Page 109 of This Wild Heart

The first time Parker Wilder smiled at me, I should have seen this coming. Should have seen the ominous clouds on the horizon that he’d break my heart without even realizing it.

I sank onto the edge of the bed and stared up into his face, a terrible ache lodged in my throat. No. I would not cry.

He ran a hand through his hair, his shoulders deflating on an exhale, and his eyes stayed on mine.

“Now what?” I asked, my hands curled into tight fists on my lap.

His jaw tightened. “You should tell your family the truth.”

“Maybe in a few days.” I sighed. “My dad is … he’s a wreck. Seeing Isabel hurt ...” I swallowed hard. “It triggers a lot for him.”

Our eyes held, and eventually, he looked away. “I bet it does.”

Fear was the worst kind of shackle because even if you knew what it was, to shake its hold was like slicing through metal with your bare hands. Even my father, one of the strongest men I knew, was victim to it at moments like this. He’d lost love before, and the idea of it again, with Isabel, it had him rocked.

Sitting still, even for a few moments, was hard because the need to be with my family was a fierce push. But as much as I didn’t want to do this with Parker, we had to.

I had to force myself to ask the things I didn’t want to ask, risk detonating another landmine in his chest and my own to come out the other side of this with the truth in hand.

“Was it the sex?” I asked quietly.

His eyes burned as they held mine. “No.” Then he closed his eyes. “Sort of.”

Fighting the push of tears at the back of my throat, I managed a short nod. “I didn’t … I didn’t intend for that to happen when I came to find you.”

“I know. If anything, it’s on me.” He scrubbed a hand over his mouth. “I promised myself I wouldn’t … I wouldn’t do that anymore to ignore the shit I didn’t want to face.” His hand dropped by his side, and the heavy look in his eyes was almost my undoing. “It’s easier, isn’t it? To seek out something that feels really fucking good when everything inside you is a tangled mess.”

Parker felt good.

Ifelt good when I was with him.

But that didn’t mean he was wrong. The last two months of my life was a jumbled blur, I’d spun directions so fast that it was a miracle I was still standing. And at the center of it, I’d pushed aside all the things I didn’t really want to face.

When I didn’t say anything, he pushed off the wall and came to join me on the bed. His shoulder brushed mine as he sat. “It’s Leo too. It’s our families. And all the other shit we didn’t account for, and now we’re stuck right in the middle of it, and it’s not as simple as I thought it would be.”

I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “It never is, is it?”

“No.”

“My life feels like a soap opera right now.”

“Yours? I had a baby dropped off on my front porch. I think I win.”

I smiled. Just a little. “We doing sad shots again?”

Parker laughed. “Dear God, no.”

I ran my hands through my hair and let them fall back into my lap. “I think … I think this might trigger a midlife crisis,” I said. “Can you have a midlife crisis in your mid-twenties?”

Parker let out a small huff of amusement. “No, I don’t think so.”

I studied the hard lines of his profile before speaking again. “What’s the tangled mess you were trying to avoid tonight?”

He thought for a moment. “This. Having this conversation. My mom said a few things to me before we left, and I think I knew then that we’d have to come clean.” Parker glanced sideways. “What about you?”

“How I got here.” I stared down at my hands. “Looking back now, I don’t even recognize the person I was with Max, and I think doing something crazy, something impulsive and wild, it felt like I was reclaiming some piece of myself that I lost. I missed that part of me, you know?”

Parker let out a low noise. “You didn’t seem lost to me.”

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