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“Yes!” She flung her hands out, anger coloring her voice as she pointed a finger in my direction. “Thepancakes.”
She spit the word as if I’d poisoned them, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she thought so, considering how she had to choke them down as if they were disgusting. And I knew they weren’t, because I’d checked as soon as she left the kitchen, nibbling around the edges of the chocolate chips because I’d been so intent on making her happy I’d forgotten to make any without them for myself.
“The pancakes?” I held a hand up, stopping her from interrupting as I continued on, incredulously, “You mean the breakfast I made you - the ones I texted Ames about so I knew how you liked your pancakes - after I finger-fucked you so hard you could barely walk? Those pancakes?”
“Yes, those pancakes. The ‘let’s just be friends’ pancakes. The ‘last night was a mistake’pancakes.”
She stood in the pool with her arms crossed, eyes narrowed on me in a mixture of hurt and anger. But that quickly turned to confusion as I shrugged out of my clothes, dropping my sweatshirt to the ground and toeing off my boots before pulling down my pants. By the time I was down to my own underwear, I was already making my way to the side of the pool, throwing my shirt over my shoulder as I reached the edge.
“See,” I told her as I climbed into the pool, wading through the water until I stood only a foot from Wren’s body. I watched as goosebumps formed on her skin, and I traced them with my fingers, no longer intent on keeping my distance. Clearly distance had gotten me nowhere. Distance had Wren thinking I regretted what was unarguably the best night of my life. “That’s where you’re wrong, little bird. Those weren’t ‘let’s just be friends’ pancakes. Or ‘last night was a mistake’ pancakes.”
I leaned down and pressed a kiss to her collarbone, just over the faint bruise my lips had left. Still present, even days later. “What kind of pancakes were they?” Wren’s voice was barely a whisper, and I felt her chest brush mine as she took quick, panicked breaths.
“Morning-after pancakes.”
“So, you do want me?”
I laughed against her neck, pulling back to look her in the eyes. Her eyebrows were furrowed, and I pressed a kiss there before answering, “You already said that I did when I first walked out here.”
“That was all show!” She blustered, pushing at my chest with a huff, her arms doing nothing except making the water ripple around us. “Answer the question. You still want me?”
“Yes, I still want you,” I whispered against the shell of her ear, tired of this line of questioning. Now that I’d given up on my distance, every moment I stood next to Wren without being on her, inside her, on top of her, was torture. “I always did, and I do now.”
“Always?” Wren jerked back a bit, brows unfurrowing as she reasoned, “Oh, like since the Pool Incident?” The way she said the words clearly implied a proper noun, as if she often referred to it by name.
“No, Wren,” I rolled my eyes with a smirk, “Always, always.”
“Like since the Tears Incident?” Again, with the implied capital letters. God, she was fucking infuriating. If her goal was to torture me by forcing me to admit every last embarrassing detail about my obsession with her, she was succeeding. If the genuine confusion wasn’t obvious in her eyes, I would’ve already pressed my lips to hers in an attempt to kill this conversation.
“Wren,” I admitted honestly, “I don’t think you understand the extent of how much I want you. Every time I look at you, I can’t breathe. The first time I saw you…” I shook my head, the moment burned into my brain.
“Yeah, when Alex blackmailed you into coming here,” she prompted, but I shook my head.
“No, that wasn’t the first time I saw you.”
“Yes, it was. It was the first time we met; I would’ve remembered.”
“But it wasn’t the first timeIsawyou. It was after the concert, the one Alex gave us tickets to. I didn’t know who you were then, but it didn’t matter. I left the concert, and you were there, dressed up like a little punk barbie. You had on ripped jeans and a well-wornThe Living Deadt-shirt, but you had one of those big, puffy headbands in your hair and you wore these sparkly little boots no one but you would ever wear to a punk concert.”
“I had to hose all the beer off them when I got home,” Wren said solemnly.
“Your cheeks were flushed from jumping around all night but your smile was so big, and I was just…lost. I got halfway across the street to pick up Ames’s car, but I turned around, planning to find an excuse to talk to you. By the time I fought against the crowd, you were gone, and I circled a few blocks for a handful of minutes, trying to find you. Eventually I had to run to the parking deck, and I barely got Ames’s car out before it closed for the night. And even after all that, I still drove around the block looking for you. After ten minutes, I realized I left my sister alone in a dark concert hall while I drove around looking for you, and gave up.
“I called Ames, she came down none the wiser, having apparently been charmed by Alex. I tried to chalk your existence up to some post-concert mania. But I couldn’t forget about you. I planned to find you somehow, maybe hack into the ticketing system to see if I could find names of the concert-goers. But then Ames and I got into a fight and Alex blackmailed me and I showed up here. And you were just…there.”
“That’s why you stumbled back that first night when you saw me.”
I nodded, pushing a loose strand of Wren’s hair behind her ear. “At the concert, you could’ve been anyone,” I reasoned, thinking back to every rushed thought that had run through my mind when I first saw Wren here at the house. Even as I spoke with Ames about her ordeal and got to know Alex and Dev, every ounce of my being had been attuned to where Wren stood. Every joke she attempted and smile she sent in my direction had me wanting to flinch away from her unwavering innocence.
“But as soon as I met you, every fantasy I’d imagined since I first saw you shattered into pieces. You were my sister’s new friend, this sweet girl hanging out with these dangerous men. You were too innocent to stick around for long.”
“I’m not as innocent as I look, Bex,” she argued, jaw hardening at the adjective.
“I know,” I attempted to appease her, starting to tell her that I was wrong for making the assumption in the first place. “I should’ve never -”
“Just because I dress a certain way and work with flowers doesn’t mean -”
I met her interruption with my own, wrapping a palm around the nape of her neck and tilting her head back before I crashed my lips to hers.
