Page 52 of The Ex Project (The Heartwood #3)

“Well, I don’t exactly showcase it.” She shifts in her seat, uncrossing her legs and then crossing them again in the opposite direction.

The same habit I have when I’m feeling uncomfortable.

“The only reason I’m telling you is because you should know I did everything I could to protect you from my fate.

I never wanted you to end up like me. I guess I hoped if I did everything right, then Mom and Dad would go easy on you.

” Claire takes a sip of her tea and then stares into her mug.

“I loved that you were your own person, I envied you.”

Claire? Envious of me?

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not. I really did envy you. You marched to the beat of your own drum, at least when you were younger.

Before you were somehow brainwashed into thinking you needed to go into engineering.

You were carefree, artistic, sensitive. I miss that version of my little sister,” Claire says wistfully, her eyes going shiny.

What she’s saying is genuine, but there’s a huge disconnect between what she’s saying now, and what happened after I left for school.

“Then why did you convince Hudson to dump me?” I say, my voice cracking, because thinking back to the pain she caused me reminds me my relationship with Hudson is still perilous.

“What?”

“Don’t play dumb, Claire,” I warn. “I’d rather you were honest about it and owned up to it at this point. Hudson told me what you said to him. Before I came home for Thanksgiving.”

“I don’t even remember that.” She looks genuinely shocked and surprised, confused even. She’s a good actress.

“No? You don’t remember ruining the one good thing I had in my life?

I find it hard to believe.” I scoff. “Hudson said you made it very clear he should push me to follow my dreams, that I should be moving forward and not backward. That I should get everything I want in life. He said you helped him to ‘see the reality’ that he was only going to hold me back.”

“Oh my God.” Claire’s face pales. “Wren, I had no idea that’s how he took it. I swear. I’m such an idiot.” I didn’t think she’d resort to playing dumb, but here we are. I glare at her, trying to read her expression.

“How was he supposed to take it?” I say, my tone indicating it’s a rhetorical question, that anyone would interpret what she said the way Hudson did, but she gives me an answer regardless.

“I meant I wanted him to remind you of what truly made you happy. I wanted him to show you how miserable you were in school, and I hoped you would see that’s not where you were supposed to be.

” Claire shakes her head, her eyes darting around the table in front of her.

It’s as if a thousand tiny puzzle pieces slot into place. “When I said move forward, I meant?—”

“Not doing whatever Mom and Dad wanted me to do,” I finish. Claire looks up at me now, her eyes lined with silver.

“I’m so sorry, Wren. When you didn’t come home, I thought that had been your choice.

That you ended things, and I figured you had made your decision.

” And with those words, it dawns on me that Claire is the only person besides Hudson who’s been on my side all along.

She saw what was going on and respected my choices, treated me like I didn’t need to have my fucking hand held all the time.

“Well, I didn’t. I didn’t get a say in the matter at all. I got thoroughly dumped.” I push a breath out between pursed lips.

“I didn’t know that had even happened. I was trying to help.

It was so hard to watch you struggling, dealing with crippling anxiety and panic attacks because you were going against everything that made you you ,” Claire says.

“I’m sorry,” she repeats, as if the more she says it, the less devastating the outcome might be. But it’s already done.

Claire isn’t the enemy I’ve made her out to be my entire life.

In fact, I wonder if any of this is her fault at all.

Hudson is still on the fence about us, unsure of whether we can make things work for the same reasons as before.

As easy as it would be to make Claire the scapegoat and blame her for our issues, she’s had no involvement this time around.

“You knew about my panic attacks,” I say, and Claire nods.

“Even though I wasn’t officially a doctor yet, they did teach us about it in med school. What panic attacks look like, how to recognize them in someone,” she explains.

“So, you also knew I wasn’t having an asthma attack then?” My tone has a hint of a bite in it.

“I mean, it takes more than looking at someone across a table to know what’s really going on with them,” she says. “But I had a suspicion, yeah.”

“You never thought to bring it up with me?” Now that I’m finally learning this new aspect of myself, I only wish I had known about it sooner. I might have been able to spare myself from a lot of turmoil had I been able to find the right resources.

“We never had a close relationship. You’ve always shut me out, and so I had no way of trying to help you. I thought getting to Hudson would be the key to getting you to listen,” Claire explains.

“Yeah, that plan backfired,” I deadpan, but a moment later, my mouth twitches up into the smallest smile. A matching one forms on my sister’s face. I let out a long sigh. “The last few weeks in Heartwood are the happiest I’ve been in a long time, besides Mom and Dad basically disowning me?—”

“They what?” Claire interrupts, aghast .

“Story for another time.” I wave in a don’t worry about it motion before continuing.

“No, we’re not skimming over that.” Claire’s eyes look like mine when I get angry, glowing amber, and now I understand how intense I look when I’m upset, too. “Mom and Dad are so fucked up.”

“Here I was thinking you were always their little pet.” I don’t hide my eye roll, though it’s more playful than the way I’ve rolled my eyes at Claire in the past.

“God no.” She shakes her head in disbelief. “It took me a long time to realize it, but they’re flawed people, too. They don’t know everything. Nobody has it all figured out, and sometimes the people who claim they do are the most insecure of anyone.”

I nod, trying to understand what Claire is telling me.

“Mom once confided in me that Dad got kicked out as a teenager.”

“What?” I blurt out, nearly spilling my tea. We never knew Dad’s parents growing up, and I guess now I know why.

“I don’t know all the specifics. It sounds like Dad was a rowdy teenager, a little like you. You scared him, Wren. You showed him all the parts of himself he thought were wrong.”

“Oh” is the only word my brain can form as it wraps itself around this new information.

I never knew this about my family. I never asked.

But Claire has almost four years on me, and it stands to reason she saw things from a different perspective.

There’s so much understanding I’ve been missing out on because I refused to talk to her like this.

“He fought for everything he has now, you know. Put himself through business school at night while working two jobs, and then law school the same way. He never wanted us to have to do that, too. So, as fucked up as he can be, I do think he has good intentions.”

A silence stretches between us as we both sit and consider the weight of what she’s told me.

“So, what’s going on with you and Hudson now?” she finally asks.

“Now …” My voice trails off as I think about our conversation.

The road ahead of us. The uncertainty of our relationship.

“We’re still working through the same shit.

But we’ve been through it before, and I’d like to think we both know what’s at stake, what we have to lose if we don’t figure it out.

I’d like to believe we’ve both grown and developed new skills.

I can’t bear the thought of losing him.” Claire nods, contemplating what I’ve said, and I take a drawn-out sip of my tea. “He’s worried we’re incompatible.”

“Well, that’s fucking stupid,” Claire barks.

“You two are the only compatible people I know. I know what incompatible looks like, and it’s not you and Hudson.

You may have your own insecurities to work through, but he gets you, Wren.

He always has. That’s why I always liked him.

He let you be exactly who you wanted to be. ”

“Try telling him that,” I say with a slight eye roll. “Actually, don’t. Clearly, you two don’t communicate well.”

Claire laughs.

“Yeah, I’ll leave it up to you this time.” She throws her hands up in a leave me out of it gesture , and I heave a sigh.

“We may be compatible, but I worry I did a lot of damage when we broke up. I never considered how Hudson felt about it at the time.”

“Like you said, you’ve both grown since then. You’re different people now,” Claire reminds me.

“It’s been so good with him since I’ve been back. Even with everything going on, none of it felt too big, or too scary, because I had Hudson on my side. He had my back, you know. A real teammate. And that made me feel like we could conquer anything.”

“Slow down there, Miller.” A deep, groggy voice says from behind me.

I pivot in my seat to see Hudson, hair rumpled, walking down the stairs, his IV bag in hand.

It’s almost empty, and the colour has started to return to his cheeks.

“I might need a day or two before I can do any conquering.” Hudson approaches me from behind, and wraps a forearm around me, bending down to give me a peck on the cheek.

“I don’t want to lose you either, Wren. Whatever we need to do, we’ll figure it out,” he murmurs in my ear, and a warmth blooms in my chest. It’s relief, and hope, and joy all at once. “Same team.”

“I would be careful about doing any smooching for a while. If it is a virus, he’ll still be contagious,” Claire remarks, and because I’m still Wren Miller, and she’s still Claire, I stick my tongue out at her before turning my head and planting a warm, wet kiss on Hudson’s mouth.

Because I don’t care about germs in this moment, all I care about is Hudson.

And besides, I’m a Miller, and I’m not going to let a stupid little virus hold me back from getting what I want.