“Then explain it to me,” I plead, getting up to my feet and pacing around the ice, keys in hand, ready. This girl is so hard to understand. I wish I could just crack her like an egg and read all the thoughts in her head.

I hear something that sounds a lot like a sniffle before she says, “Aaron, I could only be with you if I loved you less.”

Time stands still. Snow stops falling. Wind stops howling. I stop breathing.

“Repeat that?” I get out.

“I…I’m sorry.” Then, the line cuts.

“Wren? Wren?”

Nothing.

I try calling her again, but she sends me straight to voicemail.

“Fuck!”

“What’s happening?” Finn says as he gets up from the bench and walks to me.

Unable to move my gaze away from my phone, I whisper, “She loves me.” I didn’t dream it, did I? No, she definitely said the words.

Finn snickers. “Dude, are you serious? Of course she does. That was never the question.”

“Well, it was for me!” She’d never said the words. Never even said anything remotely close to it.

“Are you blind, or what? That girl looks at you like you’re made of gold,” he says, eyebrows high.

“And you didn’t want to tell me that before?”

“Didn’t think I needed to.”

She loves me, I repeat to myself. She actually loves me.

This changes everything.

I was willing to accept whatever she threw at me. Letting her go was something I’d come to wrap my head around, but that was when I thought she didn’t love me. I would never push something on someone who doesn’t want to be with me. Now I know love isn’t the problem. And that was the only thing I’d be willing to let come in the way of me and her.

“I need to get her back,” I state.

“I thought that was another given.”

Eyes narrowed, I say, “You’re not being helpful, you know that?”

“Don’t care. You just said I was a good man.”

“A mistake.”

“Keep telling yourself that.” He gives my shoulder a brotherly pat. “Now just go get her, will you?”

“Right.” I finish packing my bag in a hurry, then throw it over my shoulder. “Wish me luck.”

He smirks. “Don’t think you need it.”

Oh, how I wish that were the case.

Without wasting a minute, I leave Finn and start toward my car. Time to think of a plan.

Chapter 33

CHAPTER 33

Wren

I’ve never struggled during a run as much as I did this morning.

If that isn’t a sign I went overboard on Friday night, I don’t know what is. Still being hungover two days later isn’t normal.