Page 59 of Wild Sanctuary

Instead, my other hand finds the small of her back—light, barely there, a guide more than a grip—and I steer her toward the rear of the tent where the canvas flaps open to the orchard beyond. Away from the stares and the gossip. Away from Holden Blackwood, who I can feel watching us from somewhere in the crowd with the kind of calculated interest that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Daisy doesn’t resist. Doesn’t ask where we’re going. Just lets me lead her through the crowd with her hand still wrapped in mine and her shoulder brushing my arm, and the heat of that contact burns through my shirt sleeve like a brand.

We clear the tent and the noise drops to a muffled hum behind us. The orchard stretches ahead in orderly rows, the old apple trees still holding the last of their blossoms. Petals drift in the grass beneath them, while their branches are laced with string lights that cast warm pools of gold across the grass. The air is cooler out here—the kind of spring night where the warmth drops out of the sky the second the sun does—clean, carrying the scent of apple blossom and new grass and that distinctive distant sweetness of the mountain wildflowers that bloom along the ridge this time of year.

I walk her deeper into the trees until the tent is a soft glow behind us and the music is just a suggestion on the breeze. Then I stop, and the quiet settles around us like a blanket.

I still haven’t let go of her hand.

Let go, Hartley. Right now. Before this becomes something you can’t undo.

I let go this time.

She doesn’t step away. Just stands there in the dappled light, one hand still holding Tom’s hat against her thigh, the other hanging at her side where my hand used to be. The trembling I noticed on the stage hasn’t stopped—it’s subtle, barely there, the kind of thing most people wouldn’t catch.

But I’m not most people. Not when it comes to her.

We stand in silence for a long moment. The band has started up again inside the tent—the opening bars of “Cover Me Up” drifting through the orchard on steel guitar and fiddle. A breeze moves through the orchard and the string lights sway, sending the shadows dancing across her face.

She speaks first.

“Holden Blackwood.” Her voice is steady, but there’s a tightness underneath that she can’t quite iron out. “His father bought Larkspur River for two hundred thousand below market value. Did you know that?”

“Yeah.” My voice comes out rougher than I intended. “I know it.”

“I’m standing up there, and that man whose family profited from the worst thing that ever happened to me is bidding on me like it’s sport.” She’s looking at the ground, at her boots, her jaw working. “And everyone’s smiling and cheering. Laughing, like it’s charming.”

Her voice cracks on the last word. Just barely. Just enough and my chest tears clean open. The hand holding her hat is trembling, and she’s doing that thing she does—the thing she did at the funeral and again on stage—where she locks her jaw and lifts her shoulders and tells herself that if she holds her body together, the rest will follow.

“Daisy.”

“And then you.” She looks up at me, and the tears are still there but there’s a ferocity too. “You told me I was your problem this morning, Wyatt. That I was in the way. And tonight you bid two thousand dollars and looked at me like… like that—” She stops, shaking her head with a frown. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

I reach out before I can think better of it and tilt her chin up with one finger. Gentle. Just enough pressure to bring her face up to mine.

“Hey. Look at me.”

Her eyes meet mine, and the impact damn near takes me out at the knees. Brown with those amber flecks, bright with tears she’s refusing to let fall, and so close I can see the reflection of the string lights swimming in them like tiny gold stars.

I should take my hand away from her face. I should step back. I should do a hundred things that a responsible, decent man would do when he’s standing too close to a woman he has no right to touch.

I don’t do any of them.

Instead, I notice a honey-gold strand of hair curling against her cheek where the evening breeze has coaxed it forward. My hand moves on its own, my finger tracing from her chin to the curve of her jaw as I tuck the strand behind her ear. The rough pad of my thumb grazes the soft skin below her earlobe, and her breath catches. A sharp, quiet intake that I feel against my wrist.

The feel of her under my calloused hands is something I know with absolute certainty I’ll never be able to unfeel. She’s warm and impossibly soft and her pulse is hammering against my thumb. And some part of me that’s been locked in a box for six years breaks free with a violence that leaves me breathless.

I lean down. Close enough that her hair brushes against my jaw, close enough that I can feel each shallow exhale against my throat. Close enough to breathe her in—warm skin and something floral and singularly her.

I let myself have it. Just this once. I let myself stand in the dark with Daisy Monroe’s face in my hands and her scent in my lungs and the warmth of her skin seeping into the rough places I’ve spent thirty-five years hardening against the world.

The words come out low. Barely a whisper. Meant for her and no one else.

“No one’s ever gonna make you feel like that again, Daisy-girl.”

The name leaves my mouth and it sounds nothing like it’s ever sounded before. Not the wall I built that Christmas night when she walked in wearing red and I forgot how to breathe. Not the distance. Not the promise I’ve kept for six goddamn years.

It sounds like the truth. Raw and low and terrified, like I’ve been holding it so long it came out wrong.