Page 12 of Saving Wyatt

I shrugged. "I'm wearing it in the wrong hand, so most people don't know that's what it is."

"A wedding ring is a wedding ring no matter what hand it's worn on."

I sighed and pursed my lips but said little else, choosing instead to roll the band around my finger.

Mr. Rogers bid me goodbye and walked away with his exuberant dog, and I stood there, watching the people go past, fiddling with my ring.

Had he noticed it? Wyatt? Even if he had, would he have known it's a wedding ring? Would he even care?

Gosh. What's wrong with me today?

Why did it matter if he noticed or if he thought I was married. It wasn't as if my heart was available anyway.

No. It didn't matter. No matter how blue his eyes or how pretty his face, my heart had shut down for business four years ago.

And I would never fall in love ever again.

FIVE

WYATT

“How are you feeling, Wyatt?” Azrael asked, and I looked up at him.

Looked at all of them.

It was quite unlike us to gather in one place, especially unusual to have all of their partners here too, but I guessed this was an important meeting for everyone involved.

I still didn’t know if Elliot should be here, though. He was too young for any of this, yet he stood between Autumn and Donovan as if he was ready to take on the world with us. It was wrong. All kinds of wrong.

“How do you think?” I replied and instantly regretted it because I sounded way more pissed at him than at the situation.

I cast a fleeting glance at Dare and Zach and hoped the latter wasn’t judging me too harshly.

I still couldn’t fathom that Zach knew about me. That he knew the truth. I couldn’t move or talk or do anything for fear of being found out by him, which was bizarre because he already knew.

“The bar has been quiet since the incident,” Maddox said, and I huffed.

“Don’t remind me,” I grumbled.

“Those are all short-term problems,” Warren said. “When Wyatt’s name is cleared, things will go back to normal.”

Autumn pursed her lips. “I don’t know if it will be that easy. Some mud does stick,” she said, and both Dare and Donovan coughed.

Autumn jumped, grimaced, and apologized to me.

“It’s nothing that hasn’t crossed my mind,” I told her to put her at ease, though how successful I was, that was another thing entirely.

“Do they even have enough evidence to charge you?” Hwan, Parker’s boyfriend—I guess it was fiancé now—said.

“Surely if they did, they would have already,” Duke, Azrael’s fiancé, asked.

“It doesn’t mean they’re not going to find any,” Santiago, Joey’s husband, said.

God. Everyone was all partnered up. Well, everyone except Elliot, but he was barely eighteen. He didn’t count.

That didn’t help me not feel like I’d felt all my life, however. Like the black sheep. Like the aberrant. The outsider. Once upon a time these were my people, my officers, now I was the outcast. And why? Because I was too scared of my own self to do anything about it.

But what was the point? It wasn’t like I was going to find the love of my life at the ripe old age of fifty-eight, was it? What would be the point of stepping out of the closet now, so late in life? Especially if I didn’t have a reason to?