Love Grows Wild Read Online Winter Renshaw

Categories Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary, Suspense Tags Authors: Winter Renshaw Advertisement

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I park outside my house on the hilltop, kill the engine, and sit for a minute. Just breathing. Alone with my thoughts—thoughts that are louder tonight than they’ve ever been.

She’s too much.

Too soft.

Too pretty.

Too close to the parts of me I can’t remember the last time I let anyone see.

Every part of me wants her like I haven’t wanted anything in a long, long time.

But the truth is, I like control.

I need it.

Hell, I don’t know who I am without it.

I can control the type of seeds and chemicals I use. I can manage my weather expectations, employee output, finances, and acreage bids. I can plan and prepare. I can always fix what breaks. These are things I know . . . things I do and do well—better than most, if I’m being honest.

But I can’t control the way my chest tightens every time Wren looks at me like I’m someone worth knowing.

I can’t control the way it feels to hear my name on her lips or how it knocks the air out of me to watch her walk away.

My heart? That’s the one thing I can’t control.

And that’s the one thing that scares me most.

Because I know what happens when you hand it over. I’ve watched love disappoint. Watched it walk away. Watched it die. Everything I’ve ever loved, I’ve lost.

Everything but land.

But hearts? They do their own thing regardless of what you want them to do, and it’s human nature to avoid pain and suffering. I might be good at managing an operation, but in pouring my focus into my farm, I’ve become good at avoiding emotional anguish too.

I stare out the windshield at the dark stretch of river valley below, the clouds slowly thinning in the distance, outlined by the glow of a full moon. Half a mile away, Wren’s little porch light glows soft at the edge of her tree line, a tiny beacon that shouldn’t matter but does.

I imagine she’ll sit there for a while longer. Maybe finish that wine since she already opened it. Maybe think about me the way I’m thinking about her.

Or maybe not.

Maybe I’m just a man with a broken compass, too set in his ways to find his true north.

I scrub a hand down my face, exhale hard, and climb out of the truck, the taste of red wine still on my tongue and the heat of her body still warm on my shoulder.

Heading in for the night, I fall asleep with one thought on my mind and one thought only: I should’ve kissed her.

16

Wren

The porch creaks softly as I rise from the swing, wineglass still warm from where my fingers wrapped it too tightly.

I watched the taillights of his truck disappear over the hill a few minutes ago, swallowed by the trees, leaving me in silence. A breeze lifts the loose tendrils of hair around my face, cool against the alcohol-and-embarrassment-induced flush still clinging to my cheeks. The bottle I’d opened is still full and untouched, the air still charged like it was when he was sitting next to me.

And yet he left.

Just like that.

I linger for a minute longer, telling myself it was fine. It is fine. I’m fine.

Not ready to head in yet, I sink back into the swing, legs tucked beneath me as the last bit of moonlight fades behind the night clouds. I hate that I feel like this. Hollow and a little bit foolish. Like I’ve built up something in my head that didn’t really exist.

Maybe it was the wine and the fact that he showed up with a generator when I didn’t even ask, when I was perfectly content to use candles and shower in cold water in the morning and wait patiently for the power company to do their thing.

It felt more meaningful than I suppose it was.

And then he stayed. Had wine. Answered my questions. Let his eyes linger on my lips. His face softened from time to time. I had him smiling.

I could’ve sworn that when he left, there was almost a heaviness in the way he told me good night, like it pained him to say it, like something in him wanted to stay.

But he didn’t.

And I should be used to that by now.

I’ve never been the girl someone chooses—not really.

Not when it counts.

Not the boy in high school, who asked out my best friend instead.

Not my college boyfriend, who ghosted me the second I started talking about long-term plans.

Not Atticus’s biological father, who swore up and down he’d always be there for us, then changed his number when the pressure got too real.

Not even the fiancé who promised me and my son forever then left me standing in a white dress with a sinking heart and a four-year-old who didn’t understand why his mommy cried for days.

You’d think after all that I’d be jaded.


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