Page 65 of Wild Sanctuary

“We’ll talk in the morning if you want.” She squeezes my arm. “Or not. Whatever you need.”

Then she’s gone, her wool socks silent on the hardwood, and I’m standing alone in the doorway of Wyatt Hartley’s bedroom.

It’s a simple room.

Clean. Spare. A bed with a dark quilt, a nightstand with a reading lamp and a battered copy of something by Louis L’Amour. A wooden dresser with a belt coiled on top. Boots lined up by the closet door. A window that looks out over the valley, the curtains half-open, the moonlight painting a pale stripe across the floorboards.

No clutter. No excess. Everything in its place, everything functional. It is so completely, thoroughly Wyatt that my throat aches.

I step inside and close the door behind me. Then I look down at my dress with a heavy sigh. My pajamas are in the cabin. With Felix.

Because of course they are.

A flannel hangs on the hook on the back of the door. It’s Wyatt’s blue-and-gray check, well-worn and soft from a hundred washes. He was wearing it the day I arrived, sleeves rolled to his elbows.

I slip it off the hook before I can talk myself out of it, lean against the door, and press it to my chest for a moment, simply breathing. His room smells just like him, warmth and cedar.

Deciding to change quickly, I pull my dress over my head and toss it on the dresser before tugging the flannel on. It falls past my thighs, the sleeves hanging well beyond my fingertips. The collar is loose enough to slip over one shoulder, drowning me completely.

I don’t care. It’s warm and soft and it smells like him and I hate myself a little bit for how much comfort that brings me right now.

I crawl into his bed to find the sheets cool and the pillow smelling like cedar. When I pull the quilt up to my chin, I crack. I press my face into the pillow and let out a breath that turns into a sob I wasn’t expecting.

Don’t. Don’t you dare. You are fine. You are a grown woman who owned her shit and you are fine.

But I’m not fine.

I’m lying in Wyatt Hartley’s bed wearing his shirt, and he’s out there somewhere—with Shelby, probably—because I got into a car with another man and made it look like none of it mattered.

He didn’t come home.

The thought circles and lands, heavy as a stone. He texted June to say he was staying out. On a Friday night. After the fundraiser.

And through the rear window of Felix’s rental car, I saw Shelby Reynolds walking toward him in that blue dress.

I didn’t wait to see what happened next. I faced forward.

Because I already knew.

Of course he went back inside with her. Why wouldn’t he? I walked away. I left him standing there and handed him every reason to believe I didn’t mean a single second of it.

And Wyatt Hartley is not the kind of man who stands in the dark waiting for a woman he thinks is taken.

I roll onto my side and pull the quilt tighter, but the spiral keeps turning.

Don’t call me that if you don’t mean it.

I said that. In the dark, with his hand on my face and his breath warm against my skin, I asked him not to take it back. And I’ll never know what he would have said, because Felix’s headlights came through the trees before either of us could find out.

My eyes burn. I press my face harder into the pillow, into the cedar and soap and him, and the dry voice in my head goes very, very quiet.

Seemingly, it doesn’t have a punchline for this.

I pull the collar of his shirt up over my nose and breathe in.

Wyatt Hartley didn’t say a single word in that orchard that told me how he felt. And I walked away without asking. And now I’m lying in his bed in his shirt with absolutely no way of knowing.

What a journalist I am. Noticing things is literally my job.