Page 90 of Wild Sanctuary

She has to be.

Wyatt nods once in my peripheral vision before opening his door and coming around to my side. He opens my door the way he’s opened every door tonight, because he’s Wyatt Hartley and the manners are stitched into his bones. I step down, and we walk side by side to the cabin porch. He waits in utter silence while I find my key, and then this is it.

This is where I say goodnight.

This is where I walk inside and he drives back to the main house.

This is where I know that tomorrow I will finish packing so that next week I’m back in Denver with a staff position and a new apartment and none of this.

“Thanks for dinner.” My voice sounds as though it’s being held together by sticky tape and a prayer.

“Night, Daisy.”

Not Daisy-girl. Daisy. The correction is deliberate and I feel it like a door slamming in my face. I put the key in the lock, ready to be done feeling like this, but suddenly something inside me snaps.

There’s no buildup. No warning. It detonates like a fuse that’s been burning since I drove back onto this ranch two weeks ago.

“Why the fuck did you bid on me?”

The words come out before I can stop them. I whip around, and he’s still standing there at the edge of the porch steps. One boot on the bottom stair, and his hand on the railing. As though he was about to leave and some chivalrous part of him couldn’t until I’d been ushered safely inside.

“Daisy—”

“No.” I step toward him. “You don’t get to Daisy me right now. You bid two thousand dollars, Wyatt, in a tent full of people. You outbid a Blackwood. Then you walked me into that orchard and you looked at me like⁠—”

My voice cracks, and I hate it.

“Like what?” His voice is low and rough and oh-so goddamn careful in a way that makes me want to scream.

“Like you were really seeing me. Like I was something more than Tom Monroe’s daughter who you were just looking out for.”

His face changes. Just barely. “You read that.”

“I read it.” I’m shaking now, and I can’t stop. “‘She’s Tom’s daughter. Drop it.’ Yeah, Wyatt. I read it. After I slept in your bed because you didn’t come home because you were with Shelby, and I lay there in your shirt breathing you in like some pathetic loser who⁠—”

“I wasn’t with Shelby.”

His hand drops from the railing as he takes a step forward, but he suddenly stops.

I shake my head, my hair swishing around my face. “It doesn’t matter either way.”

His nostrils flare as his jaw tics. “Daisy⁠—”

But I cut him off, ready to burn it all down now.

“It doesn’t matter because the message was clear. It’s been clear since I was twenty years old in a red dress I bought for you, hoping you’d look at me like a woman for once in your life. And you called me Daisy-girl.” I spit it out through clenched teeth. “You know what that nickname did to me? Every single time? It told me you’d never see me. That I could stand right in front of you and you’d still see a kid trailing after her dad. And I told myself that was fine. I told myself I’d get over it. I’ve been telling myself that for six years and I’m still standing here at twenty-six years old, physically shaking because you put your thumb on my hip and called me Daisy-girl in that damn voice and I just can’t do this anymore.”

The words run out, and silence rushes in, and he just stares at me. And for the first time since I’ve known him, Wyatt Hartley looks like he doesn’t know what to say.

“Are you done?” His voice is so quiet I strain to hear the words.

“Yeah.” My eyes are burning, hands balled into fists at my sides. “Yeah, I’m done. I’m done with Blackstone Creek and I’m done pretending. I’m going back to Denver next week and you can go back to being exactly who you’ve always been. And I can finally stop wishing you’d see me.”

I turn toward the door, but his hand catches my wrist.

I didn’t hear him move. Didn’t hear the steps creak or his boots on the porch boards. But he’s right behind me, close enough that I can feel the heat of him before I spin back and his other hand is on my jaw, tilting my face up.

His eyes are dark when his thumb brushes over my cheek as his breath whispers over my lips. “I see you, Daisy-girl.”