Page 64 of Knot By Design
She smiles up at him, and then Beau and Levi kiss her too, one after the other.
I look away for a second because this is their home, their intimacy, their world of warmth and devotion, and it’s beautiful enough to hurt.
“Gym time,” Beau says, squeezing Wren’s hand. “We’ll be back.”
As soon as the door closes behind them, Wren pulls me back into her arms. The swell of her stomach presses into my side, that gentle reminder of how full her life is, how wanted she is.
My throat burns at the thought.
“I should’ve called before I barged in here.”
“They know you take priority,” she murmurs. “Always. Now talk to me, babe. What happened?”
My chest shakes as I exhale. “I don’t… I don’t want to ruin your morning.”
“You couldn’t ruin anything if you tried. Tell me.”
So I do. All of it.
I tell her about waking up alone. The watch. The note. The way my chest feels like someone reached in and scraped everything raw.
She listens without a single interruption, hand running up and down my arm in slow, soothing strokes. She makes little sounds here and there—soft hums of empathy, the kind that tell me she’s fully present, fully with me.
By the time I finish, tears are running freely down my cheeks. Pancake burrows deeper into my lap like he’s trying to plug the leak in my heart with his tiny furry body.
Wren wipes under my eyes with her thumbs. “Can I ask something?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s going on with Dorian? Like… what happened between you guys? I’ve never gotten the full picture.”
My breath catches. “I—fuck, I don’t know where to start.”
“How about the truth?” she says gently. “You never tell me the whole truth about him. You always stop halfway like you’re scared of saying it out loud.”
I look down at my hands. “Because I’m dumb.”
She swats my knee. “No. Don’t do that. Talk.”
The word settles over me like a command my heart’s been waiting years to obey.
I swallow hard. “He was my best friend.”
“I know. And he helped you through your first heat.”
I nod. “He did. And we were together. A long time.”
Wren adjusts the blanket around us, her face softening. “So what happened?”
“He took the job in Portland without talking to me about it.”
She stills.
“And he asked me to go with him after he had signed the contract,” I whisper. “And I… couldn’t. My aunt needed me here. I wanted to stay and work on my own dream. My whole life washere, and he… he needed bigger. Brighter. He needed a world beyond Fox Hollow, and I didn’t want to hold him back.”
“So you broke up?”
“Not at first. We had the nastiest fight we had ever had. Dorian and I argued a lot, but we always found a way to make up. He’s not very communicative when something is bothering him, but Wren, that day, he knelt down before me and begged me not to break up with him. I know he loved me. And I was so obsessed with him. I wanted to try anything just to keep us going, so we tried long distance.”
