Wilde Fire (Forever Wilde 3)

“I agree. It was the right decision to move here, and I can’t tell you how much we appreciate your help with Tisha,” I said.

Mom and Dad smiled at me. “She’s a good girl,” Dad said. “I was proud to see her good manners in church this morning.”

“Jolie does a good job with her,” I said, always trying to sell Jolie to them out of habit. They’d absolutely hated her in the beginning, blaming her for getting knocked up and then blaming her for the bar fight that had ultimately killed my brother. It was one of the main reasons I’d stepped in to take care of her.

“Mpfh,” my mom scoffed. “Seems to me you do most of the discipline around there.”

“That’s not true, but I didn’t come here to argue with you.”

My dad raised an eyebrow. “Why did you come here? What’s going on?”

“Jolie and I are separating,” I blurted. Might as well just get it out there.

As soon as I explained we were ending our marriage, my father lost his friendly face.

“No, you’re not.”

I wanted to laugh.

“I most certainly am. When Jolie and I married, it was the only way to do right by Tisha. She needed a home and family, stability, insurance. But now that we’re here in Hobie, we can afford two places. She and Tish will stay here in the little house on the ranch, and I’ll—”

“What makes you think we’ll let Jolie live in that house without you?” my father cut in.

I stared at him. “Because it’s my house, and I own it outright. You gave it to me when we moved here.”

“We gave it to you and Jolie, so you could live there together, just like we plan on giving the main house to John and Beth when we’re gone. We most certainly did not give it to you so you could settle her there and take off like some deadbeat father.”

I laughed at that and looked incredulously at my mother who’d remained conspicuously silent. “If you think after all this I’m capable of becoming a deadbeat dad to that precious girl, where the hell have you been for the past nine years?”

I left without another word and spent the rest of the night scouring Hobie rental listings to see if I could find a small, cheap place to live that would be close enough to work and to Tisha for me to keep up my two biggest commitments. I found a little cabin on the lake I really liked, but it was for sale, not lease, so I was going to have to take some time to be sure about it before making such a big decision.

After peeking in on Tisha to make sure she was sleeping peacefully, I ignored the light still on under the door to the other bedroom and made my way upstairs to the loft.

Things were getting ready to change around here, and I had to admit to being half excited and half terrified. It was hard for me to think of anything other than when I would see Otto next, but I knew I had two months to get through first. It was the reason I hadn’t run after him when he moved to Dallas. He was too principled to mess around with me while I was still married, and maybe I was too scared to have the important conversations with him until I knew I could act on my feelings toward him.

I had a lot to explain to him and time to figure out how to go about it.

Time was going to crawl until then.

Those two months passed even more slowly than I’d expected. By early May the divorce still wasn’t final. I’d been pestering Honovi for special treatment in the courts, but he’d just laughed and accused me of trying to bribe an officer of the court.

“It’ll be less than three weeks now, Seth. Quit your whining,” he’d said over lunch the previous day. “What’s your hurry? You got another lady lined up I don’t know about?”

I debated whether to be real with him, and I quickly realized I’d known Hon for years and had always felt an easy camaraderie with him.

“Not a lady,” I’d admitted.

His eyes had widened and his lips had curved into a mischievous smile. “Let me guess… a certain Wilde child, perhaps?”

I’d felt the blush to the tips of my ears. “Yeah. If he’ll have me.”

“You two were something else in high school before you moved away. I thought for sure you’d end up together forever.”

“I did too. Sometimes things happen though,” I’d said with a shrug.

“They sure do, Seth,” he said softly, reaching across the table to squeeze my arm. “They sure fucking do.”

Late that night, I awoke to the sound of my phone blaring with the tone for dispatch.

“Walker,” I answered.