Page 44 of Wilder

Unfortunately, that had only been the beginning of everything that would eventually unfold while I was still in Baton Rouge.

Four days after Pelly was sent home, just as I was beginning to breathe a little easier, things took another unexpected turn. One that felt even stranger than the last.

Xavier and Dexter had run into some kind of trouble while visiting LSU’s botanical garden during one of their campus tours. What exactly had happened there, I still wasn’t sure. Gage wasn’t giving me straight answers and the pieces I had managed to gather with Greyson, after the fact, weren’t adding up, either.

All I knew was that whatever had gone down had been bad enough to rattle them both. Bad enough to send them packing their bags in a hurry and booking their return flight to California for the very next day.

The whole thing sat wrong with me. No matter how many times I turned it over in my head, I couldn’t make sense of it.

Xavier wasn’t the type to just leave—not without reason, and definitely not before waiting to celebrate early Christmas with us like we had been planning on doing before Dexter had to get back home to his mom. For him to suddenly ditch those plans without any kind of explanation was troubling on more levels than one.

I hated not knowing.

And if I was being honest?

Not getting to say goodbye to either of them hurt more than I thought it would.

I’d grown attached to Dexter in the time he’d been with us. His quirks, his quiet and observant nature, had woven seamlessly in with Greyson and I’s ridiculousness. He balanced us out perfectly in a way neither my twin nor I had realized we needed until he was here. Without him, things felt off-kilter.

Like the dynamic had shifted and not in a way I liked.

Seeing them go—or rather, waking up to find they had already left—left an uneasy hollowness in my chest. It felt wrong not being able to wish them safe travels or at the very least have that final goodbye.

But no matter how much it nagged at me, there wasn’t much I could do.

And then the fire happened.

The call had come out of nowhere, shattering what thin layer of normalcy we’d somehow managed to cling to after Xavier and Dexter’s abrupt departure. Gage had come out of his bedroom to find Greyson and I sprawled out on the couch, lost in some meaningless TV show, completely unaware of the storm about to hit.

He’d looked wrecked. His face pale as a ghost, the hand gripping the side of the wall he’d been leaning on shaking visibly. That expression was something I never wanted to see on my brother’s face ever again.

That was the moment I knew something horrible had happened.

When Gage finally could get it out, he told us about Xavier trying to stop one of his neighbor’s houses from burning down but ended up getting caught in the crossfire trying to pull one of the victims out of the house.

The reality of it hit in fragments, like my brain refused to process it all at once. Xavier was supposed to be invincible, just like Gage. Neither of them were meant to be brushing their shoulders with death; certainly not in that capacity.

That wasn’t—they weren’t supposed to die on us.

Telling Gage to go to California had been a no-brainer. There was no argument strong enough to justify staying. Not when Xavier was laid up in a hospital bed, suffering from smoke inhalation while his body recovered from whatever hell that fire had put him through.

But of course, Gage still tried it anyway.

His weak attempts to fight us on missing Christmas had been made more out of guilt than anything. And yeah, I’d give him that—it was sad. Being separated for the holiday wasn’t exactly how any of us had planned it, but who cared about Christmas when Xavier was on a ventilator?

He needed Gage by his side whenever he finally woke up and that was exactly the kind of Christmas gift Grey and I would make sure he got.

We’d all but shoved him out the door, forcing a packed bag into his hands and making it very clear that he wasn’t coming back until Xavier was awake enough to string together a coherent sentence. Anything less than that and we’d have no problem canceling his return ticket before the money could even be withdrawn from his account.

By the time we’d tossed his bag into the trunk and nudged him into the passenger seat, his arguments had all but dried up.

He was always stubborn until the bitter end but also knew when to cut his losses. His resistance had faded into a long, tired sigh, the fight finally leaving him as he sank into his seat and finally let Grey and I drive him to the airport.

Against the two of us, he never really stood a chance anyway.

The drive there had been quiet but not uncomfortable; a shared silence heavy with understanding.

We weren’t just sending him off to be with his loved one—we were watching the first time we’d all come together after being separated for over a year slip through our fingers, the tradition we’d been so excited to uphold disappearing in the rearview mirror with each mile we crossed heading to the airport.