Page 95 of Wilder

Obsessively, watching the clock wasn’t going to get Asher here faster.

I knew that.

If he ran into some trouble sneaking out without anyone noticing, I was in for an even longer wait. That was fine. Really, I’d wait as long as I needed to. But my chest ached with the kind of restless anticipation I’d felt back when I’d spotted him waiting on the steps the day he’d come back.

That same tick tugging at the back of my mind, relentless.

I needed him. Bad.

CHAPTER 23

Wilder

By the time I got my mama off to bed and settled for the night, the urge to crawl out of my own skin was overwhelming.

Glancing at the clock did me no favors. Nor did it keep my stomach from giving a nauseating tug the second I realized it was well past seven.

In my eagerness to get things ready for Asher to come over tonight, I hadn’t thought of the possibility of him blowing me off. That maybe after the heat and high of everything that had happened between us, reality had finally caught up with him.

Now that I was standing in the silence of my kitchen, watching out the window like a lonely dog, I couldn’t believe I’d been so damn naive.

Our spur-of-the-moment moments were just that: all impulse and laced with tension that, when lit up with a match struck too close to gasoline, burned everything around it. Spontaneous didn’t mean sustainable.

Maybe Asher had finally realized that none of this was worth the fallout that might happen afterward. Sleeping with your boss came with all sorts of consequences I’d been obsessing over right up until I’d finally gotten a taste of him and had decided the risk was worth it.

To him, it might not be.

I’d have to respect that even if it felt like a knife to the heart.

Sighing, I hooked my finger over the light switch to flick it off, dousing the kitchen in darkness. I left the back porch light on, not having the heart to turn it off and plummet my mood even more than it already was rapidly diving.

Running into him tomorrow was going to be awkward but that was the risk I’d run doing all of this. I’d be mature enough not to mention anything or make him feel bad about his decision, though it’d probably be best to keep my distance. Just until I got my head screwed back on straight.

Or until I could look at him without remembering how he sounded when he begged me to fuck him.

A knock at my back door had me spinning on my heel instantly.

I was at the door in two strides, yanking it open by the time the third rap hit the wood. The porch light cast a halo around the figure standing under it, bathing him in a warm glow.

Asher blinked up at me, a little startled, before a wide, boyish grin slid across his plush lips. “Hey there.”

I gripped the side of the door hard enough to hurt my hand.

He looked comfortable. Relaxed. Freshly showered with the damp strands of hair curling slightly at the ends. His dark sweats hung low on his hips and his hoodie swallowed up most of his frame.

Forcing myself not to ask why were you so late? was harder than I thought it’d be. I wanted to know, badly, if he’d come here late because he was second-guessing everything. If he’d paced around his room in the bunkhouse, debating whether any of this was worth the hassle or if cutting us both loose was the smarter decision.

We could come back from messing around. It’d take some time but we could bounce back. We could pretend it never meant anything and let the past stay where it should. It was just burning off tension. Curiosity tempting us over the forbidden fruit. The two of us making a poor decision in the heat of the moment.

Sex, though?

That, I was positive would change us both, permanently.

Before I could dwell on that too long, he pulled his hand from the front pocket of his hoodie, holding up a plastic baggie in the air right by his head.

“Sorry I’m late. Got caught up helping Hazel with meal prepping for tomorrow.” He gave the bag a little shake, the warm cookies inside smearing melted chocolate against the plastic. “But I did manage to score us some dessert.”

My gaze flicked to the cookies, three of them, as his grin widened. He looked damn proud of himself.