Wrens winter, p.1
Wren's Winter, page 1
Copyright © 2023 by Linnea March
All rights reserved.
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This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Paperback Vector art from Qamber Designs
e-book cover by Getcovers
Chapter headers and art by Sweet 15 Designs
Editing by EJ Editing
Proofreading by Miss Eloquent Edits
"Ask Me Why I Love You" by Walter Everette Hawkins, 1920. This poem is in the public domain.
Contents
Also by Linnea March
Dedication
1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11
12. Chapter 12
13. Chapter 13
14. Chapter 14
15. Chapter 15
16. Chapter 16
17. Chapter 17
18. Chapter 18
19. Chapter 19
20. Chapter 20
21. Epilogue
Dear readers
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also By Linnea March
Also by Linnea March
Prevalent Notion Series
Faultless Notion
Treacherous Notion
Ruinous Notion
Reckless Liar
The One You Chose
To Rusty for making the best breakfast every time
Ask Me Why I Love You
Ask me why I love you, dear,
And I will ask the rose
Why it loves the dews of Spring
At the Winter’s close;
Why the blossoms’ nectared sweets
Loved by questing bee,—
I will gladly answer you,
If they answer me.
Ask me why I love you, dear,
Let the lark reply,
Why his heart is full of song
When the twilight’s nigh;
Why the lover heaves a sigh
When her heart is true;
If you will but answer me,
I will answer you.
Walter Everette Hawkins
Wren
It figures that the first car accident of my life was because of a missed turn. After all, missing a turnoff had to be my most consistent talent. Seven years in dance had led to nothing but the ability to pick up things with my toes and a tendency to break tasks down into eight counts. I had the gift of baking passable macrons and found the perfect red lipstick for my olive skin tone. But if I was known for one thing, it was always—without fail—missing the turnoffs.
My ex-boyfriend, Buck, never let me drive, citing the little three-point detours we had to take with every trip.
The whole way up the long trip, I was careful not to miss this turn. But all the tree-named streets sounded the same: Cedar Drive, Aspen Avenue, Sitka Lane.
Sitka, that was the one.
Slamming on my brakes, my little sedan skidded through the soft snow, veering to the right, where the front bumper wedged into a snowdrift. My head snapped forward, hitting the steering wheel, before whipping back into my headrest. Between the bang and my jostled body, I heard my chip bag crunch as my soda rolled over it.
Little spots formed behind my eyes as I blinked at the snowbank before me. Air rasped in my throat as I took my shaking hands off the steering wheel and patted myself down to check for injuries. Arms still attached, stomach still squishy, boobs still boobing. A wince shot through me as I touched my forehead. Blood clung to my finger. Flipping the mirror down, I looked at my reflection. A small but angry-looking cut at my hair line bled slowly. I grabbed a brown TacoTime napkin from the center console and dabbed the gash. It had stopped bleeding, but a knot was forming underneath.
Great.
I threw the napkin on the crushed chip bag, knowing its contents would be tiny little bits. A sign I shouldn’t be eating chips in the car.
Buck’s words echo in my head.
If you watch what you eat, maybe you’ll lose this junk you’re carrying around.
Asshole.
How did it take me so long to see it? And, worst of all, why did he get to be the one to dump me instead of the other way around? If there were anything more embarrassing than being dumped after three years together, it had to be by a guy you didn’t even liked in the first place.
Are your chips really the big issue here, Wren?
Damn. No, of course not.
I stuck my car in reverse and hit the gas, only to hear the loud whir of my tires but feel no movement. The steering wheel was cold against my palms, and I shook the wheel while letting out a scream through my teeth.
I tried to think back to driver’s ed. What would old Ms. Crawford say about this situation? She would, likely, be unsurprised. It took me five tries to pass my driver’s test. I suspected the fine people at Ridgewood Drivers’ Education were tired of seeing my face. And yet, I had never been in an accident—until today. Alone, in the Olympic Mountains, miles away from the closest town of Icicle Creek and many more from the nearest Nordstrom.
My phone chimed with a text, and I glanced at it.
Him. Again. This time it was, Where did you put my snowshoes?
If Buck had a talent, it was picking the worst time to ask for something. Did he have a superpower to sense when I was at my lowest?
I responded to Buck with the location, in the attic, beside his hiking gear he never wore and under the expensive tent he used once.
He sent back a red heart emoji. That man dumps me and then sends me hearts? Heat prickled beneath my skin.
The trip was supposed to be my birthday present from Buck, and our first time away together, just the two of us. Every other one we took ended up with a gaggle of his buddies tagging along—or worse, his family. When I made the reservation, Buck told me he’d call them to put his credit card down for the deposit.
This morning, I’d awoken to an email confirming the reservation starting tonight and the full charge of the stay on my already stressed credit card. Nonrefundable, nontransferable.
Still in my old Ridgewood High jazz choir tee shirt and covered in my Grandma Pearl’s afghan, I made the split decision to head up to the cabin myself.
My parent’s house was far too quiet since they decided to visit my aunt in California for the long winter weekend.
You sure you don’t want to come with us, Wren? I’m sure Cathy would fix up the dogs’ room with a trundle bed.
No, thank you. I may be twenty-four, newly dumped, and currently staying in my childhood bedroom, but I drew the line at sleeping in the room my aunt used for her five Akitas.
I had given little thought to the weather, what I had thrown into my enormous suitcase, or how well my 2015 Toyota Corolla would do in the snowy mountains. All I needed was to get out of my childhood bedroom and away from the stink of failure following me.
I sent a message to my best friend, Summer, who was likely packing for her internship in London and wouldn’t see it for hours. I also messaged my parents, saying that I was going to spend the long weekend in Icicle Creek. My mother’s response, Have fun with your friends, had made me laugh.
Yeah, I could be my own friend.
The service here was spotty, but the road I had carelessly tried to brake for was the one I needed. My boots made tracks in the fresh snow as I walked to the top of Sitka Lane, assessing how far I’d have to go with my suitcase to get to the log cabin. I was pleased to see it only a short distance away, exactly like the picture in my email. I could walk that far.
Pulling on my favorite pink beanie, careful not to touch my injury, I grabbed my bag but left the smashed potato chips. Once I got to the cabin, I would use the provided Wi-Fi and arrange for a tow truck. That’s what people did in these situations, right? I am a smart, independent woman who doesn’t need her asshole boyfriend to carry her bags.
Halfway up the road, my suitcase slipping from my hand every two feet, doubt of my independent abilities crept in. Sweat dripped down my back, and I shrugged off my thick coat to stuff it into my luggage. The only sound on the street was a light birdsong and the crunch of the new white boots I bought for a trip to Aspen. The one Buck said he was going to take me on the previous Valentine’s Day. That fell through when he, instead, went with three of his buddies from high school.
You understand, right, Wrenny? I love how cool you are, not at all like those other girls my friends have for girlfriends.
Annoyance fizzed through me as I picked up my bag again, the motivator I needed to make it. While it was likely only five minutes after I left my car, it felt like thirty before I got to the cabin’s driveway. I slipped twice, my gloves getting soaked in the powdery snow.
The road ended in a high snowbank, with two identical log cabins on each side. The one I was facing had a green door, the one behind me a red door. Both two-story, with a porch spanning the width of the house. Each had a high-pitched roof for the snow to fall from and a small balcony on the second floor. This had to be it. There were only two houses at the end of Sitka Lane.
Hoisting my suitcase up on the patio, I pulled out my phone to check the address against the number in the email. 143 Sitka.
I was expecting the key to be in the lockbox next to the door, but I hadn’t come across it yet. The wind was cooling me off from my hike. My thin white sweater was no match for the winter air. Another text came though as I read the instructions. This time, it was Buck asking for the recipe for my deviled eggs. The ones I made every year and he accepted praise for.
It was the first one that popped up on Google. You’d think an accountant for a Fortune 500 company could figure out how to search on the Internet.
Ignoring his text, I walked around the building, looking for the lockbox and finding nothing on the wall. A large outdoor chest sat on the edge of the porch beside a pile of perfectly stacked wood in a wrought iron holder. Across the expanse of the wall, a big window showcased a darkened room. A leather couch sat behind an oversized green rug with a fireplace in the middle of the wall. In the distance, a few bulky jackets hung from a pine wood rack. Must be from the previous guests. The starkly tidy house lacked little touches of a lived-in space, with generic scenery pictures identical to the landscape outside and a single framed picture of an older couple.
Stepping back from the window, I glanced again at the numbers on the house and the email. This was it, 143 Sitka.
The door had a keypad on it. Maybe that was the code I was supposed to use. On the porch again, I tried the code to get a flashing red light. After a second time, the red light glared brighter.
A glance across the street at the other house had me hesitate. That house didn’t have numbers posted, and this was the right address. It was the only one that came up on my navigation in all of Washington State.
At the bottom of the letter was the phone number to call if there were any issues. I clicked on the number and watched the screen as it tried to connect, tried, tried. Call failed. Sure, service would be spotty up here, but why have a number if I couldn’t get in?
A third time yielded the same results. Great, Buck’s little plea for deviled eggs goes through, but my rescue can’t. Got it.
As I was about to try again, an engine rumbled down the street, and a large white truck pulled into the driveway. I huffed a sigh of relief. This had to be the owner. Who else could it be? She must have realized she had given me the wrong code and had come to let me in.
The driver turned the truck off, a sudden quiet falling over the street. The door opened, and I set my phone on top of my oversized suitcase and trudged the stairs to the truck. “Hi! Are you Agatha? I can’t get into the house with the code and…”
A long leg swung out from the seat, followed by a second.
It was a man. A muscular man. He stomped toward me, and I took a step back.
Alone on this snowy road, with no streetlights, and my car parked too far forward in the snowdrift, I should have been worrying about this man being a serial killer. But damn if he wasn’t the most handsome man I had ever seen. He didn’t appear to be much older than me, maybe in his late twenties. Dark hair peeked out of his hat, over the greenest blue eyes fringed with long thick lashes. He had a mouth that was full and soft. A mouth that was currently frowning at me.
“Oh, I’m guessing you’re not Agatha.”
“No, I’m not,” he grunted out, running a hand over his unshaven face. Thumbing behind him, he pointed to the house on the other side of the road. “Agatha’s house is there. You’re some visitor renting the cabin?”
Okay, so not a serial killer, probably. A helpful serial killer? An extremely hot, helpful serial killer.
No, this guy didn’t look helpful. He looked annoyed.
As the handsome man approached me, his grim face and narrowed eyes gave me the sinking feeling that maybe I should have kept going when I missed my turn.
Adrian
Few things tasted better after a long day on the mountain than a good beer. I had the requisite tall can in the parking lot with my friends before we parted ways, our snow pants rolled down around our waists, and the sweat from a hard ride still damp under our beanies. We all grabbed a can out of the small cooler in Tam’s trunk. It had been a tradition—as far back as I remember—that the last person to our meeting spot in the morning supplied the beer for after our runs. And every week, it was always Tam. Cracking open the tall can, I took my first swig as a young woman approached our group, her blue eyes on me.
“Hey, could I ask you to help me with my rack?” She thumbed behind her at a Subaru parked five spots down with a set of skis leaning against the door. “The lock is sticky.”
Tam grabbed the can out of my hand and pushed me forward. “He’d be delighted.”
I followed her past two high schoolers smoking pot inside their truck and a father trying to wrestle his kid out of a snowsuit without getting their feet wet.
While studying the rack, I put out a gloved hand. “You got the key?”
She handed me the small key, and it slid right into the lock.
“You ski here often?” she asked. I watched as she leaned against the back of the car, pulling on her long blond braid. Her jacket was unzipped, exposing the tight thermal she wore underneath.
“I board.” With a quick turn of the key, the arm of the rack swung up.
“My ex boarded. Or he tried.” She laughed at her own joke.
Grabbing her skis, I slid them in place and closed the arm back down on them. “That was easy. I bet you could have done it yourself.”
Her smile fell, and she glanced at my group of friends behind me. “Right. Um, thanks, Mr. Winter.”
Frowning, I placed a hand on the top of her car and looked her over. “Do I know you?”
She stepped back, zipping her coat up to her throat. “Yeah, Layla Parsons. I was in your American literature class five years ago?”
With a furrowing of my brow, I rustled through the hundreds of students over the years. Icicle Creek High wasn’t a large school, but I tended to forget most students after they graduated unless they made a big impression on me. “Yeah, Layla. How are you?”
“You don’t remember me.” She let out a shaky breath. “Nice move, dumbass.”
“No, I do—” I grimaced. “Kind of. I’m sorry. Unless you blew up a trashcan, I forget names.”
Shaking her head, she stared up at the white-and-gray sky. “God, I had such a big crush on you throughout school, and you don’t even remember my name.”
As one of the younger members of the faculty, I had my share of students staying behind a little too long to ask me questions, twirling their hair, or stepping too close.
“Ah.” I sucked at my teeth. “I’m sure, once you got out into the real world, that faded fast, and you realized I’m just some boring old dude.”
A sly smile ticked at the corner of her mouth. “I wouldn’t say that. I’m twenty-one now. You’re, what, thirty-two?”
“Twenty-nine,” I answered hesitantly.
“Only eight little years between us. It was a big deal when I was seventeen, but now—”
I stepped back, shaking my head. “It was nice to see you, Layla. Tell your folks I said hi.” I had no clue who her parents were, but I had to step away.
“Maybe I’ll see you at The Horse and Trails!” she shouted at my retreating back. “I’ll be there tonight with friends!”
Walking back to my friends, I took my beer back from Tam as the group silently stared at me. Taking a long swig, I was met with only silence. “What?”
My friends chimed on top of each other.
“Dude.”
“What the fuck, man.”
“You are the dumbest mofo ever.”
Pulling off my glove, I tossed it into my truck beside us. “Me?”
“Ad, come on.” With a shake of his head, Tam glanced at our friends, and I had a feeling he was about to say something they had discussed many times over. “That girl was into you.”
“No way. She needed help with her rack. I helped her.”
