Page 20 of Wilder

The work was hard, the hours unforgiving some days, but all of it was so damn worth it in the end as long as you could get past your own ego. With that kind of history, though, it was easy to see why Wilder didn’t expect anyone to stick around for long. Especially, young people like me.

Three weeks off was a big ask, even if I had a valid reason for requesting it. We ran a small team, and every pair of hands counted. It wasn’t like I didn’t know that.

But at the same time... I hadn’t seen my brothers in nearly a year. And that was starting to wear me down more than anything else. Ever since my phone call with Greyson, things had started shifting in my head, showing me that not every waking moment had to be this ranch as much as I was desperate to make it that way.

Perspective was a funny thing in the end; it snuck up on you when you least expected it to.

I’d spent so much time working and throwing myself into day-to-day life here, taking on extra responsibilities wherever I could because I was obsessed with trying to prove myself—trying to be useful—that I hadn’t really stopped to consider what exactly I was putting on hold in the process.

Family wasn’t something you could just hit the pause button on.

You didn’t get the time you wasted back, regardless of how often you got down on your knees and prayed for it.

And as much as I loved this place—as much as I loved what I was doing here—I couldn’t keep pretending like it didn’t weigh on me that I’d spent nearly a year being away from the only two people in this world who I could properly call family.

None of that was fair.

Especially to Gage.

Our brother, who had given up everything for Greyson and I. Who had worked himself to the bone to make sure we never went without. The one who had taken on the impossible role of big brother and parent all at once, making sacrifices we’d been too young to fully understand at the time, but now, looking back, it made my chest ache with remorse for not appreciating him sooner.

He’d spent his entire young adult life making sure we had a future and never once asked us to stay when we were finally old enough to leave because he selfishly wanted to keep us around and locked in those familiar boxes of ‘baby brother’.

Instead, he’d pushed us both forward, encouraged us to spread our wings and to chase whatever dreams we had, no matter how deeply it probably killed him to do so.

The day I finally got on the bus to head to Texas, he hadn’t said a word; hadn’t begged me to stay, hadn’t told me how much he’d miss me or made some last-minute plea that might’ve guilt-tripped me into hesitating and second-guessing my decision, getting me to turn around and get right back in his car.

He’d just... let me go.

Instead of a teary farewell, I’d gotten a tight squeeze that left bruises in its wake. The kind of hug that said everything he wasn’t going to put into words and never needed to in the first place. Instead of a ‘please don’t leave’, I got a gruff ‘take care of yourself’ and a pointed hassle into promising I’d call the second I got settled.

And then, just like that, he sent me on my way and hopped on a plane to California for his own new experience.

No hesitation. No fanfare. No big speech.

Because that was Gage.

He loved quietly. Fiercely. Without ever making it feel like a leash.

And now?

Now it was my turn to show him that just because I’d left didn’t mean I was gone forever. Just like leaving Boone Ranch didn’t mean that, either.

I owed my family more than that.

I owed myself more than that, too.

I simply needed to keep reminding myself of that very thing every time the growing anxiety choked me with scenarios of Wilder banishing me from the property for good.

Stupid, of course, because who else was going to keep Henry, our bucking gelding, from trying to kick our quarterly farrier in the balls like last time?

“Watch it,” came a curt warning right before a shoulder slammed into me.

The impact was enough to send the bucket in my hands careening to the floor. A loud clang rang through the stables as the metal hit the ground, and within seconds, the pellets inside spilled out of it to scatter in every direction like marbles let loose.

What the actual fuck?

I stood there for a beat, annoyance curling tight in my chest as I stared down at what would not only take me ten minutes to sweep up, but was probably going to need to be dumped since this was a main walkway and we had no idea what shit we were tracking in with our shoes. Feeding any potential hazard to the horses was absolutely against every ethical code we had.