Strays

Chapter 19

Wren jumped when he heard someone knocking on his trailer door. It was the first time anyone had, and he couldn't imagine who would be visiting him. He stuffed the toast he was eating into his mouth and opened the door. Raising his eyebrows, he swallowed his bite. "Lindley?"

Her cheeks were flushed and she pressed a cup of coffee to her purple lips as she stood in his doorway.

"Hey," she greeted. "I hope it's okay that I'm here. Old Rick sent me."

"Yeah," he said, enthused, stepping back to make room for her. "Come in. Why did Old Rick send you back here?" He sat on a stool by his kitchen stove while Lindley seated herself on the bed. She took in the scene around her—the faded floral curtains, the flannel blanket on the bed. While Wren's mark was evident on the trailer, he couldn't mask the remnants of the life Lindley and her mother had left.

"I think I pissed Wyatt off," she answered finally, turning to him. The coffee cup in her hand was now shaking, spilling the untouched contents onto her pants in splashes. Now that it was no longer warm, it did nothing to stem her trembling.

"Jesus, let me take that from you," he snapped, jumping across to take the cup from her. He placed it on the resin table behind him, before bringing his hands back to warm hers between his. Lindley almost snatched her hands back, but it felt so nice that it almost hurt to have her frozen fingers thaw. Wren knelt in front of her bringing her fingers to his mouth to gently blow warm air on them, the smooth mauve of his impertinently shaped lips pressed gently against her skin. Lindley blamed the fever as her blood rushed quickly and her stomach felt like a glass of champagne.

"Does that feel better?" His voice was soft and low, and Lindley could barely breathe when his green eyes looked up at her. For the first time, she noticed his feathery eyelashes and the glow of the desert sand colored skin under his eyes. Her head nodded up and down slowly, and for a second, she thought he was going reach up and kiss her. She wouldn't have stopped him.

"Are you feeling alright?" he asked her, a smile playing at the corners of his lips. She shook her head just as slowly as she had nodded, and the flirtatious smile left his face. "What's wrong?"

His voice returning to the normal decibel snapped Lindley out of her trance.

"Oh, um--," she began, feeling foolish and embarrassed. "Nothing—I just slept in the cold and I'm sick." She look around her, pulling her hands from his and into her sleeves. She forced her mouth to speak quicker than her brain recovered, making very little sense.

"You slept in the cold?" he asked her, standing up to press his hand to her forehead. "Jesus," he exclaimed again. "You're burning up." Her forehead was clammy and scalding to the touch. "Get under the blanket—I'm going to grab you some medicine."

Lindley did as told, surrendering to her exhaustion. Wren darted back with Nyquil and a bottle of water. "Take some of this," he told her, pouring a dose of the Nyquil. "It's going to put you to sleep real quick." Lindley obediently drank the medicine, grimacing after swallowing. Wren handed her the water bottle and she cleared her mouth of the cherry flavor.

"What the hell were you doing sleeping outside?" Wren asked, frustrated, fishing out another blanket to layer on top of it.

"Mike didn't pay the gas bill," she complained. "I slept inside, it was just cold." Wren knew that she wouldn't have revealed so much if she weren't halfway to delirium.

"Well, you're staying here until your house is warm again," he said, pulling a chair up next to the bed.

"For a stray with tattoos, you're actually very sweet," Lindley told him from the bed, her eyes on his bouncing knee.

"Strays stick together," he said, reaching out to feel her face again. The Nyquil should take effect quickly, and he thinks he feels that her temperature has gone down a bit, but it could all be in his head.

Lindley fades in and out of sleep, her body clearly needing to rest and fight off whatever invader was crashing her system. While Wren hated seeing her so sick and weak, he loved that she could have gone anywhere in this town, but she was here. Even if she wouldn't admit it, she wanted to come to him. She wanted him to take care of her. Lying there with her hair in a messy bun that was falling to pieces above her head, her flushed cheeks smashed into his pillow, he thought he could look at her forever. He loved seeing her in his space, where he slept.

An added bonus in his mind was that the longer she spent here, recuperating, the longer she was safe from whatever this home situation was. He didn't know what he was going to do when she decided it was time to go back to her house, but it would take a miracle for Wren not to lose his cool.