Page 64 of Wilder

If I hadn’t been so busy trying to keep occupied, I would’ve been outside enjoying it more.

Laken shoved both hands into his pockets, his breath coming out in a quiet sigh. “I’m looking forward to Friday. You?”

I pulled the stable doors shut behind us, latching them securely before raising a brow at him. “Is this a TGIF thing? I’d say yes, but I don’t exactly take days off.”

Surprisingly, he nudged me, his elbow knocking against my side.

“You should,” he said, shooting me a pointed look. “You’re gonna give yourself gray hair if you don’t quit working yourself to the bone.”

I grunted, ignoring the comment as I adjusted my hat.

Gray hair wasn’t exactly high on my list of concerns—not when I didn’t have anyone to impress or go home to. If anything, it helped me in the long run.

Older ranchers had a certain presence to them; a level of respect that came with experience, with years of hard work carved into their hands and faces. At auctions, those were the men who were taken seriously—the ones who could drop a few thousand without anyone questioning whether they knew what the hell they were doing.

A lot of this business was family-run, and more often than not, the head of the household was the one front and center at those events. A man with decades of ranching under his belt, his word carried weight just by virtue of the years he’d put into it.

Being a younger owner—and looking it—tended to work against me more than it ever worked in my favor.

I’d lost count of how many times I’d had to prove myself before anyone took me seriously.

“Well, for the record, you should take a break sometime,” he said. “Before we have to start planning your retirement party at, like, forty.”

I snorted. “I might be dead by then.”

If the stress of this place didn’t kill me first, my stupid heart sure seemed determined to finish the job instead, suffocating me under the weight of unreciprocated feelings of my own damn making.

Thirty-four years I’d spent living my life in peace and without any unnecessary complications, only for all of that to be completely destroyed by a young, brilliant greenhorn who was determined to undo me entirely without lifting a single finger.

Laken gave me a side-eye. “Damn, boss. That was kinda bleak.”

I grunted, rolling my shoulders. “Forget I said any of that.”

If Sully caught wind of me getting existential on anyone, he’d drag me back to my office at the main house and force me to have that conversation we were both avoiding.

Laken shook his head, but he didn’t push. “Whatever you say.” Then, after a beat, he added, “Hey, least with Asher coming back on Friday, you’ll finally be relieved of Pelly duty.”

My heart—the traitorous fucking thing—stuttered.

For a brief second, I almost faltered in my steps. I forced myself to keep moving, keep my expression neutral while Laken watched for my reaction.

For some reason, it still didn’t feel real that he was finally coming back.

In the grand scheme of things, three and a half weeks wasn’t long at all—barely a blip in the kind of life we’d built here on the ranch and with the amount of work we put in. But to go from seeing someone every single day, from sunup to sundown, only to have that yanked away all at once?

It felt like a damn lifetime.

“Guess I’ll go see how much trouble everyone got up to while I was gone,” he teased.

I barely registered his words before the sharp buzz of my phone went off in my pocket, vibrating insistently against my leg.

Digging it out, I lifted it in front of me, expecting to see Sully’s name lighting up the screen to tell me to get back to the bunkhouse and help him drag our staff up to their rooms, or maybe my mama’s, calling to wish me a happy New Year’s.

Instead, my breath caught.

Because the name that light up my screen was neither of them.

Asher.