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CHAPTER 55

SURVIVAL 101

CASS

W aiting in the truck practically kills me.

Every second is torture, and it feels like Wilder is in the house for hours. That it takes days for the police to get to us. I almost get out and follow him a dozen times, terrified of what he might find, terrified of what Trent might do. What he already might have done.

When the police pull to a stop outside the house, I finally get out, explaining as best I can what I know, which isn’t much. One of the officers heads inside, pausing at the front door. Whatever he hears compels him to draw his firearm, stopping my heart dead, and the other officer joins him before they enter.

Again, I’m left blind, hand on my mouth as I wait eternally. There’s some yelling that nearly tears a scream from my throat, stopped by my hands clamped over my mouth. A few minutes later, after another squad car arrives, the police finally appear in the doorframe with Trent and a man I’ve never seen before in handcuffs.

When Wilder exits behind them, my knees are jelly, my relief total. He looks like he’s been through hell, sagging and heavy, but when he sees me, he comes alive. We meet somewhere in the middle of the yard, arms clenched around each other, his heart pounding through his chest and into mine, face buried in my neck and hair.

The toll the day has taken on him is steep.

It’s hours before we’re finally on our way home. Trent and the landlord are taken to the station for processing. Wilder and I follow for questioning and statements and whatever else we can provide. While Wilder is busy with the bulk of it, I call Patty to tell her what happened. Cricket is already in bed, thank God. She cried herself to sleep, Patty says, and she and Paul are sick over it. Not sick enough to let us come get her, but I don’t say so.

We lied, and now they don’t trust us. They’re scared and trying to do what’s best for her. We didn’t have to bring her to them—we did it because we love her, and we respect them, despite their lack of respect for us. We don’t want to fight, even though we will.

A few days will help. Space for them to calm down, to think, will set everything right.

They’ll come around. It will be okay. And even if they don’t, we’ll get her back. I have no doubt.

I just hope we can spare her any more pain in the process.

When we’re finally finished at the police station, we’re starving. Wilder takes us to Sonic thinking it’ll cheer me up. It only makes me more miserable. But I try not to cry into my tots, choking them down past tears, my mouth so dry, everything tastes like cardboard. My food is in the bag in my lap because I refuse to scoot into the passenger seat and put the console down, preferring to eat like an animal over separation from him, even by a stupid armrest.

We talk about what all we said to the cops and my talk with Patty, and by the time we’re done with all that, we’re home. There’s no discussion about what to do once we get there—we change and fall into bed in a tangle of limbs.

I don’t think I sleep an hour all night, and most of it is in that first stretch of dead sleep. But when I roll over, I wake up. Like, all the way up . Wilder has a hold of me with both arms, his legs knotted with mine, and I can’t bear to move him, so I just lay there with my face smashed against his chest. My comfort is the feel of his heartbeat once again, thudding slow against my cheek, and I’ve never been so thankful for anyone in my life. It has been the longest, hardest day I’ve ever lived, and the only reason I’m even remotely okay is this, him. I’m sure that if we hang onto each other like this, we’ll survive whatever comes.

Eventually, I end up on my back with his head on my chest . At least from here, I can stare at the ceiling. I drift in and out of that in-between sleep for hours, but somehow, dawn never breaks. It’s three in the morning when he whispers, “Are you awake?”

I draw a heavy breath, shifting so he’ll shift too, and I’m smashed against him again, this time higher up. His pulse flutters in his neck, and I breathe him in.

“Have you slept at all?”

“Not really. You?”

“In and out.” His big hand strokes my back through the silence. “What are we gonna do, Cass?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can’t get the sight of her trying to get back to me out of my head. When she asked me not to leave her, I—” His Adam’s apple bobs.

“I know. It’s going to be okay—they just need a minute. They’re scared shitless. Did you see Paul? He’s not cruel, Wilder…he’s terrified. She ran away. We fought. He found out this whole thing started out on a foundational lie, and he feels conned. Which, to be fair, we did . But you have proven in a thousand ways that you are and will be an exemplary father. On top of being her biological father. You have every single right to her, even if you hadn’t already filled Ashley’s requirements. I mean, maybe if I hadn’t locked you down…”

He chuckles, the sound a comfort to me, a reminder that it really will be okay. “You locked me down in middle school. When you came back to town? I was doomed. Woulda walked right up to you and told you to cuff me, if it wouldn’t have sent you running.”

It’s my turn to chuckle, and when I shift in his arms, he rolls onto his back, bringing me with him. I rest on his chest, rising and falling with his breath, admiring him as he shoves another pillow under his head, sliding his hand behind his neck. We lay like that for a little while, watching each other in the moonlight.

He tucks a lock of hair behind my ear and lowers his hand to rest on my arm.

I can’t believe there was ever a life that didn’t have him in it. I’ve been living in black and white, and Wilder is 4K, HD, Dolby fucking Digital.

God, I love him.

“God, I love you,” he whispers.

My smile is quiet. “I love you.”

“I don’t know what I would have done without you today. I don’t know how I’d survive right now without you.”

“Like you did before, I suppose.”

“But I wasn’t. Somehow, I didn’t realize I was walking around with a piece of me missing, faking life. Faking happy. Trying to fill that space with anything. Everything. Baseball kept me from seeing it for a long time. Felt like I was full and whole and had purpose. But when I lost that? When I came home?” He shakes his head, his thumb shifting on my arm. “You weren’t here, and I couldn’t figure out why that felt so wrong.”

“But then I came back.”

“Then you came back to marry somebody else. And that space didn’t fill up—it flooded, washed everything out. It destroyed me. All the way up until you changed your mind. Then you filled up that space perfectly, clicked into place like you belonged there all along.”

“Because I did. I do. Just like you belong with me. It’s like you were saying—the world makes sense with you, because of you. All you have to do is exist, and my life is better for it. The world could fall apart, but if I’m in your arms, I’m safe. Life is easy.”

“Easy?” he says on a laugh. “I have not made your life easier.”

I shrug. “You have in the ways that count. All that time I was gone, I could have found you out there existing, and I could have had this. I am such a dummy.”

His lips tilt.

“Could have been any time, any place, any situation. This one just happened to be messy as all hell.” That earns me a laugh, the flash of his smile in the soft light making my heart flutter. “But we’ll be okay. We’ll get through this and to better times. Even now, even with everything on fire, I am held together with the knowledge that I have you. We’re going to figure all this out. And while we do, we can love each other, just like this.”

Somehow, he manages to pull me up to him so he can kiss me, his arms winding around me, bringing me close enough that he can embrace me and still play with my hair, stroke my skin. He tells me how he loves me in the ways words can’t, and I love him back, overwhelmed by the certainty that I will share this life, this love with him, for all my days.

And in the end, we finally find the peace of sleep.