Page 74 of Tangled Up In You

“Number one yet?” he asked, and she turned, sliding her arms around his neck, burying her face there.

“Number one, forever,” she said, voice muffled. “Thank you.”

They stretched out on the blanket, staring up at the stars, and Ren pointed out the constellations they could see: Hydra, Leo, Leo Minor, Sextans, and Ursa Major. She told him about the kinds of things she would normally do on a birthday—go for a longer walk than usual around the property, be allowed to nap out in the field without being scolded for missing chores. It occurred to Edward that every time she shared something about herself was an opportunity for him to reciprocate, but he hadn’t taken any of them.

They fell quiet, his brain lighting up with everything he wanted to say. He wanted to tell her about Mary, how close he’d been to having a family and how it had fallen apart, how angry he’d been for so long and how he’d spent the last few years plotting something he wasn’t even sure he wanted to carry through anymore. He’d carried anger and hurt for so long, wrapped himself in them and used them to keep others away. Something about Ren made him want to put it all down.

“Ren—” he began, just as she said, “Do you—?”

She squeezed his hand. “Go ahead.”

“No, you first.”

“I was just going to ask—if it’s even okay to ask this—whether you know who your birth parents are.”

A shadow passed through his chest. “No…all I know is that they relinquished custody of me when I was three, and that’s when I went into the foster system. They handed me over to the Spokane Fire Department.”

“But you have family here?”

He nodded. “In a sense.”

She’d given him an explicit opening, and still, he couldn’t step through the door. How did Ren make opening up to him look so easy?

“Mary,” she guessed.

“She was my foster mother,” he said, relieved at her gentle prompt. “She moved to Nashville a couple years after her oldest son graduated high school—which was right around the time my adoption went through. I have a job interview here on Thursday. I’d set it up forever ago, knowing I eventually wanted to be closer to her.”

“Oh my gosh, Edward, this is so much. We could have spent today with her.”

“No, there’s time for me to see her while I’m here. Seriously, she’s fine. I wouldn’t have wanted to do that when we could be doing this.”

“Do you know where your birth family is now?”

He paused, staring up at the sky. “No. But I was hoping there would be at least some genealogy stuff for me when we did that test in Audran’s class.”

“I’m guessing there wasn’t.”

“No. Nothing.”

She reached over, squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s what I was expecting, too,” she said, laughing wryly. “Nothing. And here we are.”

“I envied you,” he admitted, rolling to his side and propping his head on a hand. “But you know what’s funny?”

“What?”

“Now that I know you better, I’m surprised you did the test at all. I can’t imagine Gloria and Steve would’ve given the green light.”

“I’ve thought about that a lot—why I did it so readily.” She rolled to face him, too. “I never disobeyed my parents before, but with every day I’ve spent away from them at school, I started questioning more and more why so many of those rules were there in the first place. I started pushing, a little at a time. I did the interview with the school paper, I made friends in study groups, I did the test. I’ve wanted to experience everything, because deep down, part of me knows they won’t let me come back next fall. Once I’m home again over the summer, I think they’ll see how much I’ve changed. They definitely won’t let me finish out the semester if they find out about this trip.”

His stomach bottomed out. When he first met Ren, he didn’t think she’d last the week. Then, when she started to show him up, he wished he’d been right. The thought that her parents wouldn’t let her come back felt too real, if he let his thoughts linger on it. Given how controlling they were, Fitz wasn’t sure how she’d manage to keep any of this from them. Whether or not Ren found Christopher Koning, whether or not he was even her father, he knew it didn’t matter. She had already changed from this experience, and there was no universe in which her parents wouldn’t see that.

And another thought landed, and this time, his stomach twisted tightly and he let out a guilty groan. “I made so many rules,” he said quietly.

Ren frowned at him. “What?”