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)
He studied her, their faces only an inch apart, and his arms still hooked snugly around her back. When he leaned in, she drew back but could only go so far. “Logan—”
His hold tightened. “Just let me try something.” His lips pressed to hers, and her eyes went wide.
His kiss was soft and sensual, the slow kind that begged to go deeper. But she couldn’t go deeper with him.
Turning her cheek, she looked away. “I can’t.”
Neither of them moved for several long seconds as they died in the awkwardness and had to wait to be reborn.
His arms loosened, and she pulled away as soon as he unhooked his hands from her back. Wind whipped at her face, but she was too embarrassed to feel the cold.
“Just tell me one thing, Wren.”
She nodded, her voice having disappeared.
“Would it be any different with Soren or Grey?”
She thought back to the shed and the weight of Greyson’s mouth on her. She recalled how her body responded to his touch, shivering at the memory of him pressing her into the wall. Her cheeks burned when she remembered the way he’d forced her hand over the bulge in his pants. No one had ever been so aggressive with her before. Even now, her body clenched at the intense memory.
But Greyson didn’t want intensity. He regretted touching her at all.
“My relationship with each of you has always been different, but I love each of you equally.”
He glanced at her under a firm brow. “Now, who’s in denial?”
“Soren and I are just—”
“I’m talking about Greyson.”
She couldn’t argue that she and Grey had always had a complicated relationship, but that didn’t make them more than friends. “He doesn’t see me that way.”
He laughed without humor. “If you really believe that, you’re blind.”
CHAPTER 7
“Meet the Stranger Who Has Saved Your Life”
Greyson slammed the ax down, splitting the log in two. Breath gathered into vapor as steam rose from his shoulders. The prior night’s events played like a loop in his head, and he couldn’t figure out where things went wrong.
He’d gone to The Chowder House. Run into Sarah. Had a few drinks. Bought her a round. The chemistry was good and still familiar enough that they knew where the evening would lead. All systems were go, until he paid the tab.
“You wanna get out of here?” she’d asked, leaning in as if to show him the offer on the table. “I’m free all night.”
With a nod, he threw some money on the bar and grabbed their coats. Once outside, he walked her to her car.
“Meet you at my place?”
Where else would they meet? He never brought women back to his cabin because he preferred an exit strategy.
She’d leaned against her car door, waiting for confirmation. He needed to work out his tension, so he was ready to go. But when he kissed her, something felt off. She was too tall, and her hips didn’t fill his hands the way he wanted. Her lips weren’t soft enough. Her perfume was all wrong.
“I can’t. Not tonight,” he said, and she stared up at him in confusion.
Greyson wasn’t one to explain his decisions, but he couldn’t if he wanted to. He needed to get laid. He and Sarah had been down this road several times before. There was no reason not to go home with her. He didn’t even have to stay the night.
But she wasn’t Wren.
Another log split and clattered to the frozen ground. The snow had melted. The storm was a bust. Bodhi was right about the snow predictions. They got three inches, and it melted shortly after it stopped coming down. Crazy old coot.
This was the nonsense that drove him nuts. Science had a purpose, but not to the Wildes. No. They relied on nature’s vibrations, the phases of the moon, and how a leaf might curl when clouds rolled in.
Perhaps Greyson was more like his father than he wanted to admit. Wren’s mother, drove Magnus insane. She’d change vacation plans because Haven pulled a worrisome card from a tarot deck.
Some days, they’d come home from school, and the entire house would be filled with smoke because Haven convinced his mother that negative energy filled the walls.
They were kids back then, so these strange tendencies didn’t concern him, but his father would become enraged, threatening their mother with ultimatums if she didn’t cut off her friendship with Haven.
But no force could come between the women. They had been best friends since childhood. And the more his mother chose Haven over his father, the worse their marriage became.
Greyson set up another log and split it in two, recalling how loud their fighting became at the end. Wren didn’t have any of that at home.
Bodhi loved Haven. She was his entire world. And when she died in the same accident that took their mother, he was never the same. Wren not only had to deal with her own confusing grief as a child, but take care of her father as well.