I finish applying the last piece of moleskin and slide on her socks.
“There, you should be good to keep going now. We can change it again for the hike back down later.” She looks up at me with an expression I can’t exactly read. Gratitude, but also skepticism. Like she doesn’t know why I’m helping her. Wren obviously still doesn’t trust me. I’m hoping by the end of today, once I can explain myself, that might change.
She puts her boots back on and smiles when she takes a few steps with no pain.
“That stuff is amazing.” Wren smiles, and God, the light radiating from her when she does, it’s like staring into the sun. I don’t even care that I’m blinded by it.
I would go the rest of my life blinded by Wren’s light if it meant I got to see her smile every day.
We keep walking for another half-hour or so. The summer sun is now high in the sky, but the forest provides cool, refreshing shade as we hike. We stop occasionally for water, and Wren readily offers hers to Ruby, squirting some out of the bottle in a stream for her to lap up.
By midday, we’re nearing the end of the hike, and coming closer to the moment I have to tell Wren how much I’ve missed her. Why I let it all go. Why I let her go. My heart shudders in my chest as we reach the clearing, the trees part, opening up to the backside of the mountain. Rolling hills stretch on for acres covered with bursts of bright colours.
This time of year is peak wildflower season, and it’s breathtaking. The wildflowers always make me think of her. They’re tenacious, they continue to flower evenafter a harsh winter. They grow in the most arid terrain; they bloom where they’re planted.
Wren lets out a gasp when she comes to a halt next to me, and I glance down at her. I’ve seen this view a thousand times and it never gets any less beautiful. Even still, the only thing I catch myself staring at is her.
Wren Miller. My wildflower.
CHAPTER 20
WREN
I haveno air left in my lungs. This view is … it’s incredible. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
“Why didn’t I know about this place?” I say, sort of a whisper under my breath. “I lived here for eighteen years, and I never knew about this. We came up this way all the time,” I add, thinking about the swimming hole that is more easily accessed from the other trailhead. We used to spend every summer there together, and yet we never thought to venture over here.
“I only found it the summer after you left,” Hudson says, and it feels like there is more to the story about how he discovered it that he isn’t saying. “I used to come up here a lot. I’ve wanted to show it to you for a long time.”
How many little moments have made him think of me? I get the distinct impression it happens a fair bit. Guilt stabs at my gut.
Hudson was the one to break up with me, but I was the one to leave first, wasn’t I? I’ve spent so much time hatinghim for how he ended things, I haven’t stopped to consider what my role was in our breakup. What it was like for him.
“It’s beautiful.” And it is. Even I can admit that dinner at a fancy restaurant wouldn’t have ever compared to this. It lights me up and calms my soul all at the same time.
“There’s more. Come on.” Hudson twines his hand through mine, sending a shiver up my arm and all the way through my core. His rough, calloused hand is familiar as he leads me down the trail further to a clearing. A small patch of grass with the perfect vantage point to admire the flowers.
Ruby has already taken to rolling around on it, kicking her legs up in the air and creating a cloud of dust and dried blades of grass. I let out a laugh as she gets up, covered in grass and twigs. A fallen wildflower is lodged in her fur, right behind her ear, making it look like she meant to put it there as an accessory.
It’s so freaking cute. I feel bad for being so standoffish towards Ruby when I first met her. I was closed off to anyone and everyone, human or animal. Anything that provided joy felt like wasted time, a distraction from what I should be focused on, everything I should be accomplishing.
But there’s something healing about Ruby. Her constant smile and happy tail wag. It’s like she has no cares in the entire world, and sometimes I wish I could be more like her. Being around her makes me feel like one day I can be.
Hudson has taken off his backpack and is rifling through it again. He pulls out a rolled-up blanket and starts spreading it out on the ground. Sitting on it, he draws his knees up, one elbow resting on each leg. I take the spot next to him, folding my legs underneath me, criss-cross. I twirl a wildflower Ipicked between my fingers, fidgeting with it in my lap. The July sun warms my face as I close my eyes, the soft breeze picking up the wispy hairs around my face, tickling my cheeks.
I breathe in.
I breathe out.
There’s a space growing inside the walls of my chest. I haven’t felt it in so long, probably since the last time Hudson and I were doing this same sort of thing together. Over ten years of feeling a tension in my body that made itself at home to the point where I hardly even recognized its presence.
“This is so peaceful. I could spend all day here.”
“You can, if you want to.” Hudson reaches behind him and into the backpack again, this time pulling out a lunch bag. When he empties the contents onto the blanket, I see he’s packed enough snacks to last the entire afternoon. He’s even brought chilled beer, which he cracks for both of us, and the cool liquid on my throat is refreshing.
“All I keep thinking is that this would make such a beautiful painting.” I take another inhale, this time smelling the sweet, floral fragrance of the valley floating on the wind. When I open my eyes, Hudson has placed some supplies in front of me on the blanket. There’s a book, slightly different from the one I have at home, but leather-bound and aged. When I pick it up, I notice my monogrammed initial in the corner. “You kept this?”
It was a sketchbook I gave him before I left, filled with drawings and small paintings. Some of him, some of us. But all from memories we shared together. Like a scrapbook ofevery beautiful day we spent together in our youth, the memories perfectly imperfect and preserved on paper.
