Page 108 of Wilder

My head snapped up the second I registered what I was hearing.

Why the fuck did he go up there?

Only a few seconds passed between me rising to my feet and Sully storming back into the dining room.

Tucked under his arm was one of my Mama’s rubber water bottles and in the other was Asher, being hauled into the room by the collar of his hoodie. Sully held the fabric in a fist so tight that it turned his knuckles white, using it to steer Asher over to one of the chairs and dumping him into it.

Asher caught himself on the edge of the table before he pitched over backward, his eyes wide as he stared up at the man towering over him.

For a second, no one moved.

“Wilder,” Sully bit out. “What the hell is this?”

CHAPTER 26

Asher

Holy fucking shit.

My heart was beating so hard in my chest, I thought it might crack a rib clean in half.

Each thump rattled through me, making it near impossible to suck in a lungful of air past the lump in my throat.

Sully hadn’t stopped staring me down since he’d dragged me in here—that hard, furious expression of his pinning me right to my spot, scaring the shit out of me. I’d never been on this side of his anger before, luck and good behavior putting me past the line of fire.

If I’d known Sully was in the house—if I’d had even the faintest clue anyone aside from Wilder was downstairs—I never would’ve left the bedroom. Hell, I probably would’ve hidden myself under his damn bed like some kind of stalker waiting for him to come back, or climbed out the window and scaled the side of the fucking house until my feet were touching the ground again and I could run back to the bunkhouse.

Anything other than what I’d actually done.

I’d gotten up to pee. That was it.

A harmless, half-asleep shuffle across the hall to find the bathroom after managing to find my clothes strewn around Wilder’s room. Rubbing at my eyes with my brain still fuzzy from sleep and that stupidly good sex we’d had the night before, my body still sore from it.

What I hadn’t expected was for my dumb luck to run out the second I cracked Wilder’s door open and stepped out into the hallway, my hand still wrapped around the knob when Sully spotted me from where he was standing at the top of the stairs, looking like a fucking specter straight out of one of my nightmares.

It’d only taken him half a second to register on my face—his eyes snapping wide, his jaw clenching so hard I thought he’d crack a molar the second he realized what room I’d been coming out of.

I could see the exact moment when it all clicked. When his gaze drifted down to my wrinkled clothes and messy hair, looking like I’d spent the night exactly where I wasn’t supposed to be.

I should’ve run.

Or, fuck, lied.

Doing anything else but standing there like I was brain dead would’ve been better. Fainting right there in the hallway would’ve at least saved myself the next ten minutes of hell.

But I hadn’t.

Instead, I hadn’t fought him as he dragged me down the staircase and into the dining room, tossing me down into the chair across from Wilder’s mother who was also staring at me like she’d seen a ghost.

“Oh, dear,” she mumbled to herself.

What would it take for the universe to open up a hole in the middle of this house and allow me to crawl under the floorboards and die?

“Sully,” Wilder said, his words slow and careful. “It’s not what you think.”

Sully’s glare didn’t budge as he continued to keep his eyes on me. His mouth flattened into a thin line, grinding out between his teeth, “Then tell me what the fuck I’m seeing right now.”

Oh, I was so dead.