Page 70 of Wild Sanctuary

Maybe the orchard was just relief and adrenaline. A moment that meant something different to both of us.

Maybe I leaned in and she was already pulling back and I was too far gone to see it.

She got in the car with her friend.

He reached for her like she was his.

That’s not a question. That’s an answer.

Thinking otherwise is all on me.

Then Rhett says, without preamble, the way he says most things that matter, “Your dad would’ve bid three thousand.”

The ache of it settles behind my ribs, familiar and heavy and completely without remedy.

“At least,” I murmur, tipping my head back to take in the canopy of stars above my head.

Still wouldn’t have been enough.

17

DAISY

The view from Wyatt Hartley’s bedroom window is genuinely unfair. The mountains are still snow-capped, and the morning light across the valley is obscenely beautiful. And none of it cares even slightly about my problems.

My tea has gone cold, because I’ve been standing here for forty minutes.

He didn’t come home.

And sometime around three in the morning, it all started to make sense.

His hand on my face wasn’t a declaration. It was a kindness, offered by a decent man to a woman who’s trembling and scared. Who’s just had a Blackwood bid on her like she’s a parcel of land.

His thumb across my cheek wasn’t a promise. It was a comfort.

His silence wasn’t restraint. There was nothing he needed to take back.

And after a decade of wanting him, I turned it into something else entirely.

It makes complete sense.

What doesn’t make sense is the way he looked at me. I keep coming back to that. The way his eyes found mine across that tent before he’d even opened his mouth to bid. The way he didn’t look away. Not when Holden folded, not when the crowd reacted, not when the gavel came down.

A man simply being kind doesn’t look at you like that.

Does he?

I’m still standing here turning that over when Felix’s rental car pulls into the yard.

I watch it stop. Watch the door open.

My stomach drops at the impending confrontation, but then the barn door swings wide, and West is crossing the yard, arms folded, hat low. He moves with the unhurried certainty of a man who was ready.

He didn’t just hear it. He was listening for it.

The knot in my chest loosens, sudden and sharp, and the sheer relief that floods the space is almost embarrassing.

Felix gets out of the Audi with the energy of a man who slept like crap and has decided that’s everyone else’s fault. His face is hard, and he’s yelling before he’s fully out of the door, one hand gesturing toward the house. I can’t hear a word of it over the sound of blood rushing between my ears, but I don’t need to.