Page 51 of Wilder

“Oh.”

God, he was too cute.

I bit back a smile. It was so like Wilder to overthink things like this. Maybe we were two peas in a pod with that horrible trait. Both of us guilty of reading between the lines, turning molehills into mountains in our own heads for no reason other than to torture ourselves.

“Sorry for worrying you,” I replied.

“I’m happy to hear you’re all right. Things go well with your family today?”

Without meaning to, I let out a soft sigh, collapsing down onto my bed the second my knees brushed along the edge of it.

Wasn’t that a damn question for the ages?

One I absolutely had no business getting into with my boss, let alone on Christmas when the world was supposed to be draped in twinkling lights and holiday cheer.

The noise was barely audible, just a breath of frustration slipping past my lips, but apparently loud enough to catch his attention.

“That doesn’t sound good.”

Shit.

The last thing I wanted was to drag him into my mess, to spill something raw and personal into a conversation that was never meant to be anything but a casual check-in, just like his text had been. That was all this was supposed to be: a casual exchange, a brief moment of connection before we both moved on with our nights.

Simple and easy.

He was my boss, not my confidant.

What right did I have to dump a bunch of personal shit into his lap?

None of that was his problem. It wasn’t anyone’s problem but mine, actually. And maybe Greyson’s, when he actually made it home.

“I don’t want to bug you,” I muttered, rolling onto my side to stare up at my ceiling.

The silence on the other end of the line stretched out, long and drawn, doing nothing to ease the itching worry creeping beneath my skin.

Was he regretting calling me now?

That thought clenched my stomach.

Wilder was far too busy to be dealing with me and my moping.

Then finally, he spoke. “Didn’t I tell you you’ve never bothered me, Asher?”

“No,” I said, a tight laugh escaping me. “You said I never annoy you.”

“That’s the same thing.”

I was aware I was playing semantics. Clinging to technicalities in order to pivot away from what was rapidly growing into a deeply personal conversation.

I had a healthy fear of toeing that line. Crossing it wouldn’t be a simple misstep. It wouldn’t be something I could shrug off or laugh away later when I made it back to Texas. No, once I let myself step over that threshold there’d be no undoing it.

There would be no neatly folding my personal problems back into the little box I kept them in in order to pretend I hadn’t let something raw slip out to begin with.

And then what?

Wilder would probably avoid me for the rest of my time at Boone Ranch. Maybe not in a way that was obvious to anyone else, but I’d know. He’d stop seeking me out for the little things, stop coming around to check on Pelly and I while we ran laps in the back paddock, avoid me altogether until the only time we saw each other was during morning huddles.

That quite honestly might kill me.