Page 88 of Wilder

Newsflash: it wasn’t.

If Wilder thought I was going to sit here and take the fall alone, he had another think coming. I’d throw him right under the bus for making the actual first move. Being pressed up against a wall was nothing compared to him carrying me into the office, locking the door behind us, and then kissing me.

I lifted my chin, meeting his stare head on. “Sure. Go ahead. Interrogate me.”

Wilder’s brows knitted together, his expression shifting just enough for me to catch the flicker of confusion behind those sharp, assessing eyes. Like my change in attitude had thrown him off balance. Almost as if he hadn’t been expecting me to be so... combative.

Well, too bad.

He wanted me to be honest?

Fine. Then he was going to get the full force of it, whether he liked it or not.

Sully cleared his throat. “Asher, can you walk us through what happened the day you came back to the ranch? You can start from when you came to the stables.”

I rolled my shoulders back. I kept myself controlled, even. I had nothing to hide—well, about this subject anyway. “Yeah. Sure. I came in here to check on Pelly and say hi to her. Found that her stall was empty and figured she was most likely brought out to the pasture for some enrichment.”

He nodded, gesturing with his hand for me to continue. “And then?”

I lifted a casual shoulder. “Then I went into the tack room to grab her a lead because I was going to take her up to the back paddock and get some training in with the barrels and ran into Carter.”

From the corner of my eye, I caught Wilder shifting on his feet, his arms crossing over his chest to mirror me.

“And then what happened,” he prompted.

I turned to stare at him.

Why was he asking?

He already knew the full story when I⁠—

Oh.

Holy fuck.

They didn’t bring me down here to ask me about what happened in the goddamn office, they wanted to know about the incident with Carter.

Oh my god, I was the dumbest motherfucker on this planet.

Wilder had warned me that Sully would probably want to hear it from my own mouth, to verify my story was straight and didn’t change. But here I was, too caught up in my own deep paranoia and self-inflicted doom spiral to connect the fucking dots.

I sighed, dropped my arms in order to rub a hand over my face. “Yeah, so I caught him over by the feed playing with it. He was using the metal scoop to move it around. At first, I thought he was starting restocks earlier but then I spotted the weed killer bottle he had next to him.

“If we took you to where we store the chemicals, do you think you could identify the bottle?” Sully asked.

“Absolutely.”

He nodded, looking back to Wilder. “Shall we?”

I barely held back a bone-deep sigh of relief as we headed toward the back entrance of the building, far far away from the damn office. Honestly, it was a wonder I’d made it this far in life without giving myself an actual heart attack induced from unnecessary stress.

Because between sneaking around with Wilder, and now this whole Carter situation, I was one good panic attack away from keeling over in the middle of this goddamn ranch.

As easy as it would be to get lost in whatever mess was happening between Wilder and me, we did have a much bigger issue to deal with.

Judging by the way Sully was handling this meeting, it was clear Wilder had filled him in on everything the second he had the chance yesterday which meant they were both taking this seriously.

As they should.