“Nothing,” I force out, willing my voice to return to normal. “Nothing—I’m justsoexcited for The Sweetheart Train.”
He looks at me like he doesn’t quite believe that, but hooks his arm through mine anyway, murmuring for me to be careful on the icy steps as we climb them together.
Luca
The Sweetheart Train is exactly what it sounds like, and more. We’re greeted with champagne and strawberries, which reminds me of our first date.
Our firstfakedate.
But something happened in the parking lot, and it’s thrown Wren off her usual frequency. I watch her as we tuck into our little train car, sitting down across from one another, a small pine table between us.
“So, what’s the scenery?” she asks, her hands moving jerkily, a bit of her champagne sloshing up and over the side of her glass. I stare at the little droplet as it tracks a path down the cup, thenpick up a napkin and hand it to her, watching as she absent-mindedly pats at it.
It’s like I can hear her heartbeat. Wren doesn’t normally get rattled like this—in fact, other than that night at my parents, I’ve never seen her unintentionally let her emotions come to the surface.
So, I’ve gotten good at reading her little tells. Rather than crying when she’s sad, she just gets quiet. Instead of yelling when she’s angry or frustrated, she starts picking at her fingernails. And when anyone else might flush red with embarrassment or start to stammer, Wren turns up the charm, like her fight-or-flight just makes her even more socially capable.
But right now I’m seeing something of her that I haven’t before. She’s fidgeting, looking nervous, her eyes flying to the window despite the fact that there’s nothing out there but trees moving slowly past the glass as the train starts to roll along.
I open my mouth to ask if she’s okay, but I know her better than that. Asking that would be too direct, and too easily avoided. You can’t ask Wren Beaumont if she’s okay. She’ll leave you at the end of the conversation wondering why you asked in the first place. How you could assume she was anything other than okay.
So, maybe the truth is thatAre you okay?isn’t direct enough.
“What happened in the parking lot?”
Her gaze flies to mine, and she blinks rapidly. For the first time since I met her, I see a little patch of red on her chest, a physical reaction to whatever is going on here.
“What?” She tries to deflect, but it’s a lot sloppier than what I’d usually expect from her.
I’ve spent hours talking to this woman, spent countless meetings sitting across from her and debating team issues. She’s gone toe-to-toe with a six-foot NHL forward, and never had a reaction like this.
Before I can try again, or press the issue, she opens her mouth, and I stop, giving her a chance to talk. If I’m honest, the way she’s acting is worrying me—what could have happened in the parking lot to make her act like this? Did she see something—or someone—that upset her?
“I’m sorry,” she says, dropping her gaze to her hands. “It’s embarrassing.”
“What’s embarrassing?”
“It’s not afearof trains, exactly,” she says, laughing in a self-deprecating way and flicking her gaze up to mine. “But I just get kind of queasy on them, I guess. There was this one time in Germany, when…”
I stare at her, blood rushing in my ears.
She’s lying to me. I know she is. Six months ago, I would have jumped on this as an opportunity to learn more about her. I would have pushed, and if she didn’t tell me, I would have tried to figure it out on my own.
Just like when I followed her after work. When I hired that detective to compile information about her for me.
But now it’s not just that I want to know. It’s that I want Wren to be able to tell me. I want her to feel like I’m a safe person to talk to. When something happens to her, I want to be the first person she thinks of telling about it.
“…so, anyway. You get it,” she finishes.
“Yeah.” I flash her a smile, watching her eyes skip over my face, knowing she’s reading the tiny lie here behind my expression. I wonder if it’s always going to be like this between us, both of us not quite getting close to the truth, and both of us knowing that’s the case, even without saying it. “I get it.”
“Okay,” she says, and when she smiles, I know she’s hearing what I’m really saying. I get it. I get that she doesn’t want to share right now.
And I hope that, at some point in the future, she’ll want to tell me.
As Wren continues sipping on her champagne, the tension from the moment slips away and we ease into the date. We laugh and trade jokes, enjoying the breakfast course that comes out first.
“Okay,” she says, leaning back in her seat, resting a hand on her belly. “If I’d know this was going to be a bunch of eating, I would have brought my sweatpants.”
