Page 111 of Wilder

None of this was fair.

Wilder’s face soon turned to stone, hard and unmoving while he squared his shoulders.

I could see the cracks forming underneath the surface, though, in the way his hands fisted at his sides. The hairline fractures in that careful mask he slipped over himself to keep his emotions locked up tight were visible enough for me to step forward and reach for him.

Fuck, all I wanted to do was cross the room and grab onto him, drag him out of here so he didn’t need to keep listening to this bullshit. Remind him that I was here—that I wasn’t going anywhere no matter how many times Sully tried to put this very obvious wedge between us.

“Enough.” Emily’s voice snapped through the awkward tension. “Both of you.”

They shifted awkwardly, like they’d both forgotten she was even in the room until she spoke. Honestly, I did, too. She’d been so damn quiet this entire time, it was like she’d completely disappeared into the background.

Neither of them looked at each other again after that, turning their glares away to anything else in the room.

When she turned in her seat, Emily’s gaze landed on me.

That steel in them softened instantly when she looked at me. It wasn’t pity exactly, that was reflecting back in my direction, but something close to it. More like a sad and tired understanding, like she already knew how this conversation was going to end and wanted to spare me from hearing the rest of it.

“I think you should head back up to the bunkhouse,” she said gently.

I opened my mouth, the protest right there on the tip of my tongue, ready to argue. “But⁠—”

“Go, Asher.”

It wasn’t Emily this time; it was Wilder.

I whipped my head around to look at him.

There wasn’t an ounce of bite to his words. No anger or frustration. Nothing like how Sully had been snapping at him seconds before. If anything, his tone was too soft—careful in the way someone sounds when they’re trying to let you down easy even though the words themselves still feel like a blade between your ribs.

I hated it. Hated that it sounded like he’d already made peace with the fact that this wasn’t going to end the way either of us wanted it to.

My stomach twisted painfully. “Wilder...”

The worst part was the way he refused to meet my eyes, like if he did, he wouldn’t be able to go through with telling me to leave again, undoing whatever strength it had taken him to say it in the first place.

Why?

Why was he kicking me out now of all times?

When he needed me most?

Even if I wanted to know, the words were stuck in my throat the second I opened my mouth, sharp as broken glass when I tried to force them out into the open.

By the subtle shift of his body turning away from me, I could tell nothing I said would change his mind.

My legs felt heavy when I took that first step back, as I desperately tried to cling to the idea of him reaching out and telling me he’d made a mistake and to go upstairs instead.

Each step away from the table felt more weighted than the last, wading through what felt like thick mud, causing me to move slowly as I headed for the front door.

No one tried to stop me. No last minute shouts of my name or pleas for me to come back so we could talk this all out together; come to some sort of agreement between us all now that the truth was finally out there.

Only heavy silence followed me as I shoved my feet into a pair of spare house slippers by the door, not bothering to go back upstairs and grab my own shoes, and slipped out into the cold morning sun.

Everything around me felt heavy.

Like I was leaving pieces of myself behind with every measured step I took back up to the bunkhouse.

CHAPTER 27