparrow was on her play mat in the boathouse meeting room when Seb came in. She turned at his voice, and he crouched beside her before he’d even taken off his jacket. I watched him offer her a finger and wait for her to grab it.