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CHAPTER 3

DIVINE INTERVENTION

WILDER

I tromp down Cass’s mom’s stairs like I have a thousand times in my life, with my heart thumping like I’ve been running sprints and my cock straining against the confines of my pants.

Not gonna lie, my painfully high heart rate started the second I heard the address for the call.

Finding Cass naked in the backyard didn’t help matters.

Catching her naked nearly gave me a coronary.

But walking away left me with a hard-on that might actually require a defibrillator to recover from.

It was impossible to avoid the naked vision of her cut out of the flames, hunched over with her feet caught in her pants. The curves of her breasts, tipped up at the nipples. The gentle mounds of flesh where her torso was bent, the perfect swell of her ass. Her body changed in ways that made me want to count every one, study them like my favorite subject. But the things I remembered most about her were exactly the same. The shiny, rich copper of her hair. The dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her rounded cheeks, colored with a flush, her rosy lips a plump passage for her shallow breath.

Goddamn, it felt good when she looked at me like that. Made me want to run out on a battlefield with an axe in my hand, if it meant I could have her. If it meant she’d be safe. And mine.

I nearly groan.

I shouldn’t have said so much. But if I know her at all, she won’t remember, and what she does recall will be so fuzzy, she’ll figure it was a dream.

For a moment, I feel like I’ve jumped back in time. Her mom’s house smells like candles, the photos hanging on the wall down the stairs the same as they’ve always been, with some additions at the end. A few frames down from our prom photo is a picture of Cass and Davis from their engagement photoshoot.

The denial I clung to on finding out she was engaged to him was fierce, and when she landed in town with him for her wedding, it damn near brought me to my knees. Not only because she was mine, once upon a time. Not just because I cannot fathom a world where she ends up with somebody who isn’t me.

She can’t marry him, or anybody for that matter.

She’s already married to me.

Problem is, she has no idea.

It was half on a whim that we got married in Vegas a week before we left for college. We were there with our friends as a farewell hoorah, but when Cass found out about the ring I’d been carrying around for months, that was it. We gave ourselves one night, just so we’d know. Just so we’d have a taste of the future we couldn’t have.

And then I went and fucked it up by not sending in the papers.

You know how it is when you tell a lie, and the longer you wait to come clean, the worse it gets? Try waiting ten years.

For what it’s worth, I did form a half-ass plan to tell her the truth. Basically, it consisted of blurting out, “Forgot to mention we’re still married,” and hoping she didn’t commit murder.

I didn’t say it was a good plan.

My feckless hope was that by the time I had to use the plan, I wouldn’t need to. Wasn’t sure how. A meteor flying into the planet, maybe. Didn’t feel like the Rapture was too much to ask for. Surely, divine intervention would save me. The divine had done a great job up to then.

Luckily, the divine did let me off the hook when they stopped the cursed wedding for me.

And just in the nick of time. My mouth was open to object when the best man beat me to it, saving me from certain death right there in the aisle of the First Baptist Church.

The bad news is, I still have to tell her.

The worse news is, I still love her.

The kind of love that inspires you to do something like get married for a night, just so you’d know what it was like? That kind of love doesn’t die. I’ve fucked around for ten years, pretending like I was over her, trying to fill a space in me that only she could fill. And ten years with some fucker who didn’t love her enough to be true is nothing when you love somebody like she loved me.

The vision of her flushed and naked in my arms just now flashes in my mind, and a smile flickers on my lips. Because the way she looked at me said she did.

I know there’s a way to get her back. It’s the how I’ve always been fuzzy on.

God help me if I’m wrong.

Once at the bottom of the stairs, I make for the back door. Jessa is outside hosing off the fire, swaying a little. She glances over her shoulder when she hears the door close and offers a tired smile.

“Sorry for all the trouble,” she says, turning her attention back to the fire.

“They still let Mrs. Crowley drive and she can’t see past her elbow. Trust me, the trouble has nothing to do with you.”

Jessa raises a brow.

“Alright, maybe a little.”

She chuckles. “We still have quite a bit more to get rid of, and I’m afraid this might not be the last time you’re called to keep a fire in check.”

I assess the piles of boxes. “Want me to take it off your hands?”

Jessa eyes me. “And do what with it?”

I shrug. “Take it to the dump.”

“Honestly, she’s so drunk, she might not even remember we didn’t burn it all. But I’m afraid she needs closure, and these boxes might be necessary. That, and she’d likely throw me in a fire if I gave it to you. Thank you for the offer, though.”

“I don’t like seeing her like that.”

Again with the brow. “Naked?”

“Unhappy.”

She sighs, looking back to the hissing pile of trash and logs. “Yes, well, she’s handling it as best she can.” We’re quiet for a second. “She’s just…miserable.”

“Maybe there’s a way to fix it.”

She pats my arm. “I think only time can do that.”

“Yeah. Time.”

“And perhaps a bit of whiskey and a raging bonfire?”

A whistle sounds from behind us, and Jessa’s face lights up at the sound.

“Hello, darling,” she says to Remy, her boyfriend and one of my best friends.

“Hey, darlin’.” He leans in to kiss her briefly before getting a good look at the carnage of melted plastic and debris. “Damn— y’all really got after it. Didn’t expect to find the fire department when I came to pick you up.”

Jessa’s head bobs. “It got a bit out of hand.”

“Where’s Cass?”

“In bed,” I answer. “Just tucked her in.”

He gives me a look that I don’t answer. “Well, alright, then. Good thing Aunt Jenny’s out of town. But it’s gonna be a shitty day tomorrow getting everything put back before she gets home.”

“Well, it’s a good thing we have plenty of hands, isn’t it?” Jessa notes.

“If you need any extra, I get off work at seven in the morning,” I offer.

Remy snorts. “We should wake her up banging pots and pans. She’ll be too weak to kill us.”

“I do think we could use your help,” Jessa says. “Perhaps we could convince her to let you take some of this to the dump like you offered?”

I nod. “Happy to.”

“Good, we’ll text you in the morning.” Remy takes the hose from Jessa and starts winding it up.

“When will you have time to sleep?” Jessa asks, throwing some strewn items into empty boxes.

I take her lead and help her pick things up. “Eh, who needs it?”

“Me,” she says on a laugh. “I need it. Desperately.”

“Then come on, Duchess,” Remy says, picking her up as she giggles and swats at his arm. She’s protesting on the grounds she’s not finished, but he ignores her. “You can finish tomorrow. Let’s get you to bed.”

With a sigh of surrender, she answers, “Yes, sir,” and winds her arms around his neck.

He leans in and whispers something in her ear that makes her laugh, her face cherry red.

“Hey, don’t worry—I’ve got all this,” I say to his back.

“Thanks, man. You’re a pal.” He manages to open the gate with his elbow, and it swings shut behind him, closing with a snick.

For a moment, I linger under the pretense of checking the fire for signs of life even though I know it’s dead. The boxes and bins piled around the remnants of the fire seem to be full of mundane items—clothes, dishes, books…the kinds of things you’d see if someone were moving. None of it means anything to anyone but Cass and Davis. But I bet there’s a story to every single item, a story I don’t know about a girl I don’t know.

Not true. I know the girl. It’s this ex-life of hers I don’t know. A whole entire life she had with another man.

And this is all that’s left of it.

The siren yelps once from the front of the house, and I hiss a swear, glancing over the place one more time to make sure there’s no threat of fire from the dripping pile of char. And as I make my way to the gate, I wish for a moment that I could take the last ten years back.