Page 17 of This Wild Heart

I married someone. I married someone who I really didn’t know all that well, and who, in all the ways that mattered, was a stranger. I knewofhim. I’d met him. My cousin Emmett was one of his best friends, but the total sum of my time conversing with Parker Wilder throughout my life was less than an hour. The conversation I remembered, at least.

God, that conversation at Emmett’s wedding.

He was … he was atease. Always trying to keep me off-balance. An audacious flirt. So confident that it was almost impossible to take him seriously.

And I’d married him. Walked down an aisle without a single family member present.

My head snapped up, eyes meeting his. “Holy shit, my family. They are going to freak out.”

“I know.” His gaze was heavy on my face. “You told me.”

I settled a hand on my chest and tried to breathe through the blossoming panic building underneath my skin. “I did?”

He leaned forward. “Telling them is the first thing we agreed to do today. You didn’t want them to hear about it online. And I’ll help.”

The panic ebbed briefly. “What does that help look like?”

There was a soft knock on the door, and Parker held up a hand. I sank my head into my hands while he answered the door. A deferential worker wheeled in a large cart, and the smell of bacon, pancakes, and, oh thank you Lord, coffee had me standing almost immediately.

Parker signed the room service slip and thanked the woman who’d delivered it. Her eyes bugged out when he handed her some bills. Apparently, my husband was a generous man. She was blushing at the sight of him, and honestly, I couldn’t even blame her.

It was stupid. He was so hot it wasstupid.

When he was first drafted with Emmett in Ft. Lauderdale, he was strong but wiry. Over the past four years, and especially since he transferred to Portland to play with the Voyagers, the man had spentsignificanttime in the gym. And God, the dedication it took to add the kind of weight he’d added in nothing but pure muscle? Let’s just say it was a little bit more than my hungover brain could handle.

He gestured for me to help myself, and I gratefully took one of the mugs of coffee, snagging two packets of sugar and stirring it in before folding a couple of pieces of bacon into a pancake and sitting back down.

He did the same, and the silence in the room for those few minutes helped me gather my bearings.

Despite a stretch of impulsive behavior in my childhood years, I was not prone to wild action in adulthood. Quite the opposite. I thoughteverythingthrough. There was an argument to be made that my entire relationship with Max was because he seemed so sensible and safe. The irony was enough for me to choke on. Instead of jumping in with both feet to help Vida with her nonprofit, I took the sensible and safe route, working at a larger organization where I could absorb knowledge. All I learned was that you could get a master’s degree in nonprofit management, be a great worker, and still get your ass fired within two years.

Sensible.

Safe.

And right now, it all felt like utter bullshit.

Some of those decisions were a grasp for control after losing my mom at a young age, but mostly, it was wanting to keep all my ducks in a row so that I was one less thing for my dad to worry about.

My dad.

The pang in my chest was almost unbearable when I thought about him—big and strong and the most supportive father in the entire world. When I thought how sad he’d be that I’d done this. That I’d married someone and he wasn’t there to walk me down the aisle the first time I said vows. My eyes burned, but I took a few deep breaths and willed that shit back.

“Do you need more food?” he asked, tearing off a piece of pancake and dunking it into a cup of syrup.

I shook my head. “When did you order this?”

He watched me rip apart my own pancake and eat it dry. “Last night. We, uh, chartered a flight back to Seattle so you can tell your family. But also, you need to pack some stuff for the next couple of weeks.”

“Oh,” I said weakly. “Sure. Right. Because … because we got married, so I naturally said I’d move in with you.”

He held up his hands. “You can go back to Washington every week for a few days if you need to.”

I quirked an eyebrow. “And that helps you with your family how?”

“My mom is planning on me visiting in a couple of weeks. Training camp doesn’t start until the end of next month, so it’s a good time for me to go. We do the family visit. You make an appearance on the first day of training camp. Maybe the first preseason game or the season opener. I don’t expect you to live with me full-time or anything.”

How modern of us to be willing to split our time up like that.

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