Page 116 of Wilder

“I’m sorry.”

Tears burned in my eyes, blurring the edges of my vision.

“Why?” I croaked. “Why would you do that?”

For a second, I thought he’d answer, explain himself and make it all make sense. Tell me that this was some grand master plan he’d been cooking up over the past few days to explain why he’d hidden himself away from me, trying to figure out how to get us the best of both worlds.

But instead, he reached up—slow and careful—to pry my fists from his shirt, peeling my fingers apart until he plucked every last one off of him. He wasted no time dropping them from his grip, no longer treating them the same way he had only days ago when he’d had those same hands running over every inch of me.

There was no love left in his touch. The warmth I craved, the safety I’d felt wrapped up in his arms, had been replaced by this cold detachment.

The man who’d burned his mark into my very bones was now a stranger standing in front of me, unrecognizable in every way but the one that mattered most.

How did we end up here?

Why?

“I’m sorry, Asher,” he said, taking a step back from me. “I’ll send Laken up to the bunkhouse, okay?”

For the first time in my life, I wanted to beg.

The first tear fell in the same moment he turned away from me.

Another one followed immediately after, hot and wet, cutting a path down my face as he took a step toward the stable doors.

He didn’t look back as he walked.

He didn’t even hesitate when he reached the barn doors and stepped out into the fresh air.

He didn’t care as he left me to break apart and crumble to my knees.

CHAPTER 29

Wilder

There were a lot of days I wondered what life would’ve been like had my father survived that heart attack.

Usually, when the sky stretched too wide above me and I felt too small beneath it. Or when the weight of everything I was responsible for sat heavy on my shoulders and I started to think that maybe, just maybe, things would be a hell of a lot easier if I’d gone out right alongside him.

I never said that last part out loud.

Not once.

Not to Sully, not to my Mama, and definitely not to Asher.

But the thought lived inside me quietly. Always there, never wavering, no matter how many days passed since his death.

In moments like this, I wished more than anything to have him back again. For that familiar hand to clap down on my shoulder, to squeeze the muscles beneath the skin tight until it felt bruising and brought me back down to reality.

I wanted his solid presence next to me, his rumbling voice comforting me as these damn tears continued to leak from my eyes and fall uselessly into the dead grass at my feet, no judgment in his words or in his tone while he reassured me that as sure as the setting sun, things would find a way of being all right in the end.

What I wouldn’t give... what I wouldn’t sacrifice to have that man rise from the dead and come back to be the one I needed most.

Life was hard.

Relationships were harder.

And I was the damn fool who’d fucked up both.