I let her lead me to the truck. Got the door for her. Closed it. Walked around to my side with my back to Wyatt Cole and every nerve in my body screamin' at me to turn around.
But I didn't.
Instead, I took my girl home.
We rode in silence the whole twenty minutes from the ranch to the house. Didn't even need to stop at the apartment for a change of clothes because sometime over the last few weeks, all my shit ended up at the house anyway.
We'd found a cheap-ass washer and dryer that were tucked into the rundown, dirty old basement. They were a great addition to our ancient refrigerator that had a persistent rattle and the single-burner stove—if you could even call it that—sittin' on the kitchen counter. I'd kinda imagined the house comin' together a little more fanciful, but Calvin and I weren't fanciful people. And there'd be plenty of time to upgrade. Right now, we were playin' house.
And I fuckin' loved it.
Loved comin' home to her.
Loved goin' to bed with her.
Loved wakin' up to her—then immediately fuckin' her.
But tonight, I'd love lettin' her find a safe space to crash after a shit day—one with me and Cat and the comfort of a bed she'd picked out new sheets for.
It wasn't much, but it was enough.
CHAPTERFORTY-TWO
I had her first.I'll have her last.
The words looped through my skull like a song I couldn't shake. Over and over and over, scratching the same groove deeper each time. His voice. That easy, confident drawl that hadn't changed in sixteen years and probably wouldn't change in sixteen more.
I ain't goin' nowhere now that I found her.
The ceiling above me was dark. Brody was asleep beside me—on his back, one arm flung above his head, the other resting on his stomach, breathing the slow, steady rhythm of a man who'd spent the drive home vibrating with rage and then come through the door and done nothing with it except hold me. Fed Cat. Made me a sandwich I didn't eat. Sat on the couch with his arm around me while I stared at nothing, and when I'd finally saidbed, he'd carried me up the stairs without a word and curled himself around me like a wall between me and everything on the other side of it.
He'd been asleep within minutes.
I'd been staring at the ceiling for two hours.
I had her first.
He hadn't had me. He'd taken me. There was a difference—one I hadn't understood at fifteen, barely understood at eighteen, and was only now, at thirty-four, learning to name it for what it was.
But naming it didn't stop his voice from playing on repeat.
I'll have her last.
The math was simple. It always had been with Wyatt. He wasn't complicated—he was relentless. He didn't burn hot and flame out. He settled in. Got comfortable. Made himself a fixture until the walls around you shrank so small you forgot there was ever a world outside them.
He knew where I was now. Knew the ranch, the town, probably already knew about the house. A man like Wyatt didn't need directions twice.
I could run.
My truck was still at Wild Acre, but I could walk there in the dark. Done harder things for less. Half a tank of gas and the highway fifteen minutes south. Idaho by morning. Oregon by nightfall. Pick a direction and disappear the way I'd done a dozen times before, back when vanishing was the only skill I had that worked every time.
I turned my head and looked at Brody.
Moonlight through the one unboarded window cut across the bed in a pale stripe, catching the edge of his jaw, the slope of his shoulder. His lips were parted. His hair was a wreck. He was, objectively, the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, and the idea of walking to Wild Acre in the dark and driving away from him made me feel like I'd swallowed something sharp that was working its way through my insides one slow inch at a time.
Somewhere between a plywood floor and aPrincessbowl and Colleen Lancaster's apple pie, something had changed. The girl who ran had stopped running, and the woman who'd taken her place was lying in the dark next to a man she couldn't leave and couldn't lose, and the only thing louder than Wyatt Cole's voice in her head was the sound of Brody Lancaster breathing beside her.
I needed to shut Wyatt up.
