My Girl to Ruin (Wilder House #5)

Prologue

Lachlan

The engine purrs low beneath my hands, smooth and responsive.

I sit behind the wheel, fingers loose on the leather, eyes scanning the long stretch of empty road ahead. Asphalt cuts through the dry California landscape like a blade, heat rising off it in faint waves. No traffic. No obstacles. Just open space.

Perfect.

“Man, listen to that,” Tyler says beside me, practically vibrating in his seat. “Tell me you don’t feel that. That’s not just a car; that’s a damn beast.”

I don’t look at him. Don’t need to. I can hear the grin in his voice.

“I feel it,” I say evenly, pressing the accelerator just enough to let the engine respond. “Doesn’t mean you need to act like a kid in a candy shop.”

He lets out a laugh, loud and easy. “That’s because you don’t know how to enjoy things,” he shoots back. “You treat every car like it’s a math problem.”

“It is a math problem,” I reply. “Speed. Control. Response time. Margin of error.”

“God,” he mutters, shaking his head. “You’re exhausting.”

I glance at him then, just for a second.

Blond hair catching the sunlight through the windshield, a little too long like he never remembers to cut it on time. Brown eyes bright, alive, always moving. There’s a looseness to him, something unguarded. The kind of energy that makes people like him without trying.

He looks exactly the same as he did at seventeen. Just…bigger. Still all in on everything, in a way that somehow never tips into stupidity. The kind of guy who says yes first and works out the details later.

“You done?” I ask.

“Never,” he says, grinning. “You love it.”

I don’t respond to that. Instead, I shift gears and press the accelerator a little more. The car responds instantly. Smooth and clean.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Tyler says, bracing a hand against the dash as the speed climbs. “Come on, don’t hold back now. Open her up.”

I don’t. Not yet. I listen to the engine. The vibration through the steering column. Every sound matters. Every detail. That’s why I drive now. Tyler used to, but he’s more interested in how it feels than in what it’s telling him.

“Relax,” I tell him. “We just installed new parts. I want to feel how they sit before I push it.”

He exhales dramatically. “You’re killing me, man.”

“You’ll live.”

“Barely.”

My mouth twitches at that. I ease the car forward, letting the speed build gradually. The road stretches endlessly ahead of us, nothing but heat, distance, and possibility. For a moment, everything feels right.

“You know,” Tyler says after a beat, voice quieter now, more thoughtful. “We should take a few days off after this job. Head up the coast or something. Clear our heads. Bring Tatum. She’s been on me about it since spring break.”

I don’t answer immediately. Days off aren’t something I think about. There’s always something to fix. Something to improve. Something that needs my attention. But Tyler thinks about things like that.

“Maybe,” I say finally.

He turns his head toward me, surprised. “Yeah?”

“Maybe,” I repeat.

He leans back in his seat, satisfied, like he’s already planning it in his head. I let the silence settle again, the hum of the engine filling the space between us.

Everything reads clean. Steady pull, steady response, nothing sitting wrong. I take it up one increment, the way I always do, and hold it there. The car holds with me.

Tyler whoops beside me, loud and delighted, and I let him have it.

“Yeah!” he shouts.

I’m already easing off, bringing it back down.

That’s when the car stops answering me.

It’s subtle at first. A hesitation in the way the car responds. My grip tightens on the wheel.

“What?” Tyler asks immediately, picking up on it.

I don’t answer right away. I press the accelerator slightly. The response lags. Not much. But enough. My eyes narrow.

“That’s weird,” I mutter.

“What is?”

The car jerks. My focus sharpens instantly, every sense locking in.

“Something’s not right.” The steering pulls. Hard.

“Lachlan…”

I try to correct it, but the car doesn’t respond the way it should. The wheel feels loose in my hands. Disconnected.

“Shit,” I bite out, fighting it, trying to regain control.

The car veers. Fast. Too fast.

Tyler braces himself, one hand gripping the door, the other slamming against the dash. “What the hell, Lachlan!”

“I’ve got it,” I say, even though I don’t.

I haul at the wheel, refusing to believe it’s failed on me. Nothing. It’s weightless in my hands. I go straight to survival, standing on the brake and dragging the shifter into neutral. It bleeds off speed. Not enough. Something catches the front end, and the car leaves the road.

“Lachlan!”

The road tilts. Or maybe it’s us. Everything happens at once.

The tires screech. The car spins. Metal screams. And then, impact.

???

Pain.

That’s the first thing I register.

It hits me in fragments. Sharp, disjointed pulses that tear through my body before I can even make sense of where I am. My head throbs, heavy and disoriented, like I’ve been dragged under something and left there too long.

Voices bleed into the darkness. Muffled. Distant.

“…lucky to be alive…”

“…significant impact…”

“…other passenger didn’t…”

The words don’t land properly. They slide past me, incomplete.

I try to move. Everything protests. A sharp burn shoots through my ribs, forcing a rough breath out of me. My fingers twitch weakly against the stiff fabric beneath them, and that small movement feels like it takes everything I have.

Light stabs through my eyelids when I force them open. I’m in a hospital room. The realization comes slowly, piecing itself together through the haze. The smell reaches me next, antiseptic with something metallic underneath it. Machines hum quietly somewhere to my side, steady and indifferent.

I swallow, my throat dry and raw.

“Tyler,” I rasp.

A figure moves into my line of sight. A doctor, I think. Maybe a nurse. I can’t focus enough to be sure.

“You’re awake,” the voice says, carefully.

“Where is he?” I ask, each word scraping my throat. “Tyler.”

There’s a pause, and something cold settles in my chest. The man glances at someone behind him before looking back at me, expression tightening just slightly.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

That’s it. Two words. But they gut me. Words refuse to form. I stare at him.

“He didn’t make it,” he continues, steady but softer now. “The impact was severe. We did everything we could.”

Everything inside me goes still. He was right there. Talking. Laughing. Annoying the hell out of me the way he always did. Planning a stupid trip up the coast like we had time for that kind of thing.

He was alive.

My stomach turns violently, bile rising in my throat.

I squeeze my eyes shut, but it doesn’t stop the images forcing their way in.

The spin. The loss of control. The moment everything went wrong.

Something happened out there. Something I’m not reaching.

It sits at the back of my mind, just past where I can get to it.

I close my eyes as guilt and sorrow engulf me. Nothing matters. Tyler is dead. When I open my eyes again, there’s another person in the room. Not medical. Uniform. My pulse stutters.

“Mr. Green,” the man says, tone flat. “I’m sorry for your loss. I’ll make this quick. Based on what we have so far, you were traveling at a high rate of speed when you lost control of the vehicle.”

I should say something. Tell him it wasn’t like that. But the harder I reach for it, the less there is. A stretch of empty road. Tyler laughing. The wheel going light in my hands. Whatever sat between those things is gone.

The officer continues, “As it stands, you’re being charged with involuntary manslaughter due to reckless driving.”

The words don’t register at first. Then they sink in. My grip tightens weakly against the sheets, pain flaring through my body, but I barely feel it over the pressure building in my chest. It’s my fault. I should pay for what I did.

I swallow hard, my vision blurring, not from the lights this time. From something else. Something worse.

Tatum Browning.

Her face hits me out of nowhere, sharp and clear in my mind. Brown eyes. Soft smile. The way she looks at me like I’m something steady. Someone is going to have to tell her that her brother is dead. That I was driving. My chest caves in on itself.

She’s going to hate me. She should.

The thought lodges deep, heavy and immovable. I deserve it. The room starts to tilt again, the edges of my vision darkening as exhaustion pulls me under. The voices fade, the machines blurring into background noise, and I don’t fight it this time.

The last thing I see before everything goes black is the sterile white ceiling above me. The last thing I feel is the weight of it all pressing down. The last thought that follows me into the dark is simple.

Tatum will never forgive me.