Re: The woods
The chin tilt, the defiant gesture of pride made Wren confused enough that she didn't even know what to say. Had she- Maybe Thomas would have been better to him without her around. Maybe without her to cause Luke to be defiant, Thomas would have approved of him more. Maybe he never would have kicked him out, like he'd done before New York. Luke had always said that was because of Thomas' family, but what if it wasn't? What if she'd been right all along, and it had been because she was with him, and because Thomas didn't want her living in his house? If it was really dangerous to have Luke with him, he wouldn't have had Max and Amanda with him. She'd always believed that, deep down, and now it seemed like it was true. This Luke loved Thomas Brandon. Or, at the very least, respected and wanted to be like him.
She didn't like that sneer on his features; it was so wrong, and she closed her eyes against it for a second. "I don't want to get anything out of you," she promised him, but it was a stammering thing. She could be cold, and she could be hard, but not with him, apparently. Not with any version of him at all.
And then Luke was looking back at her, her version of Luke, and she knew she'd done something wrong there too. The way he unwrapped his arms from around his middle just solidified her decision to leave, to go and not turn around, not ever, even if they were stuck here for the rest of their lives. And she really, really didn't like his voice. She didn't like how distant he sounded, and she took a step toward him before he told her to keep talking. She shook her head a little, a silent no, but then the older man in the room was telling her to sit.
That sit reminded her of every last one of her clients. An order, and not a request, and maybe it was Luke's suggestion that she keep him talking, maybe it was just some Pavlovian response to the command, but she turned around and she took a seat in the chair across from the desk. She smoothed the skirt of her dress nervously, and she tried to see what that rattling was, the same one from earlier.
Before she managed it, though, he had turned around. "I did. I didn't know everything had gone to hell. I- I got pregnant, and I ran away to a lot of places," she explained earnestly, feeling better about telling half-truths than full lies. "I met Jack in an alley a long time ago. I didn't know his name at first, and he didn't know mine, but he helped me when I needed it." She paused, trying to figure how to add in the other names without sounding like she was name dropping which, really, was precisely what she was doing. "I knew other people too, if that helps you believe me? Um, I knew Laura, and her best friend Gwen. I knew Max a little, but she didn't like me either, but Jack really liked her." She pointed toward the phone. "Monarch is Orin. Orin Monarch, and I knew his daughter, Nell?" She realized, almost immediately, that all those names without details might sound questionable, and she continued on in a rush. "Nell dated a boy named Sebastian, and Laura was a really, really bad at typing, and Gwen mommied everyone until her boyfriend died, and she was never really the same after."
She took a deep breath. "Can you please tell me what happened to everyone?"