7
1362 Words
Wren
"Absolutely not," I said.
"Absolutely yes," Caius said, and kept walking, and since he had my hand in his and he was built like the north wind, I kept walking too.
He had appeared at my bedroom door that morning, freshly shaved, thank the Goddess, announcing that he had consulted the same internet articles as Darius and discovered the next stage of heartbreak recovery.
"Ice cream, movie, shopping," he recited. "It's science, Wren. Who am I to argue with science?"
Which is how I ended up in the middle of the town square on a bright Saturday morning, being towed toward the row of boutiques I had spent the last two years avoiding.
I dug my heels in outside the first shop. In the big front window stood a mannequin in a wrap dress the color of red wine, and my stomach did the thing it always did. The clench. The instant, automatic no.
"Caius. Let's just get lunch."
"After."
"I don't need clothes."
"Everything in your closet was bought for a girl trying to disappear next to Kellan Vayne." He said it easily, no pity in it, and it landed harder for that. "I've seen your closet, Wren. It's forty shades of shadow. New life, new clothes. In we go."
The shop smelled like lavender and new fabric. A saleswoman lit up at the sight of Caius, because women always lit up at the sight of Caius, and he ignored her completely and started pulling things off racks like a man on a mission. The wine-colored wrap dress. A green one with a sweep to the skirt. Something soft and golden that looked like it was made of afternoon light.
I stood by the fitting rooms with my arms crossed over my body, the old armor, and finally said the quiet thing out loud.
"Caius, stop. Please." My voice came out smaller than I wanted. "You're wasting your money. Dresses like that are not for girls like me. I'm too big for beautiful dresses. I always have been. Can we please just go before this gets embarrassing?"
Caius stopped.
He turned around slowly, holding the golden dress, and for once in his life there was no joke anywhere on his face. He looked at me for a long moment, and then he said, calm as anything,
"Then we'll buy dresses that deserve you."
I blinked. "What?"
"You heard me." He draped the dress over my arms. "You've got it backwards, sweetheart. You've had it backwards for years, because a small man spent two years teaching it to you backwards. You are not too big for beautiful dresses. Most dresses are just not good enough for you. Today we're finding the ones that are." He nodded at the fitting room. "Go. I'll be right here."
"Caius..."
"Wren." His voice gentled. "Trust me for one hour. That's all I'm asking. One hour."
So I went.
The first dress was the green one. I stood in the fitting room with it on, staring at the girl in the mirror, and I did what I always did. I found every flaw first. The softness of my arms. The curve of my belly. Two years of Kellan glancing at my plate had trained my eyes where to go.
"Let's see it," Caius called.
"It's fine, I'll just tell you..."
"Wren Ashwood, I will sing in this store. You know I'll do it. I know the whole soundtrack from that movie your brother cried at."
I came out.
And Caius, who had been lounging in the chair outside the fitting rooms like a bored king, sat up straight. He didn't say anything at first. He just looked at me, all of me, unhurried, and there was nothing in his face I had braced for. No polite smile. No quick glance away. He looked at me the way people look at the last bite of dessert, at the first snow, at something they don't want to miss.
"Turn," he said.
"Caius."
"Humor me."
I turned, feeling ridiculous, the skirt sweeping around my legs.
"Okay," he said. "That one's coming home with us. Next."
"You barely said anything."
"I'm pacing myself. We have a whole rack. If I use all my words now, what will I have left for the gold one?"
The next dress got a low whistle. The one after that got, "The saleswoman just walked into a shelf, I hope you're proud of yourself." By the fourth, something strange was happening to me. I was walking out of the fitting room faster. Standing straighter. Turning without being asked.
Because Caius gave me his full attention. That was his secret, I realized. That was the thing he was doing. His phone stayed in his pocket. His eyes never wandered to the pretty saleswoman, or the window, or anywhere at all. Every time that curtain opened, he looked at me like I was the only thing happening in the entire world. Like the shop, the town, the whole day existed as a frame for whatever I walked out wearing.
I had spent two years with a man who never once looked at me like that. I hadn't even known I was starving until somebody put food on the table.
Then came the wine-red wrap dress.
I put it on and looked in the mirror, and for a second I didn't do the flaw-hunt. For a second I just saw her. A girl with soft shoulders and generous curves and color in her cheeks, wearing a dress that held her like it was glad about it.
She looked expensive. She looked warm. She looked, and I tested the word carefully, like touching a bruise to see if it still hurt, beautiful.
I stepped out.
Caius didn't whistle. He didn't clap or grin or perform. He stood up out of his chair, slowly, and his eyes went over me once, and when they came back to my face they were darker than usual and not laughing at all.
"There she is," he said quietly.
"There who is?"
"The girl who used to fall off window seats laughing at my impressions. Before some fool taught her to apologize for taking up space." He shook his head slowly. "Goddess, Wren. Look at you."
"I look okay?"
"You look like the reason the word gorgeous got invented. And if you ever again tell me you're too big for beautiful dresses, I'm telling your brother you were the one who dented his truck in 2021."
"That was you!"
"History is written by whoever talks to Darius first."
I laughed, really laughed, standing in the middle of a boutique in a wine-red dress, and the girl in the mirror behind me laughed too, and I liked her. For the first time in longer than I could remember, I looked at my own reflection and liked her.
It wasn't fixed. I knew that. Two years of shrinking doesn't undo in one Saturday. But something had cracked open in that fitting room, and light was getting in.
We bought the red one. And the green one, and the gold one, and a jacket Caius claimed was "aggressively her color." He carried every bag and complained the whole time that I was using him for his arms, and I told him that was all he was good for, and it felt like being sixteen again, easy and bright.
We were coming out of the boutique, me still in the red dress because Caius told the saleswoman we'd take the hanger and not the dress back, when I felt it.
A prickle at the back of my neck. The old instinct. Someone watching.
I turned, scanning the crowded square, the market stalls, the fountain, and for half a second, between two passing carts, I could have sworn I saw a familiar figure standing dead still in the moving crowd.
Then a wagon rolled past, and the space was empty.
"Wren?" Caius's smile faded. "What is it?"
"Nothing," I said slowly. "I thought I saw..."
I shook my head. Kellan was banished. He was gone, across the border, out of my life.
So why was my wolf suddenly growling?
- Writer
