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“You want to bet, little bird?” The words slipped from my lips, the nickname perfectly fitting the petite form in front of me, her thin collarbones visible in the light of the street lamps. I expected Wren to comment on the nickname, but she was too angry, her breaths audible from where I still sat in the car.
“Go ahead and fucking try me, Bex. You’ll find I’m a lot stronger than I look.”
With that statement, she slammed the door in my face, shooting me her middle finger as she stomped through the front door of her building. Her steps didn’t falter once, her anger at me overriding any alcohol left in her system. I drove home, parking my car and walking around the side of the house to give the newly engaged couple their privacy, and settled into bed. As I drifted off to sleep, I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I felt this excited for anything. If Wren wanted me to test her limits, I would be all too happy to oblige.
Chapter2
Wren
Bex’s threatran through my mind the rest of the week. It wasn’t the threat itself that had me on edge. My words had been the truth: I loved Alex and Dev unconditionally. Ames, too, though I knew any skeletons in her closet paled in comparison to the men’s. Further, I trusted them. Knew that while they worked with dangerous men, they still had a moral code they stood by.
No, what worried me was how far Bex planned to go to prove her point. She had iced me out for months now, in front of our friends and her sister, just because she felt I was too fucking dainty and girly to be friends with Alex and Dev. I let out a bitter laugh at the thought.
She thought I didn’t belong to the family I was a part of before her. The family I helped nurture and grow. The family that meant more to me than my business, my biological family, the short-lived friendships I had failed to maintain before them. A small flame of anger lit in my stomach at her audacity, thinking she could somehow bully me into giving up the first thing that had made my life feel full. That made the happiness I wore like a mask so much of my life an actual reflection of how I felt inside.
But that flame flickered and went out too quickly, allowing the small, wimpy bitch part of me to win out. If she knocked me down every chance she got with short words and total ignorance without me pushing her buttons, what had I brought on myself with the half-drunken words I threw at her the other night? Even in my hazy state, I saw the spark of interest light in her eyes at my taunt, the type of look that promised more than a few pointed barbs. No, it was the look of ruination. A promise that she’d destroy me and enjoy it. I shivered at the thought.
“You okay?” Ames’s voice brought me out of my spiraling. She stood next to the table where I’d been waiting for our lunch date, which I had rescheduled last-minute.
“Sorry,” I smiled at her as she sat down, settling herself across from me as I apologized. “Lost in thought. Thanks for indulging my last-minute craving.”
I hated lying to one of my best friends, but the wimpy-bitch side had won out earlier today too, forcing me to relocate our lunch from Ames’s home - where I might run into Bex - to a local restaurant near the pottery studio Ames still worked at a couple days a week. Even though Ames knew Bex and I didn’t get along, I always tried my hardest to maintain the peace. Admitting I’d drunkenly antagonized her sister and was now worried she planned to destroy me would decidedly not be keeping the peace.
“Of course. It’s nice getting out of the house every once in a while, especially now that I’m mostly working out of my home studio. Plus, I can’t make a sandwich as good as they can here.” She laughed as she took a sip of her water, her engagement ring making a soft ping as she grabbed the glass.
“Let me see the ring.” I wiggled my fingers in her direction, adding, “Gimme, gimme,” until she relented and placed her palm in mine.
It was only my second time seeing the ring in person. The night of her engagement party was the first, mostly because she had only been engaged for a handful of hours by the time the party began. Alex had texted us the day prior, telling us to plan a surprise engagement party for the following night, and promptly turned off his phone. Alex had always been secretive, stingy with the information he gave Dev and me as he attempted to woo Ames from the sidelines. So I couldn’t claim to be surprised that he’d planned his engagement on his own without a whisper to anyone.
But Alex knew me just as well. He knew a text and a powered-off phone wouldn’t be enough to stop me from tracking him down for more information, so he had my car towed. Then disabled my phone from using any sort of rideshare application that I could use to get to his house to inundate him with questions. Dev picked me up half an hour later, driving us both across town while we located as many engagement decorations as we could with such a last-minute request.
But other than that single text, Alex left us in the dark. Literally. Dev, Bex, and I waited in their darkened house, popping out to surprise Ames when they came home from their celebratory engagement dinner.
“It’s gorgeous.” And it was. The elongated hexagonal diamond had black flecks that turned the entire gem a range of gray. It was flanked on either side by three small diamonds in a triangle pattern before turning into a plain white gold band. It suited Ames, who sat across from me in her scuffed combat boots and black ripped jeans, her oversized white button-up tied at the waist and spattered with clay. “And totally fits your style.”
“Alex did a good job,” she admitted, a smile playing on her lips. The waitress interrupted any further conversation, taking our drink and lunch orders before leaving us in contented silence. Silence that I quickly broke with my impatient curiosity.
“Howdid Alex do such a good job? Because surprisingly, he didn’t ask for my help.” I let false outrage show on my face at the fact, making Ames laugh before she grimaced.
“It’s my fault he didn’t ask for your help, actually.”
“Stop with the dramatics.” I scoffed at her phrasing, knowing she would never be so callous as to order Alex to refuse my help. “That’s my role in this friendship,” I reminded her with raised brows.
Ames just rolled her eyes in response. “Only you would claim you were the dramatic one. Shall I remind you that we first met after I had to run to mystalker’shouse to escape my ex-boyfriend who tried to rape me?”
I shrugged in response. Despite the initial drama that brought her into my life, Ames had been decidedly drama-free since. I prompted again, “So, the engagement ring…?”
“Right.” Ames blushed, red creeping over her cheeks in a way that had me sitting up straighter in my seat. I wished we were at the movie theater or something so I had popcorn to observe what was bound to be a juicy story. “So one night, a couple weeks ago, Alex had an after-dinner work meeting. I was sitting around the house, cuddling with the cats, and basically just thinking about how far my life had come in just a few months. How happy I was with Alex, and what a great partner he was, and how I saw a future with him.”
“You’d been drinking,” I guessed, knowing Ames tended to get more sentimental with alcohol in her system.
“Exactly,” she laughed in agreement. “Anyway, one thing led to another, and I maybe Googled engagement rings? More specifically, salt and pepper diamond rings. I found one I loved, and like a drunken idiot who forgot her boyfriend was some sort of computer genius, bookmarked it. I didn’t mean it, really. I mean, we’ve only been together a little over two months, and that’s crazy, right? But apparently, Alex had been keeping tabs on my computer specifically for engagement rings. As soon as I looked, he took it as his invitation to propose. Bought the same ring I bookmarked. And even though I would’ve said it was crazy, I didn’t have to think twice about accepting the ring he snuck onto my finger. It was the ring I wanted from the man I wanted. After the engagement party he told me, ‘I was starting to worry I’d have to take Wren shopping with me if you didn’t break soon, because I’m not a patient man when it comes to you.’”
Ames’s voice deepened as she tried to imitate the dark, low voice of her fiancé. Once she finished speaking, she shrugged, as if to sayWhat can you do?But her cheeks were still flushed, happiness radiating from her despite her embarrassment. I couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled out of me, imagining Alex’s pleased face when his phone pinged with Ames’s most recent search.
“It really is beautiful,” I reassured her after we finished our food. Even though we hadn’t even entered October, the cold had started to sneak in, and we sipped coffees after finishing our lunch to combat the chill. “I can’t believe I didn’t get a better look the other night.” Mostly due to the fact that I was too busy getting drunk in an effort to try and ignore the eyes that bored into my back all night.
“About that, I wanted to apologize. Alex and I didn’t mean to leave you stranded without a ride the other night. I totally forgot you didn’t have your car until after you were gone. How did you get home, anyway?”
