Page 96 of Wild Sanctuary

Fuck.

The guilt doesn’t come all at once. It builds in layers while Daisy sleeps, each one heavier than the last.

She’s Tom’s daughter.

She’s nine years younger than me.

She trusted me with her safety and I failed.

I lie still and let it stack up because that’s what I do. I take the hit and file it away in the place where I keep every failure I’ve ever committed, and I use it to build the next wall.

By the time I hear the front door open downstairs, boots in the mudroom, Colt’s low laugh and June shushing him, I’ve made the decision.

This stops.

Whatever it was becoming on that porch, it ends here. Not because it wasn’t real. Because it was.

And real is exactly what makes it dangerous.

Real is how people get hurt on my watch while I’m busy wanting something I was never supposed to have.

Daisy shifts in her sleep, pressing closer. Her fingers curl tighter in my shirt and she murmurs something I can’t make out, and the tenderness that rolls through me is so sharp it feels like an open wound.

I don’t sleep. I watch the ceiling go from black to gray to pale, and I hold her the entire time because I’m not strong enough to let go yet.

One night.

I’ll give myself this one night of knowing what it feels like to have her breathing against my chest. And in the morning, I’ll do the right thing.

23

DAISY

I wake up warm.

That’s the first thing I register. I’m warm and wrapped in something that smells like cedar and soap and skin that isn’t mine. My face is pressed against soft blue chambray, and underneath it there’s a heartbeat, steady and slow, and for a few disoriented seconds I don’t move.

I just lie here and allow myself to have this.

I understand now.

I witnessed the truth last night, right there on the porch, when his hands were shaking and his forehead was pressed to mine and those green eyes were wide open with nothing left to hide behind.

Just Wyatt. Wanting me and terrified to admit that he’s been drowning in it.

Six years. He’s been carrying this for six years, and every time I told myself he didn’t see me, he was seeing me so clearly it was breaking him into pieces.

I burrow my face into his chest and breathe him in, and bone-deep certainty settles in me. Quiet and fierce and permanent. As though a lock has just shut tight.

Then I open my eyes and find he’s awake.

I don’t know how long he’s been up, but long enough. He’s on his back, one arm wrapped around me while he stares at the ceiling with the fixed expression of a man who’s been having a very long conversation with himself, only to arrive at a conclusion he hates.

I know that face. That’s his I’ve-made-a-decision-and-God-himself-isn’t-changing-my-mind face.

“No.” My stomach drops as I push up on one elbow. “Whatever you’re about to say, the answer’s no.”

“Daisy.”