Page 161 of Burn the Wild

“It wasn’t a bad pitch, man.” I tell him the story that Davis and Reese know. How much of a mess I was. How I fucked up and hurt that kid.

Finished, I run a hand over my jaw. “I don’t want you in the same boat, Wy. Get out while you’re clear headed. Get over Fallon.”

Bullseye.

Wyatt’s gaze snaps to mine and hardens. Fallon’s like a grenade strapped to Wyatt’s chest. When it detonates, he’s done.

“I see what you’re doin’ little brother. You think that if you attach yourself to her side, you can protect her. But you can’t. If she doesn’t want you to take care of her, you have to move on.”

“I wasn’t there.” His glassy blue eyes take on a faraway light. “I should have been there that night, and I wasn’t.”

I feel for my brother. “Punishing yourself for what you did and didn’t do ain’t a way to live, kid.”

It’s been my MO for the last seven years. With baseball. Staying at the ranch. Not moving on. It’s easy to recognize yourself in someone else who’s fucking up. I see myself in Wyatt and all the ways he’s trying to hang onto the past.

Onto Fallon.

I lean in and level with him. “It’s still going to hurt, you know. When she gets hurt, whether or not you’re together, it’s still gonna hurt.”

Wyatt flinches.

Because it’s notifanymore, it’swhen.

He’s silent for a long beat, then says, “You don’t know what fucking hurts.”

I sit there, rocked by the bitterness in his tone, waiting for him to say more. Instead, he looks down at his hands.

“Y’all are right. I’ll quit rodeoing. My heart isn’t in it anymore.”

I eye him warily, hoping we haven’t made a fucking mistake. Hoping he doesn’t brood around the ranch for the rest of his life instead of on the rodeo circuit.

“What about you?” He nods. “You gonna take that baseball job? Leave the ranch?”

It’s not a hard choice. Not anymore.

“No,” I tell him as Reese’s gorgeous face fills my head. “I don’t want the job. I want the girl.”

I never expected her.This. How one moment I never knew she existed, and now I know an embarrassing number of things about her. I don’t want to fuck anyone else. I don’t want to leave the ranch. And I sure as hell don’t want Reese to leave.

“Well, you should keep her,” Wyatt says. “Sav treated you like you needed fixing, but that girl there…” Full blaze smile on his face, he nods at the door. “She doesn’t.”

Startled, I turn to see Reese standing at the window. She lifts her hand, giving us a little wave.

My heart flips over.

Wyatt shifts in bed, wincing. “Go, man. I’ll be out of here in five minutes.”

“Make sure you check out,” I warn him. Memory montages. Fourteen-year-old Wyatt. A bad horseback riding accident thatleft our entire family shaken up. After treatment, he ditched his gown in the hospital stairwell and bailed before discharge. He left the nurses to panic and effectively scared the shit out of our parents.

“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters, already tearing his hospital bracelet off.

I step out into the hallway.

The sight of Reese in her tiny shorts and knee-high boots nearly knocks me over. Trips my pulse.

This entire summer, everything about us has felt right. Tonight, on my arm, at the rodeo. Living in my small town. Sleeping in my bed. Since day one, it’s clicked. Nothing hard or forced.

It’s been a dream.

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