Wilder (The Wild Ones 3)

She did send me a card. I sent her a thank-you note for the card.

I’ve never sent out Christmas cards before. I thought that was an after-marriage-and-kids thing people did to show off how happy their families are.

Lilah sent one with her and Benson hugging their new puppy while wearing Santa hats. Even the puppy had a Santa hat.

It was sickeningly adorable.

“I thought if you came, you could bring Reese with you. I’m pretty sure my brother would apologize for the way he left things, and then he would be a little less weird…if only he had the chance.”

Ahhhh. So that’s why she’s calling.

Reese has refused to talk about how they ended things.

She hasn’t seemed mad.

Hurt? Yeah, but not mad.

“Reese, Lilah wants us to come back for the New Year so Hale can apologize to you properly. Do you—”

“No,” Reese says as she stands and starts to walk out. “Tell her to let Hale know that I don’t have one single hard feeling against him. No apology is necessary, and he shouldn’t feel bad in the least,” she says as she leaves, shutting the door behind her.

“I guess we’re not coming, but did you hear all that?”

Lilah’s quiet for a moment.

“What about you? Why can’t you come without her?” she finally asks.

I laugh under my breath. “Lilah, I think it’s best for me not to come back on my own. I’m still mending.”

“Because you fell in love by accident? Yeah, I know the feeling. Same thing happened with me and Benson. Well, it was more of a surprise than an accident. Kylie’s was an accident, though. She spent a year pining over Liam until he moved to Tomahawk because he had the same problem she was having.”

I scrub a hand over my face. Lilah Vincent is very bluntly pointing out all my feelings to me, and I don’t know if it makes me angry or relieved that someone else is telling me I’m in love.

I’ve never been in love before.

It’s just as consuming and destructive as everyone as all the songs say it is.

“This is a little different,” I remind her. “I have—”

I pause, the words refusing to budge from my tongue. I have what?

Since we’ve been back, Dad has only made a bad situation so much worse that Reese has had to distance us from the entire situation. Our business—that has been in the works for three years—has finally launched, and we’re in the process of rebranding ourselves with it.

We’ve already done the hard work, and that was building a name with trust by separating our identities from our parents. We just didn’t know what a decent job we’d mostly done prior to the scandal.

We took a hit, but it wasn’t as big as we expected it to be once we took a step back.

I have an apartment I’ve barely visited since we left Tomahawk.

I’m on the last leg of the trip for business, but Washington has airports too. It’s not like I can never leave Tomahawk if I go back and need to travel.

“Why are you so quiet? Did I lose you? Helloooooooo?”

“I’m still here. I’m just…trying to figure out what’s keeping me here at this point besides Reese.”

I no longer feel like I owe a debt to my parents. Just this latest scandal is a reminder of all the shit we’ve had to live through. I feel like I’ve paid my dues in full. Reese is right: they expect the rest of our lives to be dedicated to repaying their generosity.

It’ll never be enough.

“Reese can live without you for at least one weekend. I think it’d do Kai some good to see you,” she tells me.

“What do you mean?” I ask her as I stand up.

I grab random clothes and start dropping them into my suitcase, not even folding them. I’ll deal with the wrinkles later.

“I mean…I don’t know. He’s here, but he’s not really here. It’s not the same Kai. He’s never said anything about how you two left things, but if it’s as bad as Hale—”

“We left with one of the sweetest goodbyes two people could share,” I confess like a lame schmuck.

“Good. Then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t come back. After all, we’re all friends. Friends visit from time to time, especially around the holidays. You missed Christmas and New Year’s, but it’s not too late to celebrate a little,” she drones on.

“Kai misses me?” I ask, needing some freaking clarity throughout her insistent rambles.

My heart is pounding like it hasn’t done since I left Tomahawk, other than when I saw the first picture of Kai that Liam had ever posted.

Until then, it was like Kai had never had a picture posted on any platform ever. I stalked the internet and came up empty.

Was he posting them because he knew I’d be looking and hoping for one?