Page 119 of Wilder

My eyes went wide at that.

“Go get him,” he said after a beat. “I don’t want to lose you like I lost your daddy.”

Was I hearing him right?

Was Sully actually giving me permission to bring Asher back to me?

“You’re... serious?”

His hand dropped from my shoulder. “Yes. Now get your ass on a plane. Or a bus. Or ride one of the horses all the way to Louisiana for all I care. Just fix it.”

My mind spun.

This was so unexpected. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be getting some kind of blessing from Sully of all people. Encouraging me to say ‘fuck it’ to all of my fears and dive head first into the unknown with no way of knowing how it would turn out on the other side.

Stuff like this terrified me. I’d faced off against feral mares and hormonal stallions for years, yet nothing came close to the kind of fear I felt thinking about getting on a plane to fly to Asher and bring him back home with me.

“I—what do I even say to him?”

“Start with ‘I’m sorry,’” Sully said. “Then tell him the truth. Tell him you were scared. That you’re still scared. But that nothing feels right without him. That’s what I’d say, at least.”

That was the truth, wasn’t it?

It had only been a single day since I’d forced him to leave and everything already felt off. Wrong. Like the sun didn’t rise quite as high in the sky overheard. Like I was walking through a world where all the color around me had dulled now that his intoxicating light was no longer around.

What I wouldn’t give to turn back time and swallow my fears and not let them talk me into saying goodbye to him.

This could be my second chance. My final Hail Mary choosing to go all in, throw caution to the wind and let whatever road we landed on take us forward.

As long as Asher wanted me back.

I breathed out slowly. “Okay. I’ll go.”

“Don’t waste it,” he said, finally smiling. “People like Asher don’t come around twice.”

CHAPTER 31

Wilder

The humidity clung to my skin the second I stepped off the plane.

It was a different kind of heat over here than in Texas, thick and slow moving. The kind that seeped through your clothes and down to your bones, making the fabric covering you cling to your body in an uncomfortable way.

Normally, it would have me wanting to crawl out of my skin, but today, I barely noticed it.

My head was too full of what I was going to say to Asher when I was finally face-to-face with him again.

Two days—that was how long it had taken me to get the ranch in order and square things away with Sully, all the while talking myself off every ledge I came across trying to justify why I should wait. Why I should be giving it time before I sprung a surprise visit on him without warning.

But time was the very thing that had been eating me alive since he’d left. I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t even stand to be in my own damn skin anymore.

So, I packed a bag as soon as I could and boarded a flight before I could talk myself out of it entirely.

The rideshare dropped me off in front of a small, cozy-looking house nestled just outside of the main streets of the city. It was modest, surrounded by trimmed hedges and one of those novelty bass-shaped mailboxes with a gaping mouth and whose colors had long since faded under the Louisiana sun. The porch steps had deep cracks in the concrete, small flecks of them crumbling under my boots as I walked up them.

I stared at the front door, and the gold plated house number attached to it, rubbing my sweaty hands at my sides.

What if he didn’t want to see me?