Wren’s gaze doesn’t leave me. “She wants me to wear it when I get married.”
That settles between us, and something strange happens in my chest. Heart beating hard and loud, something like an adrenaline rush I’d get on the ice, but firmer. Fuller.
Wren goes on, pushing her fork around her plate, “She’s worried she might not be here when I get married. So she wanted to give it to me now. In case I decide to get married in the future.”
I open my mouth, close it again.
It would be stupid to ask this woman to marry me right now. Objectively, I know that. We’ve only been—fake—dating for four months. I’ve only known her since the start of this hockey season.
Mandy and I courted for weeks before deciding to sign that contract together.
Yeah, a voice in my head supplies, and look how that turned out.
Finally, I manage to get my mouth to say something. “Will you?”
Wren shrugs and glances out the window. “Not sure I would make a great wife, Luca.”
“You would.”
Her eyes snap back to mine, and she holds the contact. The room grows heavy around us. How long can we keep doing this? It’s like there are two sides of my brain at once—the one that insists this thing is fake… and the one that knows the way that I feel about Wren Beaumont.
Like she’s a regular part of my life now. Like she’s a fixture that’s always been here, and would be impossible to live without. I want to wake up next to her every morning, and watch her brush her teeth with ferocity every night.
If that’s not the primary objective of marriage, then I don’t know what is.
But I can’t justtellher that. As strong as she likes to act—and as strong as she is—Wren is flighty. I’ve seen it in conversation time and time again, when we approach the subject of her father, her past.
She doles out the tiniest pieces of information, like she’s afraid I might not be able to handle too much at once. Like she needs to portion herself to be palatable.
“Yeah,” Wren laughs, rolling her eyes and picking up her wine glass. “Right.”
“Wren.” I put my fork down and cross my arms, a deep breath inflating my chest. I’m not going to do something like propose to her, but I can’t sit with her thinking she wouldn’t fit as onehalf of a partnership. “You’re loyal, brilliant, intelligent, funny, beautiful. In what world would you not make a good wife?”
She scoffs, and rolls her eyes, grinning and turning her hand in ago onmotion. Making it into a joke, like I knew she would. “Say more.”
“I will,” I sit forward, needing this to be serious for once, catching her gaze and not letting it go, even when she looks like a deer in the headlights—like I can hear her heart skipping frantically in her chest. “The past few months have been the happiest of my life. Maybe you’re challenging, Wren, and maybe there are some people who can’t handle that, but I’m on the team that believes a challenge is a good thing. That sometimes it’s worth working for the thing you want.”
Her lips part, and she stares at me almost wildly. The expression on her face is equal parts curiosity and trepidation.
But the trepidation wins out, because she breaks the eye contact and pushes back from the table, her chair scraping over the floor.
“Excuse me,” she says, grabbing her napkin and standing. But instead of heading for the door, she turns and walks down the hallway, toward my room.
Our room.
The room we’ve been sharing for months now.
Before I really know what I’m doing, I get to my feet and follow her, walking in through the open door and standing just inside the threshold to stare at her back, watching her shoulders rise and fall steadily.
I should pull back. Like I did on the train that day. I shouldn’t push this any harder, ask Wren for more vulnerability than she’s willing to give me. But, for some reason, this feels different. This feels not like a standoff between me and Wren, but my opportunity to go up against the nebulous other thing—whatever it is, keeping her from thinking she deserves for someone to love her.
As though I haven’t already said enough, as though every word out of my lips to her right now wasn’t just a clear indication thatI’mthe man who wants her challenge… I speak again.
“I think you’d make a great wife, Wren. And I don’t want you marrying anyone else.”
It’s not a proposal. It’s not even anything close to making it clear what’s going on between us—which we desperately need to do. But it’s enough, because she’s already turning around when I step to her. And when we come together, it’s not a crashing or an igniting like when we come home from work or when she slides her hand over to me during a movie.
There’s nothing fast about this. Nothing rushed.
