Chapter 4 Chapter 4

Roan POV

I hear the front door slam before I even get my boots off, and she catches me the second I'm inside not crying, but close to it, jaw set the way it gets when she's trying not to.

"Wren." I catch her by the shoulders before she walks straight past me into the kitchen. "What happened?"

"Nothing. It's stupid." Sixteen years old, four months out from the accident, and still learning that "nothing" doesn't fool anybody in this house. "Coach cut me from the meet lineup. Said I 'haven't had my head in it lately.'" Her voice cracks on the last word, and I know it's not about the meeting at all.

I don't tell her it's fine, because it isn't, and she'd know I was lying. I just crouched down enough to be at her eye level, the way I've been doing since I moved into the spare room down the hall four months ago, since the night Deacon called me from the hospital and I didn't leave.

"You want to talk about it, or you want to go for a ride and not talk about it?"

She wipes her face with the back of her hand, already steadier. "Ride."

We're out past the county line by dark, no destination, just the two of us and the bike and the kind of quiet that doesn't ask anything of her. When we get back she doesn't say thank you. She doesn't have to. She just leans her head against my shoulder in the driveway for a second before she goes inside, and I stand there another minute before I follow, thinking that somebody should probably tell me what I'm supposed to be to this family now, because I've stopped being just Deacon's friend and I don't have a better word for whatever comes next.

Eight years later, I still don't have a better word. I've just gotten good at not looking for one.

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Deacon slides a mug of black coffee across the table and drops into the chair across from me, giving me that look he does when he's decided this is a conversation whether I want it or not.

"Sasha thinks you're avoiding her."

My head's still paying for last night, and I'm not in the mood for Deacon playing therapist before eight in the morning. He means well. He's just wrong about the timing.

"I am avoiding her."

"Is that fair to her?"

"I've got nothing left to say to somebody who spent three months deciding I wasn't worth the effort and then got mad when I agreed with her." I remember enough of last night to know I told her something close to that, minus the polite phrasing.

Deacon turns his coffee mug slowly, the way he does when he's working up to something. "You gonna be like this forever?"

"Like what?"

"Braced. Like you're waiting for the other shoe."

I don't answer that, because he's not wrong, and there's nothing productive in agreeing out loud. I've watched enough people leave my brother in the ground, my mother three states away and barely calling, every woman who's ever gotten close enough to notice I keep one foot out the door that bracing feels less like a flaw and more like basic maintenance.

"What's got you up this early anyway?" I ask, mostly to move us off the subject.

"Ordering parts. Wren's got some client calls later she's stressed about." He glances toward the hallway, lowers his voice half a register out of habit. "Is she doing okay, you think? Since she got back?"

"She's fine." It's not a lie, exactly. She's fine the way most people are fine mostly, on the surface, with something underneath she hasn't said out loud yet. I've noticed it. I've also noticed I'm the one she tells first when something's actually wrong, same as she has been since she was sixteen, and some mornings that fact sits heavier in my chest than it used to.

"What are you two doing up so early?" Wren appears in the kitchen doorway, hair still sleep-messy, wearing the sweatshirt I left on her doorknob two nights ago over a pair of leggings, sock feet on the cold floor. She reaches up into the cabinet for a mug and the fabric shifts at her waist, and I look back down at my coffee a half second too late to pretend I hadn't noticed.

"I've got a meeting," Deacon says, standing. "Roan had too much to drink so he crashed on the couch. You want pants at some point today?"

"I have pants. I'm making breakfast, not going to work." She rolls her eyes at him, opens the fridge, pulls out eggs. "And since when is Roan company? He's practically got a drawer here."

I do, in fact, have a drawer here. I'm not sure when that happened either.

Deacon downs the last of his coffee and grabs his jacket off the back of the chair. "I'm out. Are you up for the ridge run tomorrow if the weather holds?"

"Always."

"Dad I mean, Deacon, I'm making omelets." Wren catches the slip and doesn't acknowledge it, the way we've all learned not to when someone still occasionally reaches for the parent who isn't there to call. "You want one?"

"No time. I'm sure Roan will eat mine and his both." He presses a quick kiss to the top of her head on his way past, the same easy affection I've watched him give her since she was a kid trying not to cry at a funeral. "Home by four. We'll figure out dinner."

I'm not about to turn down food.

"I could eat," I say.

Wren's omelets are somehow better than anything I've ever managed, folded clean and even like she trained somewhere instead of just paying attention. Mine come out looking like something that lost a fight. She doesn't let me forget it.

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