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CHAPTER 7

THE DEVIL IN THE DETAILS

WILDER

A s we head to my house in my truck, I can smell her in the confines of the cab even over myself.

It’s driving me wild.

Her truck’s serpentine belt busted, and I have spares in my garage from the old truck I used to drive, if you want to come with me to get one, I said. So she strutted toward my truck, her hips a figure eight, climbing in tits first. Her cheeks were pink from the heat, the tip of her ponytail hanging over her shoulder in a pretty copper curl.

Neither of us speaks for a moment, and I worry I came on too strong, said too much. I’ve barely seen her since the whole wedding thing, which leaves me wondering—if she hadn’t been in hiding all summer and I’d spent the last weeks hitting on her like this, would we be together?

When she smiles over at me, I’m pretty sure the answer is absofuckinglutely.

You have a secret to tell her first. Think she’s gonna look at you like that when she finds out you lied to her?

And I definitely can’t tell her after …whatever happens, if anything ever happens. Right?

Right.

Right. Definitely not.

All I have to do is come up with the answer I’ve spent for ten years looking for. You know, how the fuck to say it?

I clear my throat and try to keep my eyes on the road. “So, school’s starting soon?”

She lights up. “I start tomorrow! I mean, it’s like two weeks of professional development and lesson planning and setting up my class and all, but still! It’s happening. I can’t wait until my classroom is decorated, even if it’s only thanks to generous donations from my mother.” A sigh. “It’ll be nice to have my own money for once. My first real job!”

I cut a glance in her direction. “First?”

“I don’t count scooping ice cream at Twisty’s.” Before I can ask a follow-up question, she says, “Did you get any sleep?”

“Why, do I look like shit?”

Her laughter is like hearing an old song my heart forgot. “You know good and well you couldn’t look like shit if you tried. Even with your hair a little long.”

I frown, adjusting my ball cap. “What’s the matter with my hair?”

“Nothing, it just always used to be so short. I actually like it like this, even if it is a little wild. Suits you.”

“Thanks. And no, I didn’t get any sleep.”

“I slept like I was dead, but somehow woke up tired. It’s happened a lot since…well, you know. The internet says it’s depression or a drinking problem, to which I say mind your business, internet! ”

A little chuckle sounds in my throat, but my heart aches. Because it’s not until right now that I really understand that while I’ve been waiting on her, she definitely hasn’t been waiting for me. She was just left at the altar by her cheating fiancé in front of the entire town. Shame weighs me down—I’ve only been thinking about myself. Not her. She’s dealing with the consequences of what she’s been through. Depression. Tears. Drinking too much. Her heart broken.

My fists tighten on the steering wheel. I imagine it’s that son of a bitch’s neck.

I shouldn’t be flirting with her like this. If she isn’t ready, will I ruin my shot if I jump too soon? If I keep it up, I might end up being a rebound.

Cold fear quenches the fire in my belly.

Good thing. Because I’ve gotta tell her we’re married first.

That cold fear turns to ice.

“Um, about the whole…naked thing last night,” she says awkwardly after my silence. “I’m really sorry about that. It’s so embarrassing.”

“Don’t be sorry or embarrassed on account of me. If I’d been through what you’ve been through, I’d probably be burning my bras in a bonfire too.”

Cass giggles, but I see she’s playing at nonchalant when she asks, “The bras of your conquests, or your own bras?”

I shrug one shoulder. “What if it’s both?”

“Pics or it never happened.”

Gravel crunches under my tires as I pull into the driveway of my little blue Craftsman. I put the truck in park.

“Want to come in for a minute?”

“Sure,” she answers with a smile, only hesitating for a heartbeat. Together, we walk in through my side door, which is unlocked.

She snorts. “I forgot what it was like to live in a place where people don’t lock their doors.”

“I know. It took me at least two years after living in LA before I could stomach it. First time was an accident. Now I just never lock the damn thing. Until raccoons figure out how to stack milk crates, I figure I’m safe.”

The kitchen is cool and mostly clean, thank goodness. She looks around, trying to mask her curiosity, but her eyes are big and quietly scanning. I think I see approval in them.

“Get you a drink?” I ask, heading for the fridge.

“Sure, what do you have?”

I glance at the sparse contents and scratch the back of my neck. “Uh, other than beer? Condiments and some milk I don’t think you should drink.”

She’s smiling, amused. “Beer’s great, thank you.”

“IPA? Kolsch? I think I have a honey blonde in here somewhere…” I’m digging around in the back when she laughs.

“And here I thought you had a thing for redheads.”

I grab a Kolsch and toss it to her. “Oh, don’t worry—I do."

She catches it perfectly, her cheeks flushed.

The hiss of our beers opening precede us raising our cans and taking a swig. I lean against the sink, and she sets her beer down to hop on the counter across from me. I’m glad the kitchen island is between us as she crosses her ankles and picks up her beer again, looking around some more. I’m staring at the line where her calves are pressed together, her knees, her thighs disappearing into her skirt.

“So, I hear you’re Captain Davenport?”

I scratch the back of my neck and half laugh, embarrassed I guess, despite being proud of myself. “It’s recent. Our station’s old captains came in at the same time and all seemed to retire at once, so Chief needed guys. I was surprised he tapped me. It wasn’t my turn, that’s for sure.”

“Whose was it?”

“Tate. He says he doesn’t care. I mean, he probably doesn’t. But you know how he is. Crack a joke, acts like he doesn’t care. But he went into the department when we left for college. All of us left him here. Wonder if I’ll ever stop feeling guilty about it.”

“It’s no one’s fault he didn’t get a baseball scholarship, and it’s no one’s fault that he couldn’t afford college. He doesn’t blame us.”

I nod and take a sip, even though I still feel bad about it. “Yeah, so I’ve only been in the spot for maybe six months?”

“Do you like it?”

I catch myself smiling and feel weird about it again. “I do. I like to…I don’t know. Help. I like to be the guy people want around in a crisis or when they need motivation or…this sounds so fucking weird. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. I haven’t ever said it out loud to anybody.”

“Maybe they just never asked.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Or maybe it’s you. “I’m good under pressure—it’s part of what made me a good pitcher, I think. I could keep my cool, not get stuck in my head.”

“You’re still a pitcher. And being left-handed didn’t hurt your chances at a career in baseball either.” Her eyes are all twinkly as she takes a drink.

“No, that didn’t hurt.” I can’t help but smile as I take another too.

“Well, I’m glad for you. I’m sure you didn’t have to work when you came back from LA.”

A dry chuckle. “No, I didn’t. But I was bored out of my fucking mind in two months. If I had to go fishing one more time with Dad, I was gonna jump in the lake and let it take me.”

“I know what you mean. I spent so much time sitting around the apartment in Boston, I thought I’d lose my mind. I watched Drag Race three times. Regular and All Stars.”

I try not to react to the idea of her being kept caged up like that. “Did you have many friends?”

“Not really, just through Davis. I never really fit in with them. I tried so hard, but we didn’t have the same references, you know? Like, they’d joke about some designer brand or an obscure vacation spot or whatever, and I’d just pretend I knew what was so funny. But if you’d asked me a couple months ago, I’d have lied and said I fit in just fine.”

A spark of connection strikes in my chest. “Nobody gets it,” I start, shaking my head. “LA felt like another country, especially when I first got there. I made a couple of single buddies—they wanted to go out when we could. Half the time, we’d end up at parties at these swanky houses in the hills, and I just remember so many times I’d find myself sitting there, looking at it all, wondering what the fuck I was doing there.”

“It was too much?”

“Yeah, but…I don’t know. That part wasn’t my dream. It just…didn’t fit. I didn’t fit. Either way, it didn’t feel right. You know?”

“I do,” she says in such a way that I know I struck something in her. But as fast as it happened, it’s gone again, and she’s smiling. When she makes eye contact with me, she brings her beer up toward her smiling lips. “Remember that time we got married?”

I nearly choke on my beer and clear my throat, thumping my chest with my fist. “Yeah, I remember.”

The sparkle of her green eyes is visible from across the room. “I can’t believe we did that.”

The statement, so flippant, surprises me. Did she forget how we felt? I carried an engagement ring around in my pocket for months that summer, waiting for the divine to give me a reason to think I could have her. So when we were in Vegas and she suggested we get married for one night, I got down on one knee and put that ring on her finger. When I said my vows in front of an Austin Powers impersonator in a room of floor-to-ceiling shag carpet, she cried so hard she couldn’t even say her vows. Instead, she told me she didn’t want to go, that there had to be a way for us to be together. She begged and she cried and I kissed her to soothe her. Austin, that shitass, pronounced us man and wife without giving Cass a vows do-over.

“What are you smiling at?” she asks, taking a sip with merry eyes.

I sniff and shake my head. “I remember it different, I guess. I can one hundred percent believe we did that.”

She laughs, her cheeks eternally pink. “I guess if I think about it, I can too. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t gone to Oxford. I wonder what would have happened if we’d stayed together? Maybe this would have been my house too.”

She says it like a joke, but the feral feeling that overcomes me is almost too strong to keep in check. Because yeah, this would have been her house. I’m instantly fucking positive we would have stayed together.

I take a sip of my beer and shrug, not trusting myself to speak.

“Did you know I still have my ring?” she asks dangerously, lightly, heavenly.

My head shakes.

She laughs again, an easy sound. My heart is caught in a rock tumbler. “Yeah, it’s in my old bedroom in my jewelry box. It was so crazy to see it again after all these years. I found it when I was staying there before the wedding. Still fits!”

I swallow hard. “You tried it on?”

“Of course.” Her smile falters. “Wait, is that weird?”

One of my eyebrows rises. “That days before your wedding, you took off your fiancé’s engagement ring to put on the one you were married to me in?”

Color flares brighter in her cheeks. “I mean, when you say it like that…”

“Is there another way to say it?” I tease.

Cass ignores me. “Do you still have yours?”

I pause, but end up nodding.

“Will you show me?” She’s already hopping off the counter.

My beer clicks against the countertop when I set it down. My major organs are playing checkers.

“Sure.”

I do not want to show her. I don’t want to take her back to my bedroom, to the little tray of shit on my dresser top. I don’t want her to spot it or reach for it or hold it in her slim, pale fingers. But she does anyway. She slips it on her thumb and points the digit at the ceiling, wiggling her hand so the ring spins around it. Her eyes are all full of wonder and nostalgia.

My guts are on the floor.

“I remember the Austin Power Fembots helping us pick this out,” she says. “I still think you should have gone with that tacky onyx pinky ring thing, but I get it. You have your pride.”

I can’t laugh. I’m too busy staring at her thumb and the ring I only got to wear for a night.

“God, we were seriously so crazy.” She starts to laugh. Something in me twists.

“Were we?”

She rolls her eyes, but her face is pinched with that look she gets when she’s busted. “I just mean, like, who gets married for a night? Looking back at it as an adult , or whatever, it’s nuts.”

“The only crazy part was when we said we’d end it.”

The awkward look melts into something softer, unsure. She turns her attention back to her thumb where the ring wiggles around some more. “Well, it didn’t make any sense to stay together.”

“No. But it didn’t make sense that it ended either.”

For a second, she doesn't say anything. “Well, we ended it.”

“I don’t remember us breaking up.”

She laughs nervously, rolling her eyes again. “But we?—”

“Left, sure. But we didn’t break up. The last time we were really alone together, you were my wife.”

The word does something to both of us. A shiver rolls through her.

“Sometimes I wish I’d stayed.”

My heart stops. “You do?” The words are thick, rough.

Nodding, she takes off my ring and inspects it. “Life would have been so different, easier maybe. Sure, we would have moved to LA, but that would have been kind of a dream, I think. I could have watched you play. I could have been there when you got hurt. When you came home. Plus, none of the bullshit I went through would have happened to me if I’d just transferred to Auburn and stayed married to you like I wanted to. So, gun to my head? Yeah. I wish I’d stayed.”

All these years I’ve been waiting on divine intervention. And now here she is because her car broke down, standing in my bedroom with my wedding band in her hand, telling me she wished she’d stayed with me.

The divine opened a window, and I’m climbing the fuck in.

“What if I told you I could grant wishes?”

She laughs, closing her hand around the ring as it drops to her side. “What, you have a magic wand in here somewhere too?”

I shake my head. “What if we were still married?”

This laugh is different—louder, cheerful. “My nana used to say, w ish in one hand, shit in the other. See which one fills up first. ”

“Cass.” I take a slow step toward her with my heart drumming.

“What?”

“What if we were still married? What if I told you right now that you and I are married?” My gaze is locked on her, and I take another step, hope rising.

She blinks, her mouth open in some cross between a smile and a scoff. “But we’re not.”

“But if we were?” God, I want to touch her. Unthinking, I take another step until we’re so close, her chin tips a little to see me.

More blinking. “That would be crazy, Wilder. Crazy and ridiculous and impossible because you filed the annulment papers.”

I wait through painful seconds. I watch her catch on. I feel my hope hitting a fever pitch…

And her face changes. Tightens. Heats. And dread creeps over me as I realize I might have made a grave miscalculation.

“If you didn’t file them…then I was about to commit fraud with Davis.”

I clench my fists at my sides and my teeth with my jaw, bracing myself.

Her lips flatten, her cheeks flushing with anger. She crosses her arms and says quietly, “And it would mean you lied to me. For ten years.”

A divine trap, I see too late. That’s what I walked into.

“Wilder? Are we still married?”

She’s calm, but it’s a facade. Her eyes are raw fury.

“I…”

“Say it,” she demands through her teeth.

My sigh seals my fate. “I swear, I was going to tell you?—”

Cassidy erupts like Vesuvius, and I’m covered in molten lava and ash. Mutely, I stand there while she yells everything I’d imagined she would on those lonely nights when I’d pick up the ring in her clenched fist and consider calling her.

How could I? How did this happen? Why did I lie? How dare I keep this from her? And on and on and on.

She’s hurt and angry and blindingly righteous, and I’m miserable in the knowledge that I’ve done this to her. I deserve it all, every punishing word, and I stand there to take it. Because another man has lied to her. Another man has betrayed her.

And worst of all, that man is me.

I want to pull her into my arms and hold her. I want to drop to my knees and beg her forgiveness. I want to wipe away her pain and her fear and undo the damage I’ve caused. Suddenly, the angst I’ve felt over telling her seems fucking stupid. It was fucking stupid and selfish and terrible.

Because in the hellfire of that moment, I know exactly why I didn’t tell her, and it has nothing to do with how to do it.

It’s because I couldn’t stand the thought of not being married to her.

I still can’t.

When she finally stops long enough to take more than one breath, the doorbell rings.

Her mouth snaps shut, jaw set, lips flat and white. “Get rid of them.”

She turns on her heel, ponytail whipping as she marches to the bathroom and slams the door shut.

Maybe I’m in shock, or maybe I’ve only just realized the severity of my situation—it made perfect sense in my head, I swear—but I drift through my house to the front door and open it. Instantly, my confusion deepens.

On my doorstep is an older couple, and between them is a little girl in glasses and braids. She’s looking at the ground, a ladybug stuffed pillow in her arms. She’s miserable. The couple looks grief stricken.

“Are you Wilder Davenport?” the man asks.

“Yessir. Can I help you?” My brows gather. I don’t recognize them.

“I’m Paul Wilson, and this is my wife, Patty. And this here is our granddaughter, Cricket. Her mother is—” He chokes. “ Was. Her mother was Ashley Wilson. She said the two of you used to date, about seven years ago.”

Cricket looks up at her grandfather, then at me.

I look down at the little girl. It dawns on me slowly as I take in the shape of her face, her caramel hair. But it’s her eyes that give her away, the same distinctive shade of amber that I share with Shelby and my long-passed mother. And I know something in my bones that I cannot even begin to grasp.

She’s mine.