Page 181 of Wild Then Wed
He could break my heart without even trying.
And the wildest part? I think I’d let him.
I think I’d hand my heart over to him—put it right there in the palm of his hand—and hope like hell he decides to keep it.
Chapter 30
SAWYER
There’s so much snow.
I can’t see the road. Just white, endless and blinding, swallowing the horizon. It’s quiet—too quiet. The trees are lined with icicles, glittering like Christmas lights, but colder somehow. Meaner. And the road—fuck, the road is slick with it. Ice blacker than the sky.
She should’ve never gone alone.
I should’ve driven. Or insisted we ride together. I should’ve done something. But I didn’t, and now—
The sound hits before the panic does.
Metal. Bone. Rubber. The screech of brakes and then the crunch—this awful, twisting, shattering sound like the world falling apart at the seams. Like someone taking a crowbar to my chest and ripping it open.
“Julia!” I scream, but it’s too late.
The snow’s red now. I don’t know how that happens, but it is.
And then I’m shaking. No—someone’sshakingme.
“Sawyer.”
I know that voice. Even half-buried in a nightmare—where the sky is black and starless and the snow falls like shattered glass, where the trees stand frozen and brittle—I know it.
That voice doesn’t demand anything from me. It waits for me, as if it’s always known I’ll come when I’m ready. And I do. Every time. Because some part of me has always leaned toward that voice, whether I meant to or not—a pull etched into my being, the way flowers bend toward the sun without ever needing to be taught.
It’s soft and certain and real in a way almost nothing else is. Like sunlight breaking through after weeks of rain and you realize you’d forgotten how warmth felt on your skin. Like a hand finding mine in the dark, threading our fingers together and not letting go.
That voice is my true north. My way back home.
Wren.
“Hey.” She’s close now. Closer. “Sawyer. You’re safe. Wake up.”
My eyes blink open. The ceiling is pale and unfamiliar. My forehead is covered in a film of sweat. My chest is tight, my ribs aching like I’ve been fighting something off in my sleep.
She’s leaning over me now, worry etched between her brows. Her blue eyes flick over my face, cataloging every breath, every tremor. The lamplight makes them look almost silver.
Her hair is a mess—damp and loose—clinging to her neck in some places, falling around her face in others. It’s the color of late July—clementines ripening on a windowsill and bonfire embers and dried marigolds and every warm thing I’ve ever missed. It’s a sunset pressed into something soft. It brushes my chest where she’s leaned in, and for a second, I forget what it feels like to be afraid. I forget what it feels like to brace for impact. I only feel her.
She’s wearing one of my old T-shirts. The gray one from the Hart Clinic with a faded logo and a frayed collar. She’s swimming in it, and somehow, even like this—with messy hair and sleepy eyes—she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
My heart’s still racing, but slower now. I swallow and shift against the mattress. Hank’s snoring at the end of the bed, dead to the world.
“What time is it?” My voice is scratchy, like it got dragged through gravel on its way out.
She reaches over and grabs her phone off the nightstand. “Three fourteen.”
I nod, scrubbing a hand over my face.
“Bad dream?” she asks, quieter this time.
