When he passed Lauren the next time, he slowed. “Did you hear that?”
Her brow furrowed. “Did I hear what?”
“Hooting. Chirping. Birds.” Panting, he paused a couple steps below her bench, and they were suddenly even in height, eye to eye. “Not a wren, most likely, but I suppose I have one of those anyway, right?”
Reaching out, he gently flicked that distinctive nose, then kept going. Only to discover, the next go-round, that Lauren wasn’t looking at him anymore, and she’d hunched her shoulders in a way he hadn’t seen in weeks. The serene smile lighting her face for the past hour might never have existed. Her expression had turned as blank as the day they’d first met.
Shit.
Halting at her bench, he used his discarded shirt to swipe at his face, his chest, his arms. He made quite a show of it, in fact, and got nothing in response. Not a glance, not a comment.
Well, fuck. He was going to have to say something, wasn’t he?
“I’m an asshole. We both know this.” He set his fists on his hips and ducked his head, trying in vain to meet her eyes. “However, in this particular instance, it might be helpful to know the specific way in which I demonstrated said assholery just now, because I truly have no idea.”
She exhaled through her nose. “It’s okay, Alex. Don’t worry about it.”
“If I don’t know what I did or said, I can’t deploy that particular action or phrase when an urgent need for assholery might arise again. As always, preparation is key.” No response. Fine, then. He’d be sincere, damn it. “If I don’t know, I also can’t avoid doing whatever I did again. I don’t want to make you angry.”
“I’m not angry,” she said quietly.
Hurt, then. Fuck. That was way worse.
Frustrated and panicky, his pulse pounding in his ears, he climbed to her level and crouched in front of her, until she couldn’t avoid looking at him.
“I’m sorry.” Reaching out, he covered her hand where it rested in her lap. His palm was sweaty, but she wouldn’t mind. For all her austerity, she was surprisingly tolerant. “Whatever I did, I’m sorry, Wren.”
There. She’d flinched.
“Wait. Is this about my new nickname for you?” When she slid her hand out from under his, he sat back on his heels and obeyed her silent directive not to touch. “Because Sionna calls you the same thing, and you don’t seem bothered at all.”
“She calls me Ren. R-E-N. Short for Lauren.” Her attempt at a smile was short-lived. “As I just discovered, you apparently call me Wren. W-R-E-N. Short for ‘my minder has a ridiculous beak for a nose.’ ”
“No. Lauren, no.” He kept his voice stern. Firm, because he was serious for once, and she needed to know that. “I call you Wren because, yes, your features and overall appearance may be somewhat avian—”
She looked away again, and goddammit, he should have started somewhere else. But he was committed now, so he kept barreling forward, as was his custom.
“—but I like that.” He paused for emphasis. “I don’t find anything about you ridiculous.”
She shook her head, eyes still on a nearby succulent. “That’s not what you said when we met.”
He should have known that would come back to bite him in the ass one day.
“I was calling the entire situation ridiculous, not you,” he told her. “Ron misinterpreted because he’s a dick, and I should have corrected him then. But let me be clear now: I like your nose. I like looking at your face. I like looking at you.”
Her gaze flew to his, and he rushed to add, “But more importantly, I like birds. Specifically, I like winter wrens. They’re my favorite species.”
Caution and hurt still pinched her brow, so he kept talking.
“Early in my career, I was in a found-footage horror film called Thump in the Woods. Maybe you’ve heard of it?” When she shook her head, he continued, “Anyway, I was cast as one of three college kids filming a project about a famously haunted cabin in an isolated Maryland forest, where people theoretically disappeared and died via decapitation by ax. As you might imagine, it didn’t end well for us poor students.”
When he mimed the swipe of an ax, complete with a whistling sound and a final thud, the corner of her mouth indented slightly. He took that as a promising sign.
“The three of us did our own filming in the woods, and it was a hard, low-budget shoot. The directors progressively restricted the amount of food we got, and they kept waking us up at night with ostensibly scary sounds we’d have to react to on camera. It rained and rained and rained, until our tents flooded.” He sighed and scratched his beard. “We were all fighting on camera, which the story called for, but some of that tension bled into off-camera interactions too.”