Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 99399 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99399 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
I wanted to freeze time and watch him here in his element, in his comfort and happiness, in the safety of his anonymity, until he’d drunk his fill. Until he felt whole forever.
I sucked in a deep breath as the truth hit me, not like a punch but like warm rays of sunlight once the clouds finally moved aside and allowed it to shine.
Fucking Christ, I’m in love with him.
Part of me wanted to immediately backtrack. To throw up a million roadblocks. I’d avoided Wolfe for so long, I barely knew him anymore. His fathers would lose their minds. He was young, and I wasn’t. It couldn’t be true, therefore it wasn’t.
But what I’d seen couldn’t be unseen. And I was tired of running from it.
I loved Wolfe Marian. So deep down in the marrow of my bones, I could barely breathe from the fullness of it.
I didn’t know how or when it had happened. Maybe the spark had been ignited six years ago and had steadily grown into a roaring blaze while I pretended I couldn’t see it. Maybe the tinder I’d laid long ago had caught fire in one fell swoop the night of our kiss. Or maybe it was seeing him here, away from everything familiar, that had suddenly burned down my resistance once and for all.
Regardless, it was the truth.
Wolfe glanced up and met my eyes, the fire flickering the green from deep forest moss to early spring grass with hints of summer sun. I could only imagine what he saw in mine that made his suddenly widen. Love? Overwhelming need? Stark terror? There was no telling.
“He’s really good, isn’t he?” Claudia murmured, leaning toward me.
I swallowed as Wolfe’s eyes moved back to the strings. “So fucking good,” I breathed.
When the song ended, he moved right into another. Lena recognized it and started singing again. This tune was more upbeat.
I have a secret that no one knows
When the world feels heavy there’s a place I go
Where the salmon runs free and the honey flows…
I recognized it as a newer Zee Barlo song, one I’d only heard a couple of times. It sounded different sung in Lena’s feminine voice.
But then, to my surprise, Wolfe joined her on the chorus.
His voice was both new and familiar. New, because I’d never heard Wolfe Marian sing like this, all deep-toned and sultry. Familiar because this was the voice of Fletcher Coe… and anyone who followed him on social media like I did could recognize it.
I stared at him, at how easy and free he was as he played and sang. No one had ever seen Fletcher’s face. Why in the world would he risk being recognized like this?
Jake pulled up his phone to record a video, and I leaned forward in my seat as if to stop him, when Wolfe simply… stopped singing. His voice faded out midway through a stanza as if that was always his intention, but I could tell he’d made a conscious choice to stop.
Jake continued recording for a few moments before stopping, presumably to send it to his sister. When he finally slipped the phone back in his pocket, Wolfe’s eyes closed in relief for just a microsecond. No one else would have caught it, but I’d been clocking his discomfort level all night.
If this was how mindful Wolfe needed to be when just having fun with friends by a campfire, what the fuck was his life even like trying to keep this huge secret? It had to be impossible.
God, how fucking lonely must he be?
After several songs, he returned the guitar to Brennan and accepted everyone’s compliments with a shy smile and a dismissive flick of his hand.
I stood and grabbed his water bottle from where it had been left on the ground next to Jake’s chair. I handed it to him, staying on my feet a moment longer than necessary.
He flashed me a grateful smile with a murmured thanks.
“No, thank you,” I said softly, biting back the term of endearment that wanted to swan dive so easily off my tongue. “That was beautiful.”
Wolfe twisted the cap off the bottle in two quick rotations. His fingers weren’t quite steady, which surprised me.
I watched him tip the bottle back and drink, his eyes sliding closed for just a moment as if gathering his composure. When he lowered the bottle, a small drop caught the firelight at the corner of his mouth, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.
Tension flooded back into his frame, as if the guitar had been the only thing keeping it at bay. And the second he set the water bottle on his knee, his thumbnail found the side of his index finger again in that slow, repetitive tell.
What the hell is going on with him? Whatever it was seemed to only be getting worse. It wasn’t Jake’s presence. He seemed to like the guy and was obviously willing to talk to him.