There were exactly four things I hated about Ezra Nakamura.
One: The way he stood. He had this relaxed, sloping-shoulder posture that screamed I belong here, which was a lie, because the only person who belonged next to Wren was currently white-knuckling a steering wheel thirty feet away.
Two: His hands. They were always steady. When he handed Wren that water bottle, his fingers hadn't even brushed hers, but the proximity alone was enough to make my vision go red at the edges. I knew his touch was platonic. I knew he was her anchor. I still wanted to break his camera.
Three: The silence. He didn't have to talk to her. They had this shorthand, this quiet, intuitive language born of months of shared secrets and small-town exile. I had to earn every word from her. Ezra got them for free.
Four: He was in the light.
That was the one that really stung. While I sat in my truck, performing the role of the disinterested jock waiting for a light to change, Ezra was the one catching the charcoal dust on his sleeves. He was the one who got to see the way her eyes lit up when she nailed a shadow. He was the one who got to be human in her presence while I had to be a ghost.
I watched the red 'Cease and Desist' sticker hit the wall through my side mirror.
My heart did a slow, heavy roll in my chest. I saw Wren's shoulders drop, a minute movement that felt like a tectonic shift in my world. I saw Chloe's smirk, the sharp, calculated victory in the way she adjusted her designer bag.
I wanted to get out. I wanted to put Chloe's father through the brick wall he was so keen on 'preserving.' I wanted to take the red sticker and shove it down his throat until he choked on the city code.
Instead, I watched Ezra reach for her arm. I watched her shake him off.
And then I watched her disappear into the alley.
I didn't follow her. Not yet. I waited until the white SUV pulled away, until the street was empty of everything but the smell of wet paint and the fading echoes of Chloe's triumph.
Ezra stayed by the wall for a long minute, looking at the place where Wren had vanished. He looked tired. He looked like he wanted to go after her, but he knew better. He knew she needed space.
Finally, I thought, a dark, petty satisfaction blooming in my gut. Something you don't know how to handle.
I waited until he walked away toward his beat-up sedan before I put the truck in gear.
The old mill was a graveyard of rusted machinery and moss-covered stone, but to me, it was the only place in Millhaven where I could breathe. I pulled into the shadows of the loading dock, the engine clicking as it cooled.
Wren was already there.
She was sitting on the edge of the dock, her legs dangling over the dark water of the creek. She looked small. In her oversized coat, with the charcoal on her face and the blue paint on her hands, she looked like a masterpiece that had been left out in the rain.
I stepped out of the truck, my boots crunching on the gravel. She didn't look up.
"I saw," I said. My voice sounded too loud in the quiet of the woods.
"Of course you did." She let out a short, hollow laugh. "The whole town probably saw. It's the event of the season, right? The stray girl getting her toys taken away."
I walked to the edge of the dock and sat down beside her. I didn't say anything at first. I just let the silence settle between us—the real kind, the kind that didn't belong to Ezra.
"I'm going to kill him," I said. It wasn't a threat. It was a statement of fact.
Wren finally looked at me, her eyes red-rimmed and fierce. "Don't, Hayes. It won't change anything. He has the Mayor. He has the heritage board. He has every bored, spiteful person in this town on his side."
"I don't care who he has." I reached out, my thumb catching a stray tear before it could track through the Prussian Blue on her cheek. "He touched your work. He put a hand on something you built. That's a debt he can't afford."
Wren leaned into my palm, her eyes closing. For a second, the anger left her, replaced by a bone-deep exhaustion that made my chest ache.
"It was my ticket, Hayes," she whispered. "Columbia. The mural was the anchor for the whole portfolio. If I don't finish it, the offer is just a piece of paper. I'll be stuck here. I'll be exactly what they want me to be."
I pulled her into me, my arms wrapping around her with a possessive, desperate strength. I tucked her head under my chin, breathing in the scent of linseed oil and cold air.
"You're not staying here," I said into her hair. "I'll buy the building. I'll bribe the council. I'll set the whole damn town on fire if it means you get to leave."
Wren shivered in my arms. She was quiet for a long time, the only sound the rushing of the water below us.
But then, I felt it.
A small, sharp vibration against her ribs.
She stiffened. Her hand went to the pocket of her coat—not her regular pocket, but the hidden one on the inside.
She didn't pull the phone out. She didn't even look at it. But the way her pulse suddenly spiked against my chest, the way her entire body went from soft to wire-tight... it was a tell.
I'd spent my life reading defenses. I knew when someone was hiding a play.
"Wren?" I pulled back just enough to look at her face.
She looked away, her jaw tight. "It's nothing. Just... a notification."
"You don't get notifications on that phone," I said. I didn't know how I knew she had a second phone, but I did. I'd felt it against me in the truck. I'd seen the way she guarded her bag.
She didn't answer. She just stared out at the water, her expression shuttered in a way that made my blood run cold.
The jealousy I'd felt for Ezra was nothing compared to this. Ezra was a known quantity. Ezra was a friend. This... this was a ghost. This was a piece of the life she hadn't told me about, a piece of the 'nobody from nowhere' that had a direct line to her in the middle of a crisis.
"Who is he?" I asked. My voice was a low, dangerous rumble.
"It's not a who, Hayes. It's just... a problem."
She stood up, brushing the dust from her coat. The vulnerability of a moment ago was gone, replaced by a cold, hard resolve that I didn't recognize.
"I have to go," she said.
"Wren, wait—"
"I love you, Hayes," she said, and the words were like a blow to the solar plexus. They were true, but they felt like a goodbye. "But you can't protect me from this. "
She walked to her car without looking back.
I stood on the loading dock, the smell of wet paint and cedar mocking me. My shoulder throbbed with a dull, insistent heat, a reminder of the sacrifice I'd made to keep her hidden.
But as I watched her taillights disappear into the trees, I realized I'd been so busy looking at Ezra that I'd missed the real threat.
Wren wasn't just hiding from the town.
She was hiding from me.
And whatever was on that phone was going to be the thing that finally broke us.