Page 94 of Against the Autumn Pines
Ember
The nightat the club with Wyatt had been exactly what I needed. Time to turn off my brain and process something aside from anger and grief. I felt like an old computer that had just been rebooted after being on constantly for the last twenty years, never even winning a wipe down.
Lying across that bench with him while he smacked my ass until it was red and then fucked me until I came all over him? That was my reboot. Time to get out of my head and exist where just the two of us existed.
So now, three days later, sitting at Wyatt’s dining room table and staring at my phone, I was pondering if someone else could make this call for me.
“It won’t ring itself, little flame,” Wyatt muttered from behind me. I ignored him. He wasn’t even supposed to be here. He was supposed to be up in his office working—something he’d been ignoring lately because he’d been so worried about taking care of me.
“Don’t you have some sort of virus to get rid of or nosy competitor to knock out?” I grumbled, but instead of falling into my trap of distracting me, he just chuckled, kissed my cheek, and grabbed my phone. “What are you doing?”
“Helping,” he replied.
My eyes widened as he set the phone back on the table in front of me, but it was now ringing on speaker phone, Evan’s name across the top of the screen.
I glared at him. “Traitor!”
He chuckled and ran up the stairs. “Good luck!”
“Hello?” Evan said, answering the phone. The nerves were clear in his voice. I never called him first; it was always him reaching out. I should feel guilty over that, and I did, but at the same time, I didn’t know who I could trust right now.
“Hey Evan. How’s life?” I asked, trying to imbue some positivity in my life.
“Oh, um, hey Em!! Good. Still working on the ranch with Uncle Howie. Even Elliot loves it, and we all know how he is with jobs,” he chuckled.
“Yeah, we definitely do. I’m glad it’s going well. Is he treating you okay? Uncle Howie, I mean.” I started tracing small shapes on my thigh while he talked. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d talked like this. He told me about what he did on the ranch—how he loved the horses and barrel racing was becoming his new favorite sport.
“I’m glad you’re having a good time. You deserve it.” I cleared my throat and glanced out the window at the cloudy sky. “Listen, are you coming to the dinner at Mom’s tomorrow?”
Evan scoffed. “And miss you bringing home a man? Absolutely I’ll be there. El and I wouldn’t miss it.”
I smiled despite the feelings rumbling around in my chest right now. “Okay good. So I’ll see you soon?”
“I’ll see you soon, big sis,” he replied.
We said our goodbyes and hung up a few minutes later. I found myself staring at my phone, contemplating whether this was the right course of action or if I was going to make a bad thing even worse. They didn’t know about the fire yet—Wyatt had talked to a couple of his friends at the police station who’d kept it under wraps for me. The bakery had dark tarps over the windows and a sign on the door saying we were closed temporarily.
It all felt so dramatic, so secret agent and covert ops of us. But we wanted to ensurehedidn’t know until we were ready for him to know.
So tomorrow, Wyatt and I would show up, and we’d hope for the best.
“How’d it go?” Wyatt asked as he came down the steps.
I scoffed. “As if you weren’t listening the whole time. Don’t play with me.”
He smirked, his dimple showing off as he plopped down next to me in a chair. “I was listening the entire time. This is good, right? All three of them will be there to question?”
I nodded, back to drawing random shapes on my thigh with my finger.
“Yeah, I know you’re right. Doesn’t mean I have to enjoy the fact that any one of them could be helping him, or worse, all of them could know.”
He leaned over and kissed my forehead, his arm wrapping around my shoulders. “I know you don’t want to believe it, trust me. But I can’t find him anywhere, and I’ve been looking for over a month. Which means someone in your life is hiding him. I don’t think it’s your brothers unless they’ve got him out on your uncle’s ranch somewhere, so that leavesyour mother. The records Julian was able to track down have his mail being sent to the same address your Mom’s is sent to.”
I sighed, dropping my head back. “I know, I know. Honestly, she’d make the most sense. She’s never been able to tell the man no for anything, but what if she’s in on it with him? What if she knows about the loan shark psychos and shit?”
Wyatt was quiet for a moment, but eventually his arm squeezed my shoulder before he shrugged. “We’ll deal with it when it happens. Don’t worry.”
“Let’s just eat and try to get some sleep tonight,” I muttered, but he agreed and hopped up to start making dinner. Tomorrow was going to be a long fucking day, and I was already ready for it to be over with.
