Page 29 of Drowning Her

In some ways, the two of them were the same. Green and Wilder were not good people. But Wilder had never fooled me. He might not have answered my questions, but when he did, he was honest. And in the end, he had saved me from Green. Told him to never touch me again.

Wilder could have even killed me, knowing that I might have been stealing too. But he didn’t.

“Why did you save me?” I asked.

He switched lanes, never losing his focus. “I didn’t save you,” he said.

“You broke Green’s arm and stopped him from hurting me.” I threw up my hands. “Like it or not, you saved me, Wilder.”

He swerved to the side of the road, slamming on the brakes. We surged forward. He cut the engine. My heart palpitated.

“I did not save you,” he repeated, his eyes completely absorbed in me. Blood vessels in his neck and forehead vibrated with rage. But he kept it inside. Every emotion tempered. Every feeling held back. He bent toward me, sucking in a long breath. “I saved the farm.”

A bumpy sensation filled my stomach. I still didn’t believe him. If he wanted to save the farm, he would have caught on to my stealing. But he hadn’t been watching me carefully enough.

He started the car again, merging back with traffic. I thought back—he had sighed earlier when I said that I hadn’t stolen anything. HeknewI was lying.

He was on my side. And it wasn’t because of our legal agreement. It was something else.

Chapter 10

Wilder

A few days later,a towel hung around my neck like a limp body. I had needed to get as far away from Maisie as possible, which was why I had gone to the pond, sitting at the bottom until my head pounded and my chest hurt. I jogged back through the pastures to my house. Sawyer was resting on the wooden railing outside of the Calving Barn, staring into my house’s windows. Maisie was on the other side, watching television.

“The fuck are you doing?” I asked.

Sawyer lifted a brow, and I clenched my fists.

“Sensitive,” Sawyer said. “Dare I say, ‘protective.’”

I didn’t understand what was going on inside of me. But Sawyer staring into my house, seeing what was mine, when Maisie was there? It made my blood boil. But it didn’t matter what I felt. I had to be stronger than that. Had to keep my emotions in check. Had to be stronger than everything. Including him.

“You know how Uncle Taylor died?” Sawyer asked. I didn’t care how our uncle died, nor did I want to play thisgame where I was expected to ask the right questions. I wasn’t going to fall for Sawyer’s bait. “The Feldman Trial ate him alive,” he said. “He died trying to get ahold of this farm. To take leadership of it.”

Leadership didn’t mean anything to me. Sawyer was the one who cared.

“Our father killed him,” he said. “It was the farm or nothing. And Forrest did what he had to do. Just like I did.”

My stomach tightened. Why was he telling me this? We werebothdoing what we had to do. I was tired of hearing about how he had let his woman die for the Feldman Offering. Death came for everyone, not just his dead lover. And if I was expected to sacrifice, like Sawyer, then I would.

“Your point?” I asked.

“I’m down to the last few,” he said. “Once I kill these next two, it’ll be my last name. Then, I’m done.” He pinched his fingers together. “I’m this close.”

I glanced at the window. Maisie raised the remote, the television clicked off. She stretched, then walked through the hallway, down to her bedroom. Was she going to sleep, or would she follow me again?

That wasn’t a question worth answering.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

“You still haven’t found Eileen Hathaway, have you?” Sawyer asked.

I gritted my teeth. The video footage of the woods had shown a few hints, but every time I had a chance to investigate, I had been distracted. I had been taking care of other tasks. Like Maisie.

“I’m going to laugh if I finish before you do,” he said.

I wanted to hurl him across the field so hard that when he hit the ground, he wouldn’t be able to breathe. But that would mean I cared. That would mean that his words hadpenetrated me. And they hadn’t. Yet, the urge boiled over, the desire to throw my fingers around his groomed neck and squeeze the life out of him—out of anyone, evenher—as long as I could witness their power dissolving before me.

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