WREN
The most frustrating thing about Ash wasn't that he was always there, it was the fact that he always seemed to know when to be there.
I couldn't explain it properly, even to myself. But every time my mind started drifting toward Elias — toward the drunk visit, toward the lab, toward any of the things I'd spent years trying to bury and apparently hadn't buried deep enough — Ash would appear.
He'd just materialize beside me with something to say, or something to do, or sometimes nothing at all except his presence, which turned out to be enough to pull me back from wherever I'd been going.
It should have been irritating, it was irritating. It was also, and I hated admitting this even inside my own head, something close to a relief every single time.
By Friday I had stopped pretendi
