Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 142214 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 711(@200wpm)___ 569(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142214 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 711(@200wpm)___ 569(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
“Grey, you always have a choice. But sometimes the right choice is the hardest to make.”
He looked down at Rat and grinned at how comfy he looked curled up at the apex of her thighs. Lucky bastard. “Thanks again for coming here with me.”
“Of course.”
“Tomorrow, we’ll do something fun. Soren’s on Dad duty, so I’ve got the day off.”
“Tomorrow’s the Santa Fun Run. We could go into town and bet on the winners.”
“It’s on.”
He carried her bag into the house, surprised to find it silent. Logan appeared in the hall. “Hey Wren.”
She hugged Logan.
“How was he?” Greyson asked, peeking into the den to find his father resting in the adjustable bed.
“I think he tired himself out around the twelfth phone call.” Logan glanced at the floral bag in Grey’s hand. “You staying the night, Wren?”
“I am.”
His brother’s eyes lit up. “Like an old school upside-down day?”
She smiled. “Dig out the waffle maker.”
She made breakfast for dinner for him and his brothers just the way their moms used to. As foolish as it was to eat waffles for dinner while dressed in pajamas, the act healed something in them and Greyson felt a closeness to his brothers and Wren that he hadn’t experienced in years.
After his brothers left, Greyson led Wren to the second floor. The house staff worked quietly downstairs, as they did every night while his father slept. Any cause for alarm, and they’d come get him.
Greyson opened the door to his childhood bedroom and waved Wren inside. She stepped over the threshold and scanned the walls, as if entering a museum, slow and reverent. His heart thudded against his ribs. He could fix a busted engine in an ice storm, and drag a buck out of the woods with his bare hands, but watching Wren look around his teenage bedroom? That disarmed him in ways he wasn’t prepared for.
The faint scent of cedar and damp earth filled the air. That coastal dampness never left Hideaway Harbor, no matter how much furniture polish the maids used. He liked it more than the briny air at sea, because it reminded him of home. Of Wren.
Fishing rods still hung in the corner like sentinels. Lures were framed in shadow boxes, and old tide charts were tacked beside a bulletin board full of yellowed concert tickets and scribbled notes.
Her fingers brushed the edge of the small desk he’d built by hand the summer after the accident. Watching her reverently trace the grain in the wood where he’d carved little fish symbols made him feel like she was caressing etchings along his soul.
“Grey...” She breathed his name, but it wasn’t a word so much as it was a feeling.
A lump formed in his throat as she turned to the bookcase and stilled.
She saw it. And he was going to own it.
“I couldn’t let them go,” he confessed.
Her eyes turned to him, then returned to the collection of treasures. Top shelf, back corner, hidden, but not really. The ribbon from the 4th of July sandcastle competition, which they won when they were young. A tiny photo strip from the boardwalk arcade when their moms took them to the Jersey Shore—her laughing, him pretending to look cool. A smooth heart-shaped stone she’d given him, just because. Her old senior photo—the corners curled upward with time.
She traced a gentle finger over the silver tray holding the dried lily petals from his mom’s funeral. “You kept all this?”
“I kept the parts I wanted to remember,” he said quietly.
She pressed her lips together, eyes shiny, then studied the wall above the bed. Posters still hung from thumbtacks—old rock bands and a boat schematic he’d drawn when he was fifteen, dreaming about starting his own line of high-performance skiffs.
A soft laugh passed her lips. “I remember this.” She read the signed photograph of a local fisherman he’d idolized.
Pinned in the middle of all of it, right between the Eddie Vedder poster and a map of the Atlantic currents, was Wren’s senior prom photo. Except the part where Logan stood behind her had been folded back.
She turned and looked at him questioningly.
“I was jealous,” he admitted before she could ask. “It didn’t matter that he was my kid brother. You were mine.”
She didn’t say anything, but she took it all in.
Lowering onto the old twin bed, her fingers curled into the worn patchwork quilt as the springs softly squeaked. A smile curled her lips as recognition dawned. “My mom made this.”
He nodded. Haven had given each of them a quilt for their tenth birthdays.
She looked back at the prom photo on the wall. “You know, I wanted to go with you.”
“I was twenty. You were still seventeen.”
“People would have understood.”
“I couldn’t.” He shook his head. “I thought about it—a lot—but I couldn’t do it.”
“Why?”
He stepped fully into the room and shut the door. “I didn’t have the words yet.”