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“Worth it.”
She smiles self-consciously, looking down at her body. There’s evidence of my work all over her. Her hair is a disheveled mess knotted up in a rat’s nest on top of her head, marred with more streaks of paint. She looks well and truly fucked. It’s the most beautiful I’ve ever seen her—and if I’ve said that before, then sue me, because it’s true every time.
I get to my feet and offer her my hand. “We’ll need to wash off quickly before the paint settles and you look like this forever.”
I guide her to the shower, holding her up so her trembling legs don’t give out beneath her. When we step under the hot shower spray, I keep my hands on her, smoothing them over the paint streaks again and again until the water drips clear.
Wren’s eyes have lost some of their luster when I circle back to look her in the face, though. I frown. “Everything okay?”
Her lip wobbles for a fraction of a second before she sucks it between her teeth. She steps up and folds herself in my embrace. “What are we doing, Dmitri?” she murmurs softly.
The moment the question leaves her lips, I see ghosts. A whole damn horde of them, lurking just beyond the frosted glass of the shower, staring balefully at me in reminder and accusation.
Rose. Jared. Elena.
How cruelly ironic that the losses that helped bring us together might be the same ones that tear us apart.
But only if she finds out.
“I don’t know,” I confess quietly.
Her fingers run from my abs to my chest, then back again. “I’m scared.”
My hand curls around her waist protectively. I know I have to tell her. This is too big a secret to keep hidden. But at the same time, I wonder if maybe that’s exactly why I should shield her from it.
Some truths are too big, too dangerous, too heavy to hold. Especially if the goal is to put them behind you and move on.
“I can protect you, Wren.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” She shudders. “After… after everything, I vowed that I’d never be another man’s mistress. And somehow…” Her eyes travel up to mine. “… I find myself making excuses to be yours.”
I tip her chin up with the crook of my finger. Those eyes are flush with longing, with desire, and yes, there’s fear there, too. Fear most of all. “You already are mine,” I tell her firmly. “There’s no going back now.”
But even as I say it, I can’t help but wonder…
Am I trying to convince her?—
Or myself?
60
WREN
“This is the freaking life.”
Syrah is spread out on one of the freshly unpacked lounge chairs in my newly christened den, a fluffy white towel keeping her hair up, sliced cucumbers over her eyes, and her mani-pedi still gleaming as it dries.
Chuckling, I tuck my blanket in around my legs. “Glad you’re enjoying my baby shower.”
She sits up straighter and removes the cucumbers from her eyes. She pops one into her mouth, ignoring my look of utter disgust, and peeks towards the door cautiously.
“Where’s Bee?” she asks in a low voice.
“Still in the kitchen, apparently.”
“She’s super nice.”
“You seem shocked,” I observe with a laugh.
