Chapter 28
Asher
It took almost three entire days before I saw him again.
A mere sixty-two hours that felt like an entire lifetime.
Time seemed to stretch out before me, each minute dragging by as I waited for something—anything—to change.
For some break in the cycle to finally come, only to be disappointed each night as the sun fell and rose the next morning and everything continued to remain the same.
I told myself over and over that this was nothing more than a temporary thing. A blip in the radar that I’d look back at in a year and laugh about.
Sooner or later, Sully would calm down and eventually realize just how ridiculous it was to try and gatekeep two fully grown adults from each other like we were misbehaving teenagers instead of people who’d finally stopped lying to themselves.
Whatever apology he wanted to give me, I’d happily accept as long as by the end of it, he stayed the hell out of my and Wilder’s business.
Sadly, that moment never came.
By the time day three rolled around, it was getting painfully obvious this wasn’t something that would blow over in a couple of days like I’d hoped. I’d somehow stumbled into a full-blown standoff where every hour I was praying for a ceasefire.
The ranch kept moving, business as usual, with my fellow ranch hands none the wiser about the absolute mess of emotions I’d started to dissolve into.
I hadn’t seen Wilder once. Not from a distance or in passing. Not even a fleeting glimpse of his familiar hat disappearing around the corner of one of the buildings. Each day that ticked by felt like another layer of me was slowly being peeled from my body, torturously painful.
I was slowly being driven mad.
Having nothing but my own thoughts and emotions swallowing me whole, dragging me down into some dark pit I had no way of knowing how to crawl out of, I’d wanted to disappear into nothing the moment Sully had caught me, but now that I was drowning in that very void, I wanted nothing more than to be rescued by the one person who apparently was hell-bent on avoiding me.
I needed something—anything—to distract me from this endless waiting game.
Right around noon, I found myself wandering down toward the stables like muscle memory at this point.
Truth was, I needed to see my horse, sought the comfort she brought me and hoped like hell it would actually save me from doing something stupid like tracking down Wilder and confessing my undying love to him while begging, on my hands and knees, to tell Sully to fuck off.
The barn doors were already open when I arrived, the place quiet once I stepped in past the threshold.
We’d let the horses out early this morning, taking advantage of the unusually warm weather.
There hadn’t been much on the schedule today outside of Laken taking the two new colts through a few basic exercises in the arena.
Outside of that, the rest of the herd had been left to graze until the sun went down
I headed down the midway to the tack room.
With both Wilder, and subsequently Sully, avoiding me, there was no one left to tell me I couldn’t take Pelly out for a ride.
Where I’d go, I had no fucking clue. Somewhere far enough away that the noise in my head might finally shut up for once.
Ryder had shown me a map once during my first few weeks here and that there were a few trails that ran west of the property line, weaving through the brush of the Texas wilderness.
As long as I had my phone on me, no one could accuse me of taking off without permission. I could argue it was part of my job or my responsibility of keeping her active and training her to handle more than just a few laps around the paddock—whatever excuse I needed to make it make sense.
I grabbed one of the leads off of the wall, throwing the end of it over my shoulder. I brushed my fingers over the row of harnesses hanging neatly beside it until I found Pelly’s, unclipping it and settling the familiar weight over my arm.
The plan was simple enough: grab Pelly, bring her back here, saddle her up, and then ride until the restlessness in my bones burned out.
Simple.
I turned on my heel, already mentally ticking through what I’d need to grab next, when something shifted at the very edge of my peripheral vision—a flicker of movement that had my head turning toward it.
And then I saw him.
Wilder.
The breath punched out of me like someone had hit me square in the chest.
For a long, unbearable second, neither of us moved.
He stood halfway down the stable aisle, still as stone, the afternoon sun pouring in behind him through the wide, open barn doors.
The light behind him hit just right, framing him in this soft, almost ethereal glow that made him look otherworldly.
Like something I’d conjured up in the middle of the night when I was too heartsick to sleep.
But the closer I looked, the more the cracks began to show.
While his expression was unreadable, there were dark shadows under his eyes, deep enough to look like bruises against the warm sun-kissed tone of his skin. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days, exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with long hours spent doing physical labor.
As sick as it sounded, that brought me a flicker of comfort. Even if I couldn’t be sure I was the reason behind it, this was a proof I wasn’t the only one drowning in some kind of emotional mess.
I swallowed against the lump forming in my throat, forcing my legs to move forward. My boots made a soft, muted noise against the concrete floor, the cavernous space stretching between us quickly being swallowed up as I grew closer.
When I stopped a few feet away, I couldn’t help letting my gaze sweep over him.
Up close, he looked rougher than normal.
His scruff darker than usual, his hat tilted back just enough for a few pieces of his hair to stick out like he’d been running his hands through the strands dozens of times out of frustration.
One hand was curled into a fist at his side, while he used his other to rub his fingers together anxiously.
I licked my lips to wet them, my voice coming out softer than I meant when I finally spoke. “Hey.”
Wilder’s eyes flicked up to meet mine, and for a heartbeat, I almost let myself hope. But then there was a small tug at the corner of his lips, down turning them, that I didn’t like at all. “Asher.”
There wasn’t a trace of relief in it, no hint of joy or longing after days spent avoiding me. Just something quiet and sad, a subtle thread of resignation that clung to the two syllables in my name.
No.
I forced myself to clear my throat, trying for something more casual instead. “I was going to take Pelly out for a quick ride. You want to join me?”
The words were light, almost careless on the surface, while underneath they were a lifeline—a quiet, desperate offer disguised as something simple.
An extension of the olive branch, a plea for him to reach out and take my hand, grasp it tightly in his own while reassuring me this would blow over soon enough.
That it would just take a little more time but we had plenty of that to look forward to in our future.
Please, please...
“Actually…” Wilder’s voice was tight when he spoke. His gaze darted away from mine—goddamn it—dropping instead to the harness clutched in my hand. “I came to look for you.”
I hated the sound of that.
“I—” My voice caught, forcing me to swallow again. “Something happen?”
He drew a slow, almost pained breath. Deep enough that I could see the strain in the rise of his chest, how his shoulders tensed as he held it. When he finally exhaled, it came out in one sharp release, sounding more like surrender than relief.
His hand at his side flexed once, then curled into a fist so tight I could see the tendons shifting beneath the skin. “I wanted to tell you myself instead of you finding out from someone else. I’ve... I’m going to be sending you home, Asher.”
For a second, the words refused to register.
“Home?” I asked, dumbly.
He nodded stiffly, still refusing to look at me. “I’ve already got a rideshare coming by in an hour to take you to the airport. I went ahead and purchased you a ticket home, you just need to go up to the desk to claim it. It’ll be under your name.”
I shook my head, disbelief rocketing through me.
For a heartbeat, the entire world around me blurred at the edges. The light filtering in through the barn doors felt too bright, the warm spring air outside suddenly cold against my skin.
There was no way this was happening.
This couldn’t be real. This had to be some nightmare—one of those stress dreams that I’d fallen into after crashing from a day’s worth of heavy labor, twisting everything I feared into something cruel and vivid.
A dream I’d wake up from with a jolt the second the morning sun finally peeked through my open window.
Wilder wouldn’t do this.
Wilder wouldn’t send me home.
Not without talking to me about it first.
He...
“No.” The word slipped out before I even realized I was speaking. Quiet and hoarse like it had to crawl its way up from the pit forming in my stomach.
Wilder’s throat bobbed with the effort it took to swallow, but his gaze stayed stubbornly pinned to the space between us. “If you need, I can pull Laken from the arena. Have him head up and help you pack.”
It wasn’t the words themselves that broke me, it was in the way he said them—detached and measured.
Cold. Almost like he was doing me some kind of favor.
Like this was nothing more than a business transaction and he was trying to offer polite, logistical solutions to soften the blow while shoving me out the door.
What the fuck?
What the fuck.
Before I could stop myself, I crossed the distance between us in two steps and grabbed a fistful of the front of his shirt, yanking him toward me. The fabric bunched in my hands, creased so tightly I knew I’d feel the imprint on my skin long after this moment was over.
His head snapped up at the sudden movement. The second our gazes collided, something in his expression crumbled just for a moment. So brief I almost missed it. His eyes softened just enough for my heart to thud hard against my ribs.
“Asher—” he breathed out, almost pleading.
I didn’t let him finish.
“You’re not doing this,” I ground out. “I don’t care what Sully said. He’s not sending me anywhere.”
Wilder’s expression pinched. “Asher...”
I shook my head, fighting the urge to shake him until he got it through his thick skull. “You’re the one in charge here. You own this place. You decide what happens. Don’t let him bully you into making a decision like this.”
Something flickered across his face—an emotion I couldn’t name, too tangled and messy to pin down before he smothered it. He sighed softly, his shoulders slumping again. “He’s not the one sending you home. I am.”
My grip faltered. “What?”
“I’m sorry.”
Tears burned in my eyes, blurring the edges of my vision.
“Why?” I croaked. “Why would you do that?”
For a second, I thought he’d answer, explain himself and make it all make sense. Tell me that this was some grand master plan he’d been cooking up over the past few days to explain why he’d hidden himself away from me, trying to figure out how to get us the best of both worlds.
But instead, he reached up—slow and careful—to pry my fists from his shirt, peeling my fingers apart until he plucked every last one off of him.
He wasted no time dropping them from his grip, no longer treating them the same way he had only days ago when he’d had those same hands running over every inch of me.
There was no love left in his touch. The warmth I craved, the safety I’d felt wrapped up in his arms, had been replaced by this cold detachment.
The man who’d burned his mark into my very bones was now a stranger standing in front of me, unrecognizable in every way but the one that mattered most.
How did we end up here?
Why?
“I’m sorry, Asher,” he said, taking a step back from me. “I’ll send Laken up to the bunkhouse, okay?”
For the first time in my life, I wanted to beg.
The first tear fell in the same moment he turned away from me.
Another one followed immediately after, hot and wet, cutting a path down my face as he took a step toward the stable doors.
He didn’t look back as he walked.
He didn’t even hesitate when he reached the barn doors and stepped out into the fresh air.
He didn’t care as he left me to break apart and crumble to my knees.