Page 116 of Wilde's End
Home.
I’ve lived here for years, but even as I look around at the hardwood floors, semi-modern kitchen, newish furniture, and every goddamn light in this place shining pointlessly against the morning sun, I don’t feel the connection that I should.
I want dirt under my nails, the smell of pine trees clogging my nose, a hot sun, and dust coating my skin.
I was right about Wilde’s End. Once we’re finished rebuilding the town, people will be eager to buy into it. Maybe Kenny and Hart can even come up with an agreement with Wilde. Fence off the land they’re using and allocate the rest toward our plans. I think that’s what they call a compromise, and it could have worked so well for us.
When I’m ready to apologize to Kennedy, I’ll have to mention it to him.
For now, I’m too embarrassed, too drained, too goddamn beaten to deal with anyone. I’ll give myself today to mope, then tomorrow, I’ll get back to work. It won’t take long for this place to become familiar again, and once I’m working to the point of exhaustion, it won’t take long to forget Wilde’s End either.
Unfortunately, I think forgetting Wilde will take a bit longer.
Sutton can help with that.
I glance back over at my phone. A day of endless, degrading sexwouldwork, but … the hurt in my chest intensifies. Apparently, this feeling has linked up with sex for the first time ever in my life, and a rebound fling feels exhausting.
Not only that, but it feelswrong.
I wish I’d never gone to Wilde’s End.
A sudden knock at my front door makes me freeze.
Does Sutton have the place bugged? It can’t be my brothers since I sort of abandoned them in the middle of nowhere, and they also have a key. Mom’s never visited, which means it has to be him, and even after deliberating over my phone all morning, the thought of seeing him makes me feel sick.
The knock is louder this time. Confident and more insistent. When I don’t immediately get up, it comes again, and then again, cluing me in to the fact that whoever it is doesn’t plan to give up.
Do I have enough luck in me for it to be an address mix-up?
I showered as soon as I got home last night because the water helped me pretend like I wasn’t crying, so at least I don’t smell like a dead animal, even if I feel it. As soon as I brush off whoever it is, I might as well go and face-plant on my bed and hope like hell I can sneak a nap in.
“Yes?” I snap as I tug open the front door, but whatever I’d been planning next dies in my throat.
Because the last person I’m expecting to see is Wilde.
He looks so strangely out of place in the clean, white hallway.
And he looks ready to kill.
Rage simmers from every coiled muscle, and somehow, through his gnashed teeth, he squeezes the words “Where the fuck is he?”
I’m still trying to process that his large form is filling my doorway, let alone the words he’s saying.
“If Sutton touched you?—”
“Wait,what?”
“I said?—”
“I heard you, but why the hell do you think …” My brain kicks in. “You talked to Kennedy.”
He swallows hard, but I refuse to watch his throat move. “Yes.”
Did Kennedy go to him? Is that why he’s here? Question after question pops up in my mind as I meet the anger burning in his eyes.
“Sutton’s not here,” I finally say. “I only said that to piss off my brother.”
Second by second, Wilde’s tension eases, until all that’s left is him gripping the doorframe and the ache in my chest burrowing deeper.
