Page 1 of Almost Home
PROLOGUE
Wilder
Then
Ihadn’t seen her in four days.Four. Days.She’d barely responded to messages. Finally, she’d promised to meet me at our spot today and requested to please give her space until then.
She’d never asked me for space. We’d never needed it. If anything, right now, the last thing I wanted was distance from her. I wanted her right here, in my arms, where I could hold her while she cried. While I cried.
“Wilder, honey, will you be long? Are you taking something to eat?” Mom asked, her tone soothing and low.
Everyone had been talking that way, careful to keep the pity from their glances. Wyatt hadn’t said much at all, only clasped my shoulder in his hand, then pulled me into a rough hug. Warrick had no idea what was going on. Six years younger than me, he was eleven. We hadn’t told him Sarah was pregnant yet, so there’d been no need to break the news that she wasn’t anymore. Grandma Tilda kept him distracted with activities in town and helping with the horses so he wouldn’t be around to see me acting like a ghost.
Pain sliced through me once again, and my eyes welled with tears, but I blinked them back. “Yeah. I’ll take something.”
Mom gave me a warm smile, emotion swimming in her gaze. She’d gone with me to the hospital to be with Sarah. Had stayed while they confirmed the baby was gone and through everything that came after. Then, she’d driven me home after Sarah’s parents had refused to let me go with them and held me while I sobbed until I dry heaved and nearly blacked out from how bad everything hurt. I’d never realized heartbreak could come out of nowhere like that. How it had felt like my bones were melting inside my skin, no longer capable of holding me up the same way after losing a baby I’d started to love the minute I knew it existed and seeing Sarah crumpled with so much pain that it had hollowed me out.
“She’s meeting you at twelve?”
I shoved a water bottle into my pack, along with the letter I’d written her. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to say everything I needed to—had no idea how she’d be feeling, or if we could even talk about this. Words failed me like they often did. I didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what to want, even. How did we look ahead after this? But maybe she’d just want to move on and pretend like she was okay. Like everything we’d talked about and planned for based off that little pink line wasn’t gone.
Exceptus.We weren’t over just because we’d lost the baby we hadn’t realized we wanted until eight weeks ago. We’d get through this. Together.
Soon enough, I arrived at the little pull-off on the canyon road that sat thirty minutes from my place and fifteen from hers. It gave us privacy, even though we’d be outside and the January weather was freezing today. The snow would make it impossible to hike to the rock where we sat in warmer months, but I had a full tank of gas so we could sit and talk in the cab of my truck.
Her little white car chugged around the corner and slipped onto the shoulder. She paused, then made the terrifying curve across the two lanes of road to pull behind me. My heart pounded, and I told myself it was because of that—the risk of crossing the road after a blind turn. But she’d done it a hundred times by now, so I knew that wasn’t it.
Every twinge or hesitation seemed like a warning—like more bad news would come any minute.
She slipped into the cab of my truck but didn’t give me her eyes. I stretched out my hand. Relief flooded in when she took mine with her chilled one, the tensed muscles in my shoulders loosening a touch.
“Are you… okay?”
Her gaze found mine, and the answer lay there in the wreckage of her face. Dark circles under swollen red eyes. A nose raw from being wiped. Lips lined in a darker shade from dehydration. Even her cheeks looked a little gaunt, though it’d only been four days.
“No.”
Useless question, of course. If she felt anything close to what I was… I squeezed her hand. “Come here. Let me—”
“I can’t.”
Okay. I got that. She didn’t want to fall apart right now. She had to drive back. She had already warned me she didn’t have long, that her parents wanted to keep her close.
Tension spiraled through me, tightening around my chest and cutting my breath into short, insufficient efforts.
Focus on the tangible.
“What can I do?”
Her lips pressed into a line, firming her chin against a wobble. My heart twisted at the tears that dropped from her eyes without warning. She shook her head like she was fighting for composure. She didn’t need it with me—didn’t she know that already? She could cry all she wanted. I’d cry with her. Some part of me needed to cry with her, and we hadn’t had a chance to mourn together yet.
“I’m leaving town,” she said, her voice shaking.
Alarm shot through me, but I stayed calm. For her sake. “How long? To your cousin’s?”
She pulled in an anguished breath with eyes closed before speaking again. “No, we’re moving.”
My mind stilled. The sound of the truck engine idling fell away, and something weird happened in my feet, like they fell asleep, the blood cut off from them. “What?”
