Page 53 of Wilder

Wilder

My thumb hovered over my phone screen, and I watched as it slowly dimmed.

There was a tightness in my chest that wasn’t there before I’d stepped into this room, away from the rest of the festivities, the sounds of our holiday party carrying on in the bunkhouse’s great room muffled through the door behind me.

The slow and unwelcome squeeze only seemed to grow worse the longer I stared down at Asher’s contact and the phone log from our call.

He worried me—he really fucking did.

Whatever was going on over there, making his voice catch like that, had my mind turning over worst-case scenarios faster than I could talk myself down from them.

This wasn’t him.

He was supposed to be busy with his family, too preoccupied to answer my texts and my calls. Not answering me like he was spending Christmas all alone and had no one else to talk to. Like he’d been sitting there with his phone in his hand waiting, hoping, for someone to reach out to him.

My thumb strained over the ‘call back’ option.

Fuck.

I shouldn’t. He’d made it clear he didn’t want to talk about it and I’d meant what I said—I wasn’t going to push it. I’d never been in the business of forcing anyone to air out their own business and I sure as hell wasn’t about to go back on that now.

But...

This was Asher... my damn soft spot.

I dragged a hand over my face and sighed into it, the other one dropping to my side. “Fuck.”

If I was wrong about something going on, it was only going to make me look like a fool calling him back to try and dig answers out of him. For all I knew, I’d caught him between activities and he was simply being polite answering me in the first place.

Jeopardizing him coming back to Texas because I had it in my head he needed some grand rescue when it turned out to be the exact opposite was the last thing I wanted. I’d already toed that line of overstepping with him before, far too often for my comforts. Keeping it going while he was ten hours away would be the nail in the coffin.

Splitting my fingers apart, I peered through them into the dark room I’d slipped into; an old, unused sitting room I had yet to get around to renovating but desperately needed to. The place was stuffed with old furniture that had seen better days, most of it pushed up against the walls to form a strange looking semi-circle that looked more ominous than it did harmless.

Outside the window across the way from me were Christmas lights that had been wrapped around the outside frame, flickering softly. They were supposed to be a warm and festive sight, but instead, all they reminded me of was that small hitch in his voice.

“It’s nothing.”

I tightened my hand around my phone.

One week.

That was all I had to wait. Seven days until he was back at the ranch, back where I could keep an eye on him. I wouldn’t have to rely on trying to read him through the damn phone to figure out if he was okay or not once he was here again.

I could wait that long.

Right?

Forcing myself to push away from the wall I’d settled against, I shoved my phone deep into my pocket and grabbed the door handle before I could second guess going through with calling him back.

Bothering him wouldn’t do either of us any good.

If he was struggling, I needed to trust he could handle it on his own or call me if he needed to talk about it. I’d made it clear I’d be all ears, no questions asked.

But forcing him to?

Guilting him into opening up, like I was damn tempted to, to keep prodding at him until he gave in, was only going to push him away.

I didn’t want to keep falling back into this helicopter role I’d grown familiar with, breathing down his neck every time something felt a little off.