Wren’s hand found mine and we laced fingers over my chest. I didn’t think I needed to say more about yesterday, the way she held my hand told me she understood more than any words could, so I told her what I’d been meaning to for a while, instead.
“It probably doesn’t make much sense to you, the way Dani’s death affected me. I know Momma Von has told you a little bit. But she wasn’t just my cousin, Wren—she was my sister, my best friend, the only one in the world who saw good in me when I wasn’t even sure it actually existed. Sometimes we butted heads over it, because she wanted more for me. Hell, she demanded it. And I felt like I always fell short.”
I still remembered nights I’d come home too drunk to form full sentences and Dani would rip into me, asking me if that was all I wanted for my life. She and Aunt Rose always bailed me out when I blew my paycheck on partying or ended up in jail for something stupid, but where Aunt Rose looked at me with pity in her eyes, as if I was born that way and would never change, Dani looked at me with determination.
She wanted answers, wanted me to dig deep and find the root of my problems to expose them, kill them, replace them with the better side of me that only Dani saw.
That part of my heart was still raw, and I rubbed my chest with the thumb under Wren’s, smoothing out the ache. I wasn’t ready to go there yet.
“She used to do these words of the day. Every day at breakfast she’d tell us the new word and the definition, and then we’d all have to use it in a sentence. Of course, she and Aunt Rose actually did it correctly while I usually aimed for somewhere between ridiculous and offensive.”
I felt Wren’s lips smile against my chest and she placed a tender kiss there.
“One day the word was revelry. I forget the exact meaning of it now, but it was something along the lines of rowdiness. Basically, it encompassed everything that I was—loud, drunk, obnoxious.” I chuckled. “She said if ever there was a word made for me, that was it. And so my nickname was born. Rev.”
Just the sound of it from my own mouth made me tense, and Wren gripped my hand a little tighter, her soft skin like silk against my course palm. I didn’t know what else to say, so for a while, I just held her. We breathed, and the sun rose a little higher, the sheets grew a little warmer. It was nice, just existing with her, and even though I’d barely told her anything, I already felt lighter, like I’d shed five pounds of pressure from each shoulder.
I was so tired, as if what’d I’d told her had given my body permission to rest. I closed my eyes, my hand slowing where it still ran through her hair, and my breathing steadied. But then, she spoke.
“What you said about feeling like you always fell short,” she started, her voice soft, almost a whisper. “I get that.”
She sighed, leaning up on her elbow so she could look down at me. Her hair pulled away from my hand and fell like a curtain over her bare shoulder and onto mine. Her eyes were so bright, the gold tangling with the green even more than usual in the morning light.
“Anderson, I’m mourning the loss of someone I love, too.”
The hand that had been playing with her hair needed something to hold, so I slid it down to her hip, pulling her closer. So that was it, I thought. She lost the guy she loved. That’s why I saw death in her eyes.
But it wasn’t that simple.
“The sad thing is, he’s still alive.”
I furrowed my brows, watching as her face twisted in pain. I didn’t know what she meant, but I pulled her even closer, our hands resting over my chest still laced together.
“I married my high school sweetheart, Keith, when we were twenty. He was my everything. He was absolutely all that I felt I’d ever need in my life.” She shook her head, and now her eyes were on where our hands stuck together. She wouldn’t look at me. “It’s a long story, one I’m sure you don’t want to know, but over time, our love changed. More specifically, his love changed. It became conditional.”
I thought it had been difficult to show her my demons, but as she undressed hers in front of me, I found the lump forming in my throat even harder to swallow. I knew it from the first time I saw her—those eyes hid pain, they hid fear—and she trusted me enough to show me why.
“I didn’t see it at first, but every day I slipped further from who he thought I should be as a wife.” She shrugged, and her eyes welled with tears I knew would fall if she so much as blinked. “He was working hard to make his dreams as a dentist come true, and I was working at mine to open my own boutique. But the more my dreams took off while his grew only slowly, restricted by school and processes with many setbacks along the way, the more he resented me.” She sniffed, resisting a blink. “I didn’t think it would ever matter to him, that I made more or that I was well known. I’d always seen us as a team. But I’d travel for fashion shows or explore boutiques in other cities with Adrian and Keith would be stuck doing residency at school or, when he opened his practice, working to build clientele. He couldn’t go with me, and so he blamed me. I wasn’t home at night to listen to him tell me how his day was. I was too busy doing what made me happy.”
My heart ached right under where she rested against my chest. This smart, beautiful, driven woman, who was one in a million, was ashamed of everything that made her so.
“And you know what? Maybe he was right. Maybe I did fail him. Maybe I’m not fit to be a wife.”
Her voice quivered a little and I pulled my hand from hers to brush the pad of my thumb against her cheek. That’s all it took for her to squeeze her eyes closed and let two symmetrical tears fall. Those tears were linked to the knot in my throat and I forced a swallow.
“Why would you ever think you aren’t fit to be a wife, Wren?”
“Because,” she said automatically, her voice weak, eyes still closed as she leaned into my hand. “No matter how I tried, I could never be what he needed. Failure is my biggest fear, and every single day I failed him in some way. I watched the love drain from his eyes for years.” She sniffed, and I gritted my teeth against the urge to lash out about a man I didn’t know. “When it all ended, he called me selfish. He said I would never make a husband happy as his wife. At first I was angry and sad, but honestly, he’s right. I am selfish.”
I leaned up, cradling her small face between my hands. “What makes you selfish, huh? Because you have a dream and you fight for it?”
“Maybe,” she argued. “If I loved him the way I was supposed to, shouldn’t I have dropped everything for him? Shouldn’t I have put his dreams above my own?”
“What was stopping him from being happy? Not just with his career, but with you?” I shook my head, thumb lining the soft skin of her cheek. “Wren, if he loved you, he would have been proud of you. He would have supported you the same way you supported him. You can be married and still have dreams of your own. It’s about being a team in all aspects, not just the ones that benefit him.”
She opened her eyes then, wet lashes framing them as she looked at me again. She watched me for a moment, as if I’d said what she’d been feeling all along, like my words had validated her, or maybe like she didn’t believe me at all.
“So he asked for a divorce?” I asked, wanting her to keep talking.