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“Your turn.” Bex grabbed for me, pulling me up until I was kneeling between her legs.
“No,” I shook my head, “That was for you, to make up for last night, the haunted house, all of it.”
Bex’s eyes narrowed, voice hard as she told me, “This isn’t a tit-for-tat, Wren. And it wasn’t a question either. I want to watch you come, so you’ll come.” She didn’t wait for my answer, rolling over me until her body caged mine in. I watched as she reached for my nightstand, mischief in her eyes as she looked toward me and held up my vibrator. “Let’s recreate what I should have done last week.”
* * *
Bex didn’t leavemy bed for the rest of the week. Well, she left to drive me to work and sit on the couch with me and watch TV, but every night, she crawled into bed with me. There was no conversation about it, no end date placed on our time together, and that was how I preferred it. No conversation meant it could keep going indefinitely, which was all my brain could handle at this point. I’d so quickly gotten used to waking up with Bex’s arms wrapped around me, her bare skin brushing against mine, her hair splayed across my pillow. I couldn’t imagine it ending, so I didn’t.
Our routine stayed similar, for the most part. We’d wake up, eat breakfast, and head toIn Bloom.Despite not wanting to put them in danger, Alex, Dev, and Bex had convinced me to keep on my part-time workers so as not to tip off Alfie that we were onto him. I let them work their shifts together while I worked alone on my usual days,spending most of my working mornings checking customer orders and doing inventory of the flowers delivered from local farms. Around noon, Bex would order us lunch, or we’d pick some up together, and then return for a few short hours of putting together gift baskets and arrangements, organizing pickups and deliveries.
But Bex touched me more. She’d push my hair behind my ear when it fell in my face while I arranged flowers, brush a kiss to my shoulder as I walked by, press her knee against mine as she sat next to me in the front of the shop. She hadn’t left to work in the back room since the haunted house, working quietly next to me most of the day, keeping me updated with minimal details. Not that I asked for more than that. I felt safe enough with Bex serving as my shadow that I knew Alfie whats-his-name would never touch me.
Chapter20
Bex
I stoodat the kitchen counter cutting apples for yet another apple pie while Wren laid on the couch. She’d spent days claiming she could never eat another apple pie - after eating half a pie in one night - and had been attempting to rid herself of the box full of apples we’d picked by sneaking them to Dev. To her credit, she was inventive in her hiding spots. Dev revealed he found an apple in his glove compartment after house shopping, another in his gym bag, and a third on his doorstep, all in one day. He was dumbfounded as to how she was sneaking all these apples by him, especially on days when he never even saw her.
I didn’t tell him that Wren had enlisted Ames in her prank, and more recently, me. Alex didn’t say anything either, though I was sure he knew everyone’s location at all times. Plus, I knew he drove his fiancée to Dev’s townhouse, because Wren had told me the night before in bed, laughing as she imagined the confusion on Dev’s face when he found an apple at his front door.
But despite her claims at being finished with pie, she’d woken up this morning craving it, so I was back in the kitchen, rolling out dough. Ames had been right when she told Wren that I hadn’t made the recipe in years, not since Dad died. I’d unconsciously committed myself to never making the pie again, but watching Wren struggle in the kitchen had tightened something in my gut, forcing my feet to cross the room before I knew what I was offering.
Easing her frustration was worth breaking whatever silent vow I’d made to myself. Having her eyes on my movements as she nibbled on the apple peels I threw toward her felt almost domestic. It reminded me of when my Dad would feed Ames and me apple peels until we were old enough to help peel alongside him.
Besides, breaking a promise to myself was only one item in the long line of unexpected things I’d done for Wren. I’d argued with Dev over the right to protect her, stolen her underwear, pushed her in a pool, and lied to my sister. And I realized, standing there, peeling apples to a recipe I hadn’t made in years, that I would break a lot of vows, steal, start fights, and lie just to see Wren happy.
I glanced up at the object of my thoughts, Wren sitting in a precarious position on the couch. She was upside down, her knees and ankles resting over the back while her head dangled near the floor, her hair fanning across the faux fur rug. Her phone was pressed to her ear, her mouth occasionally moving at a fast clip as she spoke to her parents.
I knew they spoke about once a week, the information easily accessible when I went through her phone records months ago, back when I did a full background on all three of my sister’s new friends. I also knew they weren’t close, both from Ames’s reports on their relationship and the fact that the phone calls usually lasted less than fifteen minutes.
I’d seen the phone calls the past couple of weeks, most of them happening while Wren managed the front counter and made arrangements atIn Bloomwhile I worked in the back room. They hadn’t interested me until now, now that I saw Wren not as a piece of my game but my future. Which meant - despite having a tenuous relationship with them - Wren’s parents were also a part of my future.
She spoke in what I knew was Mandarin from my research on her, which meant I couldn’t understand most of what came out of her mouth. Occasionally, Ames’s or Dev’s or Alex’s name would come up in conversation, small clues as to what they were talking about. Otherwise, the context was lost on me.
From observing her, it seemed like most of their conversation was fairly surface level, judging solely by the neutral look on Wren’s face and the even tone of her voice. Wren had never been a great liar. It was what made our games so fun; watching her anger and disappointment play across her face even as she tried to hide them. It was how I always knew when she was embarrassed despite the fact that she rarely blushed.
Now, I watched as it happened, her teeth digging into her bottom lip, her eyes flicking to mine for a moment before she righted herself on the couch and turned away from me. She lowered her voice, murmuring something quietly into the phone, as if I could understand what she was saying. And it fucking grated on me that I couldn’t. I resolved to learn Mandarin, so that I could always understand what she was saying, even if she didn’t want me to.
But for now, I stalked across the room, leaving the unassembled pie on the counter as I went to stand in front of Wren. She tried ignoring me, keeping her eyes on the floor as she finished speaking. I pinched her chin between my fingers, tilting her head up until she had to look me in the eyes.
“Are you talking about me, little bird?” I didn’t bother to keep my voice quiet, and a smile pulled at my lips when there was sudden chatter on the other end of the phone. I imagined her parents asking if she had a girlfriend over and was rewarded when Wren shot me a glare before answering her parents with a string of syllables, my name scattered among them.
I leaned in, rewarding her honesty with her parents by biting her ear before I whispered, “Tell them I say hi.”
She scowled but did as I asked - at least, I assumed, based on the traitorous look she sent me as she spoke into the phone, my name mingled among the unfamiliar words. Before I could press any more requests on her -tell them you’re mine, that they’ll meet me sometime, that I’m the only name they’ll need to know for the rest of your life- Wren burst out another few sentences and abruptly hung up the phone, letting out a breath of clear relief.
“What’d you tell them?”
Wren rolled her eyes, shrugging before tartly telling me, “None of your business.”
I used my old trick, the one she should’ve known how to avoid by now but still didn’t, and stayed silent, my eyes narrowing on hers as the moments passed. She started to squirm about thirty seconds in and dropped eye contact after a minute. After almost two minutes, she finally caved, groaning as she flopped back on the couch.
“I just told them you were my friend, Bex, and that you liked to call me little bird because of my name and how you’re so much taller than me.”
I gritted my teeth, jaw tightening as she revealed what she said to her parents, the words weightless and less meaningful than they should have been. But I didn’t press, committed to winning Wren over with consistency rather than brute force. She’d admitted I was the one in her apartment, I reasoned. She called me her friend. That was enough for now, I supposed, but if she wasn’t referring to herself asmineby Halloween, my patience would begin to wear thin. I finally understood how Alex felt when he tried wooing my sister, how frustrated he must’ve been when she kept trying to run.
He was a better man than I was. Because if Wren tried to run from me, I’d get her a fucking leash.
