2. Wilder
WILDER
Lucy is awake beside me, naked under one white sheet and staring at the ceiling like she plans to force it to undo the night.
I opened my eyes to a hotel room that looks as though we fought our way through it.
Her blue dress hangs from the television.
One silver shoe lies beside the bathroom door and the other near the window.
My shirt is looped over a lamp with two buttons missing.
A room-service tray sits beside the minibar, surrounded by torn sugar packets and plastic roses stolen from the wedding chapel arch.
My head pounds with the air conditioner, and I lift my left hand to look at what feels different. A cheap silver band circles my finger. Lucy sees me looking and pulls the sheet to her chin.
“Don’t look at me.”
“Bit late for that.”
Color rises from her chest to her face. Even hungover, I like knowing I can still do that to her.
The chapel comes back first. Lucy’s hand in mine. The officiant pronouncing us husband and wife while she laughed against my mouth. Her dragging me toward the elevators afterward because the room suddenly felt too far away.
The rest arrives out of order but it’s coming back to me.
Her dress sliding down, her teeth in my shoulder.
Lucy above me, the ridiculous stone on her finger flashing while she planted both hands on my chest and told me to watch.
I know what happened. I just can’t quite put every minute in the right place.
“How bad’s your head?” I ask.
“Feels like I’m dying.”
“Water’s beside you.” She finds the bottle and drinks. The sheet slips enough to show the curve of one breast before she catches it.
Lucy has been Nora’s best friend for six years.
Six years of family dinners, careful dresses and men who looked nothing like me.
I stayed away because she kept showing up beside somebody respectable, and because one night would never have been enough.
I still said things that made her blush.
A man needs something when he is trying not to touch the woman he wants.
“Shit. We got married,” she says.
“Yeah, seems like we did.”
She turns her head. “How are you not panicking?”
“Wouldn’t make us less married, would it?”
“Wilder!” she snaps as I sit up slowly. The sheet falls to my hips, and her attention drops before she looks hard toward the window.
“You saw everything last night.” I shrug.
“I could have lived without that reminder before coffee.”
My wallet is beneath my jeans. The marriage certificate has been folded around it, both names printed beneath enough county seals to make the truth legal.
I hand it to her and Lucy reads the first line twice. “This cannot have happened.”
“Looks convincing to me.”
“We were drunk,” she protests.
“Yeah, very.”
She presses the heel of her hand to her forehead. “I remember the chapel. I remember saying yes. I remember kissing you outside and pulling you into this room.”
My body responds beneath the sheet. Her gaze catches the movement. “Do not even.”
“Not doing anything.”
“Tell that to your…” She stops short of saying the word dick.
“It’s just enjoying the memory.”
She closes her eyes for one long second. “Okay, after the door, I have pieces. Not nothing, just no order.”
“Same.”
“You clearly have more than I do.”
“Some.” I smile.
She looks around the room, taking in her underwear hanging from the minibar handle and the marks on my shoulder. “How many times?”
“Let’s just say more than once.” I shrug.
Her mouth opens, so I give her the clearest fragment. “Second time, you told me to put both my hands on the headboard because you wanted to do the work.”
She pulls the sheet over her face, and I take the certificate off the bed before she crushes it.
“We both drank too much,” I say. “Neither of us was dragged into anything.”
The sheet lowers enough for one eye. “No.”
“You wanted me, though. You made that much clear.”
“You wanted me too, though,” she says, somewhere between a question and a statement.
“I think I made it quite obvious.”
She goes still and I nearly say the rest. That I have known the shape of her laugh across a crowded room for six years. That waking beside her with a legal certificate on the floor didn’t feel like a trap. It felt like the first honest thing either of us had done.
A horn sounds below the window before I decide how much truth her hangover can carry.
We shower separately because the flight leaves in three hours and sharing the water would keep us in the room long enough to miss it.
Lucy dresses in jeans and a pale blouse.
I find a clean black shirt in my bag and leave the wedding band on my hand. She notices while packing.
“You’re wearing it home?”
“We’re married.”
“We need to decide what that means next. How we deal with this mess.”
“We can decide without hiding it.”
“People will ask, though.”
“Let them. I don’t care.”
She looks down at her own hand. After a moment, she folds the certificate and slides it into the padded section of her laptop bag.
“A souvenir?” I say.
“We’ll need it to untangle this.”
“Or to prove it.” Her fingers stay against the bag for a beat as she considers that.
Lucy calls Nora while I get coffee. When I return, my sister is on the phone from an airport gate, sunglasses covering half her face while Caleb sits beside her with two carry-ons at his feet.
Lucy holds up her left hand.
Nora stares at the ring. “What the hell is that?”
“Wilder and I got drunk and then got married.” Nora looks past Lucy and sees me setting down the coffees. For three seconds, she says nothing. Then she starts laughing.
Lucy’s face tightens. “This isn’t funny, Nora.”
“It’s a little funny.”
“We got married at a really cheesy wedding chapel with neon lights.”
Nora laughs harder. “Seriously, you guys. I leave you two alone for one night.”
“I thought you might be angry.”
“I’m not angry. I’m amazed it took this much tequila.”
Lucy goes quiet. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing I’m explaining while I’m about to board a plane.”
Nora then looks at me. “And why do you look so calm?”
“Panicking won’t change it.”
Her eyes narrow with amusement. “Right.”
“Right what?” Lucy asks, looking from me to my sister.
“You two can work that out yourselves. I’m on my honeymoon.”
“You’re enjoying this,” Lucy says.
“Immensely.” Nora smiles. “Call me when you know what you’re doing.” Then she ends the call.
Lucy stares at the dark screen. “That went better than expected.”
“Nora likes you more than she likes me.”
“That is not comforting.”
At the airport, Lucy keeps turning the cheap ring around her finger while we wait for security. The rhinestone catches on the strap of her carry-on. She frees it with an irritated tug and leaves it where it is.
“You could take it off,” I say.
“I know.” She glances at the gaudy stone but doesn’t take it off.
The security line moves forward, and so does she, still wearing it.
I don’t smile. She would hear victory in it, and this is not a game I want to win by pressure.
The ring stays because she puts it there.
That matters more than letting half the airport see it.
The flight carries us toward everything waiting at home. Lucy sits beside me, close enough that our knees practically touch. Halfway over Kansas, turbulence jolts the cabin and her hand closes around my forearm. I cover it with mine until the plane steadies.
“You never seem worried about anything,” she says later.
“Plenty worries me.”
“The marriage?”
“Not that.”
She studies my face. “You aren’t normal.”
“Never claimed to be.”
She falls asleep against my shoulder. I stay still for the rest of the flight, even though my arm goes numb. Her hand stays warm on my thigh.
Her laptop bag rests beneath the seat, packed with the work she brought despite taking two days off.
Lucy does not drift through her own life.
She built every part of it, and I know better than to mistake marrying me for permission to pull it apart.
That’s the part I have to prove. Wanting her is easy.
Making room for the woman she already is will decide whether she stays.
In St. Louis, I load our bags into the black SUV I left at the airport. The drive south takes us from flat fields into the green hills around Ransom. Lucy watches the river appear and disappear between trees, quiet for the first hour.
“What does being your wife mean inside the club?” she asks. The question matters more than the paperwork, and for someone who panicked about being accidentally married, it takes me by surprise.
“It means you are under Kingdom Come’s protection.”
Her mouth tightens. “Protection can sound a lot like ownership.”
King used the same word for both and Kane has spent the last year drawing a line between them.
“You keep your work, your house and every part of your life you want,” I say. “Anybody tries to take that from you, I deal with them.”
“That’s almost romantic.”
“Don’t spread it around, I’ve got a reputation to keep.”
That earns the smallest smile. She turns toward the window again, and I watch the reflection of her face in the glass.
She isn’t frightened of me, never has been.
The problem is everything attached to me that cannot be left in a hotel room.
The gates, the weapons and the men who know my voice on a radio and move because of it.
Lucy built a life where danger has no place. Mine doesn’t promise that every threat stays outside. I can only promise that when it crosses the line, it finds me waiting. I’ve wanted her long enough to know that wanting doesn’t guarantee she can live with that.
We reach Ransom after sunset. The river air sits heavy over town, carrying wet earth and cut grass. Some storefronts are closing early along the main street. The church steeple stands black against the last orange light, and the river flashes between old warehouses at the edge of town.
Lucy has lived here long enough to know the compound road but not long enough to stop watching it when we pass. Townspeople lower their voices when they say Kingdom Come. She’s never seen what sits behind the gates.
I take her to the neat two-bedroom house she bought last year, and her porch light comes on when we pull into the driveway. I carry her suitcase to the door and set it inside.
“You can stop escorting me now,” she says.
“I could, yeah.”
“But you aren’t going to stop?”
“Nope, you’re my wife.”
She stands just inside the doorway with one hand on the frame. Behind her, shoes sit in a basket and keys hang from labeled hooks. Everything has a place.
“We need to talk about this,” she says.
“Tomorrow.”
“I could call an attorney before then if you’d like?” I don’t answer, because I’d have to tell her it’s the last thing I want her to do.
Her gaze drops to my hand. “You really intend to keep wearing that?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“Why?”
I want to tell her. Six years of watching her arrive beside other men.
The relief of waking with her in my bed and finding the marriage felt right before I even opened my eyes.
But she’s exhausted, uncertain and still recovering from a night neither of us can fully assemble.
The truth deserves better than this porch. Instead, I step closer.
“Wilder.”
“Tell me to leave.” But she doesn’t. Instead, I put one hand gently behind her neck and kiss her. Her mouth opens at once. She grips my shirt and pulls me over the threshold, giving back every bit of pressure. I taste the same hunger that wrecked the hotel room.
I press her against the wall. Her leg slides between mine.
My hand cups her ass, and she kisses me harder until my cock is rigid between us.
I want her in her bedroom. I want one night neither of us will have to reconstruct in pieces.
I want to tell her the ring has not left my hand because I have no intention of pretending the marriage was meaningless while she decides whether it can become real.
If I take her upstairs now, she’ll wake tomorrow wondering whether this was another mistake. I need her to come to me when she knows it isn’t.
So I release her slowly. Her pupils are wide. “Why did you stop?”
“Tomorrow.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Come to the compound when you’re ready and want an answer.”
I pick up my keys and walk out. Lucy remains in the doorway, the cheap ring still on her hand.