Page 27 of The Ex Project (The Heartwood #3)

HUDSON

The summer heat is already setting in when I pull up in front of Wren’s house to pick her up. It took me the whole morning to work up the nerve not to cancel the date. So many questions undermined the confidence I had when I made the bet.

Would Wren like what I have planned? Does she even want to spend time with me at all?

What if things between us are awkward since the kiss?

She was stunned when I pulled away from her.

Normally I can read the emotions that pass over Wren’s face—she wears them plain as day—but after the kiss, I couldn’t.

She did agree to come today, so it couldn’t have been all that bad.

From my perspective, the kiss wasn’t bad at all. It was … everything.

I don’t have time to dwell on it any longer because Wren has seen the truck in the driveway and is walking down the front steps, a shiny dark ponytail bouncing high on her head, her backpack slung over both shoulders.

It relieves me to see she’s dressed practically—denim cut-off shorts showing off her tanned legs, and an old familiar t-shirt.

She must have found it in her closet. It’s the same one she used to wear when we were teens. I recognize it right away because it’s an old one of mine. I forget she held onto it.

Something about her today is eerily reminiscent of the Wren I once knew, that I once loved. I yank myself back to reality, out of my drifting thoughts, and hop out of the truck to come around and open the door for her.

“Good morning.” I greet her with an uncontainable smile.

There’s magic in the air today, something sizzling between us.

Maybe it’s the knowledge that we’re going to one of our old haunts.

Maybe it’s the way Wren looks this morning that has sucker punched my heart and sent me ten years back in time.

Or maybe it’s a new tension between us since our kiss.

Whatever it is, it feels good. Electric .

“Morning!” she says cheerfully, her voice almost a song. She feels it, too. The magic.

“Are you ready for the best date of your life?”

Wren’s mouth twists as she squints her eyes at me.

“I’m skeptical. None of my best dates have started with ‘bring comfortable shoes.’”

“Well, this one does.” I swing the passenger door open and watch as Wren climbs up into the truck, her denim shorts hugging the curve of her ass, showing off a sliver of the soft bit of skin at the top of her thigh. My gaze lingers, travelling down her leg and stopping at the boots she’s selected.

“Those boots look brand new. Are you sure you’re going to be comfortable?” I ask her, earning myself a vicious glare over her shoulder .

“I’ll be fine. Aren’t these shoes known for being comfortable?”

“I mean … yeah, eventually. But those look brand new, and they usually take some breaking in. Did you buy them for this? You would have had to go all the way to Calgary last night to get them. That’s a lot of effort to go to for a date you’re only on because you lost a bet.

” I can’t help the smirk playing on my lips, thinking of Wren preparing for this.

Wren sticks her tongue out at me.

“You wish,” she says, flopping down on the passenger seat. And she’s right, I do wish. I wish she wasn’t here because she lost our game of beer pong. I wish she was as excited about this date as I am. But at this point, I’ll take anything I can get with Wren.

As I close the door, Wren turns in her seat and greets Ruby, who has stuck her head between the seats and can hardly contain herself. She gives her some loving scratches behind her ear, a far cry from the greeting she gave her the first time they met at my apartment.

I can’t help but wonder what has changed. I can’t help but wonder about a lot of the changes I see in Wren today. Whatever it is, she’s lighter; even the way she glared at me felt a lot more unserious than it has in the past.

The drive to the old forestry road is almost … peaceful, and the silence hanging between us isn’t uncomfortable. Wren is staring out the passenger window, watching the trees go by, but her head snaps towards me when we pull onto the road that will take us to the location of our date.

“Here?” Wren asks, and there’s a hint of hesitation in her voice. Almost like trepidation at venturing into old territory, an area that holds so many memories for us. The old swimming hole. “That explains the bathing suits, I guess.”

“Maybe.” I pull the truck over to the side of the road when we get to the big metal gate that closes the rest of the forestry road off to regular traffic.

“But you know we never cared much for bathing suits.” I wink at her as I throw the truck in park.

A pink flush spreads up Wren’s neck to her cheeks, shading them the same colour as her rosebud pink lips.

Before she can answer with something snarky, I hop out of the truck and open the back door to let Ruby out. There’s no one else out here, and Ruby doesn’t wander very far. She’s my ‘velcro dog’ as I like to call her, so I let her roam around and sniff on the side of the gravel road.

Wren follows suit and jumps out of the passenger side, rounding the back of the truck where I’m opening the tailgate and gathering the supplies I brought.

“So, what about the toothbrush then?” Wren asks, and I cock my head at her. Sensing my question, she clarifies, “The toothbrush on the list?”

“Oh yeah.” I forgot I put that on there.

It was mostly to throw her off what we were doing today.

So was the bathing suit, now that I think of it.

I sling my hiking pack over one shoulder, grab Ruby’s leash, and start walking towards the trailhead.

Not the one Wren knows, a different one I found about a year after she left.

“You’re leaving me here for dead, aren’t you?” Wren says, slightly out of breath from trying to keep up with me. “ When they find me, my body will be rotting, but my teeth will be sparkling.”

“You’re not going to rot out here,” I mutter before whistling for Ruby to follow. She’s caught the scent of something and started going off in the opposite direction. I find the trailhead and turn off the road into the trees with Wren close at my heels.

“Well, this isn’t the trail to the swimming hole, so God only knows where you’re taking me.”

“There’s something I want to show you,” I admit.

The truth is, I come here often with Ruby.

She loves the hike, and for some reason, coming out here over the years has made me feel close to Wren, even though she and I had never visited this place together.

The moment I found this spot, I knew she would love it, and ever since, I’ve been waiting to show it to her.

Hoping she would come back, and I could.

Now that I’m here with her, it feels vulnerable, like I’m showing her exactly how much I’ve thought about her over the last ten years. It’s embarrassing, and I wonder if I should have saved this date for another time. When she isn’t here out of obligation.

The trail winds through the evergreens, climbing and climbing, veering away from the swimming hole we used to frequent.

The smell of dried pine needles in the sun is earthy and warm, and they crunch beneath our feet as we walk.

Wren’s been panting softly behind me most of the way, but I turn when I can’t hear her anymore.

She’s stopped about twenty paces back, squirming in her boots, adjusting them.

“Something wrong, Miller?” I ask, even though I know exactly what’s wrong .

“Nothing’s wrong!” she says, her voice reaching an octave that tells me she’s lying.

“It looks like your boots are bothering you,” I offer, my voice teasing and light.

“No, no, I’m fine. Catching my breath for a second,” she insists.

“It looks to me like you don’t want to take another step. Maybe … because your boots aren’t broken in.” Wren glances between me and her feet a few times. A wave of determination crosses her features as she attempts to take a step towards me. She visibly winces when she tries to take another.

“If your shoes aren’t the problem, why don’t you walk over to me, and I can help you figure out what’s hurting?”

“Okay. Okay. Fine. These boots are fucking killing me. I’m sorry, Hudson, I can’t go any further,” Wren whines, and Ruby is instantly by her side, pushing her head up against Wren’s leg. I walk back along the trail and set my backpack down once I get close.

“Here, sit.” Wren, surprisingly, complies and sits down on a large rock to the side of the trail. “Let me look.” I crouch down in front of her and slowly take her boots off, one at a time. The action is strangely intimate, and I let my fingers graze her ankle as I slide off her socks.

She takes a sharp inhale as my fingertips trace the length of her foot, examining it for injuries. All I find is that silver toe ring. It loops around her second toe, the silver metal meeting in the middle on the top and curling away in an artsy spiral.

“It’s the back, my heels,” she says, shifting so she can look. There are two large raw patches, blisters that have been rubbed down and now look angry and sore.

“This looks awful. Why didn’t you say something sooner?” I say, but not in a scolding way, just a compassionate one. Because that’s all I’m feeling right now. Hurt that Wren was plodding along, trying to keep up when she had to be in so much pain.

“I didn’t want to …” Her voice trails off, but I catch the break at the end of her sentence.

“I didn’t want you to think I can’t keep up.

Because I can. I’d be ten paces ahead of you if it weren’t for these damn boots.

” This is Wren’s default setting. Always be the strongest, the best in the room. Never show your weaknesses.

I glance up at her from where I’m crouched.

I search her face for some sort of explanation, but I’ve seen this expression before, any time she’s lost one of our little games.

The subtle downturn of her mouth and the line between her dark brows tell me she is more bothered by admitting defeat than she lets on.

“I’m happy to help, Miller. I have just the thing for this.

” I grab my backpack and slide it over on the forest floor, digging around in it until I find my first aid kit.

I always have it on me, and in my line of work as a firefighter, I stock it with far more than the average person would.

I finally find what I want and hold it up to show Wren.

“What is it?” she says, peering curiously at the role of pink foam I have in my hands.

“Moleskin,” I answer, taking out some scissors to cut a piece to size. “It’ll protect the blister and stop it from getting worse. Plus, it’ll pad the area so you can keep walking in your boots.”

“Oh good, I was worried I might have to take another one of your piggyback rides,” she teases. “You should make people sign waivers before you offer them one.”

I flash her a withering glare, and then my eyes snap back to the toe ring on her foot.

“You still have that,” I say, nodding my head towards it. Her leg tenses and flexes as if she might pull it away.

“Yeah, I uh, I like it,” she stammers. I don’t often see Wren nervous like this, and I have to admit I’m enjoying it.

“I remember when you got it,” I tell her, cutting a second piece of moleskin for her other heel.

“The summer I decided I wasn’t going to wear shoes.” She chuckles, a soft chuckle, like sweet nostalgia and disbelief that we were ever so young and carefree.

“That was a good summer.” It was the summer we first kissed.

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was teasing her, as I always did, lying on the roof outside her bedroom window, watching the stars.

What I was teasing her about has since been forgotten, because the memory of her lips on mine eclipsed it.

Whatever it was resulted in me tickling her ribs until she was laughing and out of breath, and I put my lips on hers to give her mine.

Her gaze is locked on me now, searching my face for what, I don’t know. I don’t care. The way she’s looking at me makes me wonder if she thinks about that summer too.

“It was good,” she says, and I swear the corner of her mouth quirks up, though it’s almost imperceptible. But there’s no denying that her eyes sparkle .

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 even after 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.