Page 110 of Wilder

“I don’t care,” Wilder snapped back. “Like I said, it’s none of their business. It’s actually no one’s business what Asher and I do.”

Sully’s laugh sounded almost mocking, like he couldn’t believe this conversation was even happening. “Well, you fucking should, because you know what this looks like? It looks like you’re taking advantage of him.”

He pointed a finger toward me, the movement sharp.

The moment those words left his mouth, I rolled up onto my feet. “Sully, that’s not fair. I had a hand in this, too, you know.”

Heat flared through my body the moment his eyes pinned back on me again. I wouldn’t back down from this. Letting Wilder take the heat when I also involved myself—hell, technically made the first move if we were going by semantics—was as ridiculous as someone trying to have an opinion on my sex life.

I got that it looked bad. Favoritism wasn’t something that should be going on when trying to run a business. However, at the same time, two people’s attraction to each other wasn’t something that could be helped in most cases. As long as we were both consenting, it shouldn’t matter.

I wasn’t some little kid needing to be protected—I was a fully grown adult capable of making my own decisions. If I wanted Wilder and he wanted me, no one was going to have a say in any of that.

Least of all our fucking coworkers.

The fact that the two of us were standing here being flayed open under Sully’s disappointed gaze while the rest of the damn ranch got to live their lives however they wanted felt too unfair. If I was getting involved with any of the other hands, like Laken or Ryder, no one would be batting an eye.

“You know I’d never do that,” Wilder said, ignoring me. He looked hurt, a little shake to his hand as he brought it up to run his fingers through his hair. “He— I’d never take advantage of anyone.”

Sully shook his head slowly. “I don’t know... I don’t know what I’m more pissed about. That you’re this reckless or this good at hiding shit.”

Wilder’s jaw ticked as he ground his teeth together. “You’re not my father, Sully. Stop lecturing me like you are.”

“Boys,” Emily chided.

Sully went quiet for a moment, the seconds stretching out between them—wide and cavernous. The guilt boiling in my gut was an understatement. Getting involved in something that was the cause of a fight like this, one that was never supposed to happen in the first place, was the last thing I’d been thinking about when Wilder brought me up to his bedroom last night.

If I would’ve known...

Fuck.

These two were never meant to be at odds, and now that they were, I wasn’t sure how any of us were supposed to come back from that.

Where did we even go from here?

Us being separated?

Sully forcing Wilder to let me go?

No matter what the end result to any of it turned out to be, I couldn’t help but imagine that we were standing over the edge of something irreversible.

I was going up against years of unspoken loyalty, years of family ties all tangled up in anger and grief, pent up with nowhere to go but implode internally. Being the catalyst for a relationship completely deteriorating was never something I wanted to do to either of them.

All I’d wanted was Wilder. Nothing else mattered at the time.

“You’re right,” Sully finally said. “I’m not. But what I do know is that your daddy would be disappointed in you.”

His words sliced through the air like a knife, aimed directly at the chest of the man standing right in front of him.

I watched the way Wilder reacted to them, like he’d been punched hard enough to make him flinch visibly, and for a split second, the solid, unshakable man I’d spent almost a year falling for looked like he’d been knocked clean off his feet.

My own heart cracked in half for him.

He didn’t deserve to be talked to like that. Not by Sully, not by anyone.

I knew what Sully meant to him, how Wilder looked up to him, how much of a second father figure he’d become in the wake of everything he and his mother had lost after his own father had passed.

To have that man throw those words around like a weapon was horrible, even if there was some truth to them.