Page 23 of Wilder

The second he was gone, I breathed out a slow sigh, the tension in my shoulders finally easing.

What a fucking shit show.

Sully turned to me. “Mind telling me what that was all about?”

I opened my mouth, then shut it again.

Shit.

What the hell was I supposed to say?

Oh, nothing much, just Carter being a jealous, insecure asshole and trying to start shit for no reason because he’s delusional.

Yeah. No. That wasn’t a road I particularly wanted to go down—especially not with Sully, who had zero patience for petty drama and even less for bullshit excuses. The absolute last thing I needed was to accidentally steer this into some weird hate-crime territory that might also be some bizarre jealous-by-proxy thing.

Because, honestly?

I still wasn’t entirely sure what the fuck Carter’s problem was.

Did he actually think I was getting special treatment?

Or was he really so pissed off that Wilder trusted me with responsibilities that he didn’t get?

Maybe this was all some repressed, cracked-out bullshit where he was jealous of something else entirely and simply needed to make it my problem.

Whatever it was, I doubted Carter had the balls to actually do anything about it.

I exhaled through my nose, schooling my expression before saying, “Nothing.”

Sully’s stare didn’t waver.

I could feel the weight of it, the way he was turning my words over in his head, deciding whether or not he was going to let that fly or call me out like he clearly wanted to. Sweat started to prickle at the back of my neck.

“Huh.” That was all he said.

Just a simple, unimpressed noise that carried a ton of weight to it. The kind that said ‘I don’t believe you, but I’m not going push it right now’.

Distraction time.

“Actually,” I said, straightening. “Do you know where Wilder is?”

Sully’s brow rose slightly. But to his credit, he let the subject drop. “Back at home with his mother for lunch. Why?”

“Great,” I said, scooping the bucket off the floor, kicking at some of the loose pellets with my toe. “Gotta talk to him about my vacation.”

“Vacation?” he repeated. “Where to?”

“Home. Just for a little while. My brother surprised me with a flight home for Christmas.”

He whistled low. “That’s a nice gesture.”

I shrugged, trying to downplay how much it actually meant to me because we really didn’t need to be getting into all of that at the moment. Not on the cusp of whatever that shit with Carter was. “Yeah, well... that’s my brother for you.”

Sully nodded, arms crossing over his chest as he popped a hip out to displace his weight. “I take it this is more than just a couple days off, then?”

I scratched the back of my neck. Time to rip the band-aid off. “About three weeks.”

His eyes widened “Three weeks?”