Page 109 of Chasing the Wild
I don’t know how long I stand there, with my shoulders slumped against the wooden paneling, while my ears strain for the sound of voices outside. Only, I can’t hear a goddamn thing over the chaotic beat of my heart drumming in my ears, and the rushing of my blood, and I’m pretty sure my tongue has gone numb.
How am I supposed to do what Colt just said? What did he even say? I feel like I can’t think of anything, except the fact that if Kayce is back, it means the road has been cleared and that five minutes ago was possibly the last time I’ll ever feel Colt’s warmth or mouth or touch.
It’s monumentally unfair.
Even though every moment with Colt was technically stolen, it feels like the cruelest of punishments. We’ve been robbed of the last little fragments of pleasure and time together. Time that what we thought we still had has now evaporated as quickly as a water droplet falling onto a sizzling hot grill.
Sucking in a wobbly breath, I smooth my hands over the front of my leggings, making sure I don’t look like I was beggingto get bent over and railed by my ex-boyfriend’s dad out here in the middle of the barn. Then, I push off the wall and cut an unsteady path toward the doors.
As I pass the horses, they puff out breaths and shake their heads and ears. They seem equally unsettled by this new intrusion into our private bubble. Or maybe I’m just projecting my own emotions onto them right now.
With every step closer to the outside world, masculine voices grow louder.
Passing the next stall, I spot a rake leaning up against the wall and quickly grab it. This feels like the kind of moment when it would work in my favor to have something in my hands. Another few paces and their conversation grows louder, I can definitely make out Kayce’s voice and Colt’s deeper, more gruff tone.
Fuck. This is it. My free hand quickly brushes over my hair, it’s up in a high ponytail today and still seems to be in place. I don’t remember Colt tugging on it or digging his fingers against my scalp like I love it when he does… oh my god… my body tenses at the renewed rush of realization that I might never have his hands on my body again.
Shit. My grip tightens around the handle and my steps falter a little. Suddenly, I’m trying to remember where my things have been left. My clothes. My Kindle. My toothbrush. Mentally cataloging each room, my mind immediately darts around the interior of Colt’s house. How much evidence might be left lingering inside to give away the fact that we’ve fucked on nearly every surface and that I’ve spent every single night in Colton Wilder’s bed for weeks now?
Will Kayce walk through those doors and immediately be able to detect the avalanche of secrets and lies we’re both holding back from spilling forth?
Swallowing down a giant lump in my throat, I can’t think of anything that might look immediately out of place. Even though it’s been only the two of us here, at least we didn’t tear each other’s clothes off in the lounge or kitchen yesterday, and I can only guess if there’s any of my things in Colt’s bedroom that surely won’t be the first place Kayce goes when he enters the house anyway.
Right now, I don’t have time to continue my minor freak out about any of that, though, because I’ve reached the doors. It’s like a magnet relentlessly pulls me towards the scene I’m about to find outside—the one where my ex-boyfriend and his father are standing around having a conversation in the yard like everything is completely normal.
Only, my wildest imagination could not have pictured what I actually come across as I exit the barn.
There are a thousand different scenarios I had run through of what it would be like when Kayce finally returned to the ranch.
In not one single one of those, did this picture play out.
Clutching the handle of the rake beneath white knuckles, I stop dead in my tracks.
There aren't just two men out here talking, there’s a third person with them.
Colt has his arms folded across his chest, back turned to me. Kayce looks up with an expression I can’t read fixed on his face. And when the familiar sight of the girl from the cafe with her poker-straight black hair, and bleached tips turns to take in my arrival, my eyes fall to her stomach.
Her very rounded stomach.
Her very pregnant stomach.
Chapter 30
The past two days were supposed to be full of all thingsLayla.
I should have been soaking up her feather soft kisses and running my mouth over her thighs and devouring the way her eyelashes flutter against her cheeks when I press my lips to her forehead.
Instead, the road up the mountain was reopened ahead of fucking schedule, my son is back on the ranch for the first time in weeks, and he’s brought his piece of ass from town with him—who he’s managed to get pregnant, no less—and this feels like all my nightmares have coalesced.
Like blood clotting an open wound, the worst possible sequence of events have formed a thick, gooey mess everywhere I turn.
Now, we’re all stuck under the same roof together, while Layla is still here, and my final chance to spend time with her has been ripped away. I don’t really know what I expected those last moments to bring. But does that fucking matter? Either way, there’s now a gaping hole of unknown where my opportunity to hold her and openly stare at her over my morning coffee should have been. Maybe there was a tiny piece of me that thoughtKayce might not come back, and that we’d be granted another extension to this thing between us… but then what?
What did I goddamn think was going to happen after the inevitable moment that hammer fell? A looming point in time when Layla would head down the mountain, collect her car from the mechanic in Crimson Ridge, then disappear out of my life for good.
Something I do know, is that I’ve never been fucking busier. Which is absolutely because I have to stay away from Layla and not keep stealing glances at her, and try my damnedest to keep a lid on the roaring sensation inside my chest that threatens to boil over at any moment. That's all I can do. My only defense is to ensure my body and mind remain occupied with fencing and the cattle and riding out to the furthest reaches of this ranch. While every second I stare at Devil’s Peak, a deeply charged longing and wistfulness echoes around my brain like a thunderstorm, wishing Layla was right alongside me.
Of course, I could invent a reason for us to take the horses and head off somewhere secluded together. Of course, I could. It wouldn’t be difficult to come up with a job that required both of us, but now that Kayce is back, those kinds of things needing done out here would naturally fall to him. There would be one too many questions if I tried to include Layla in the picture instead, and I’m too fucked up by the unexpected intrusion of my own goddamn son returning to be able to think clearly.
