WYLDER

by Kristina Weaver

  I can see it all so clearly now, how he broke me down slowly to get what he wanted, and then once he’d won, I guess I lost my irresistible charm. Well, I’ve given the milk away, as Grangran used to say, so there ain’t no use in advertising the cow for sale if the product is already out there.

  Yeah, sometimes I hate the little pieces of wisdom I remember Grangran peppering my mind with, but you know, as weird as some of it is, I totally get it now.

  I gave him what he wanted, what he thought he couldn’t have, and after he tasted it, he realized he could move on to other flavors. Of course, I now know that part of his attraction for me was all about the chase, the hunt.

  Ironic because I never thought of him as the predator he’s named for until after he discarded my carcass.

  “Lori, I never meant—”

  “Yes, you did,” I cut in quietly, pinning a smile to my face when Danny glances at me. “You meant to make me understand exactly how you felt, and I do. You made it all very clear. So, do me a favor, Wolf, and don’t sit here pretending just because you know it’s the right response. It just makes me sick having you ask if I’m okay when the truth is you’d have preferred to forget all about me.”

  “I could never forget about you, Lori. You were so strong and so…so good even under all the fear and the pressure I put on you. I won’t ever forget you, no matter where I go or what I do,” he whispers.

  I suppose he won’t, and I guess that, being his first virgin, he’ll always remember me. Until the second just falls into his lap and gives up the cherry.

  The thought is not funny, but I chuckle darkly because I have to laugh or I may just cry. Or cause a scene.

  “I really wish you would, because my only intention after I go home is to forget you.”

  He doesn’t like that at all, I think when he stiffens beside me and lets out a strangled breath in a hiss of sound. And no, I don’t suppose he would like having a woman tell him that he’ll just be a distant memory. The ego on this guy.

  “I’m your first love. You won’t ever forget me,” he says after getting himself under control.

  Oh ho, how smug and convenient, I muse, turning to look at him for the first time since we left my house. No, Wolf isn’t the kind of man who would appreciate being treated with the same cavalier casualness that I’m showing him, but you know, even if it isn’t true, I really like the look of hurt on his face when I meet his eyes and shake my head with a tsk.

  “I will, because while I was fool enough to look at you and fall in love, I now know that the man I fell in love with isn’t real. He was just an act, a figment of my imagination. The worst part of it—” I cut myself off because I swore I wouldn’t do this if I don’t have to.

  I won’t bare myself to Wolf and give him another part of me. I probably will cry at some point, and odds are I’ll make an ass of myself too. Like I said, I’m a crier with too much emotion to keep it all in.

  What I won’t do is let him see inside the woman I am now, because he’s too…wily to pass up an opportunity. And I just waved a red flag at him by telling him that he no longer means anything to me.

  Stupid, but the satisfaction is too good to pass up.

  Chapter Six

  Wolf

  “Well, what the hell did you expect, man? You thought she’d just skip in after what you did to her and fall at your feet as a sacrifice to the great Wolf Wylder?”

  I mutter a curse at Lyon’s derisive tone and kick back in my seat, the night air surrounding me like a blanket as we listen to the crickets chirp and watch the fireflies flit around.

  It’s dead silent out here at the edge of the property but for the sounds of nature, and I should be at peace. All I feel is anger and a healthy dose of resentment towards Lori for making my gut coil in a knot.

  I feel shame unlike anything I have before because, no matter what she says, I know she’s hurting, and it shows in the paleness of her skin and the dark circles beneath her eyes.

  I hurt her. It was the right thing to do, and I wish I could explain it to her in a way that won’t open me up to the hatred I deserve. I’m a coward. I know it, but I can’t tell her how fucked up I am because then she’ll know that I used her to make myself feel…something. And she’ll hate me even more.

  “I didn’t think that, you ass! I just didn’t think she’d hate me quite this much. Did you see the way she looked at me over dinner when I offered her more cake?”

  Jesus, if looks could set a fire, I’d have burned to a cinder on the spot.

  “You leaned right into her like you were trying to climb into her panties right there at the table,” he accuses hotly, throwing me a filthy glare.

  “I was trying to be polite.”

  “You were trying to get closer to her because she hurt your ego, Wolf, and you know it. Just leave her alone if you don’t love her, for fuck’s sake! She doesn’t need you playing your mind games with her again.”

  “I am not playing. I just wanted—”

  “What? What did you want, because I remember her tears when she woke up in the motel room, and I still hear her pleas in my dreams when I let her go and told her not to come back. I had to do that to her, you piece of shit, me, and I have to live with the knowledge that I did your dirty work for you because you couldn’t face the music when it was all said and done.”

  I can’t argue with the angry words or say anything in my defense, because it’s true. I forced Lyon to watch her after I ‘found’ her and took her to that motel room. I just couldn’t do it myself, because I felt so torn up already I’d have thrown sanity to the wind and kept her like my mind was screaming at me to do.

  I couldn’t do that though. I had to let her go, but Lyon is right. I wasn’t the only one who had to deal with the fallout after I cut her loose. I understand his bitterness and the disgust he’s treated me with since that day.

  I also understand why he’s pissed at me whenever he has to look at Bear, because I put him in a position where he had to lie to our brother and still does, by omission, when Bear talks about how things went down that day.

  Lyon may have agreed with me that we couldn’t sit around and wait for Ariston to come at us, but the truth is that, as sure as I was of our plan and as certain as I was about Danny’s survival, I put her at risk.

  Lyon adores that woman, and he isn’t dealing well with the way things went down. I sometimes wonder if things would have turned out okay if I hadn’t let Lori go.

  “You know I had to push Bear. He was dragging his feet the more he fell for Danny. Did you want to risk him going soft and letting it go on the off chance he’d have stayed the course? You and I both know he would never have put her in danger if Mom and Pop hadn’t been on the table,” I say, defending the decision I made even if I hate myself for it.

  “Yeah, we did agree, but that still doesn’t explain why you let her go when it was done! I thought you’d come back for her, Wolf. I trusted you, and you left me in a motel room to tell a woman who’d already been through hell that you didn’t want to see her again,” he growls, shooting me a sneer before looking away.

  “I know, and I’m sorry, but if I’d seen her again, I wouldn’t have been able to walk away.”

  It was the coward’s way out, and I own that. I knew that I would have kept Lori with me if I’d had to see her tears and hear her pleas. It damn near shredded me the first time.

  “Would that have been so bad? Come on, man. You can’t tell me you don’t feel anything for her. She’s perfect for you.”

  His voice holds no anger, just a quiet question that plunges the knife deeper into my gut.

  “I can’t love her, Lyon.”

  I want to. I want that so badly that for a while I had myself convinced that I felt it. If only it were true.

  “Can’t? What the hell do you mean you can’t? It’s not a fucking math equation, Wolf. The woman could have seduced you, the way you went after her and let your guard down. She could have used your lust to draw you in and kill
you before running. We all know Mom and Pop wouldn’t have stopped her. What’s so hard to see about how great she is?”

  Nothing. She is great. Perfect. Funny. Smart. Strong. Everything I could want in a woman. If I believed in that old family legend about all Wylders finding their one true love, it would be Lori for me.

  She really is the ideal woman. If I’d met her eight years ago, she’d be wearing my ring with a troop of my children on her heels. I’d have nailed her down that fast and done everything in my power to keep her.

  But I didn’t see her eight years ago, so the point is moot. I can’t love her, because I feel nothing. God, I wish I could, but after Sparrow and the shit I went through with Mom and Pop, it all stopped. It had to stop because if I didn’t kill the emotion, I wouldn’t have survived it.

  Bear carried a lot of it after he came back, his natural leadership and iron will pulling us all through. I took orders and did the dirty work because I didn’t care if I made it out of the fire.

  I was the muscle, the heavy with the dead eyes and the quick trigger. Bear still marvels at my ability to walk into a hairy situation and be rock solid, but the truth is I don’t deserve kudos or the respect my brothers have for me, because it’s easy to walk into a gun fight if you feel nothing.

  No fear, no remorse for whatever was going down. Nothing.

  When I laugh, it’s pretense. When I joke around and talk until my throat is hoarse, it’s all a lie. I go through each day with a dead lump inside me and only really feel if I’m inside a woman or, lately, very recently, when it’s about Lori. Then I do feel. Remorse. Regret. Hopelessness.

  “It’s not hard to see how great she is, Lyon. It’s just not going to work between us, and I don’t want to lead her on. She loves Mom and Pop, and she has all these dreams about family and that shit. That isn’t ever going to happen if she sticks around with me. I can’t give her all that love and home shit.”

  “I just don’t get you, man. I’d kill to find my one. Every year that passes without someone to share my life is like hell, and yet you have a woman who loves you. After the way you met, everything you did, locking her away, she should have despised you and taken the first chance to off your ass. She didn’t though. She fell for you instead.”

  “I didn’t ask her to!”

  Liar. You did everything right, made every right move, and said all the right things. You seduced her and took all those dreams she told you about and used them to get her to fall.

  I did, and having her look at me with adoration and need was a rush. It made me want to feel, and for a little while, I really thought she’d crack the ice.

  But Lyon is right, and as tough as it is to admit, I can’t deny that I used her up, sucked all the passion and heat from her, and then let her go, empty and cold.

  “Like you didn’t ask Angela to love you? Marie? Tess? Lana?” he taunts. “You forget that I have been your cover for years while Lynx and Hawk flit around and keep Bear’s ass safe. It’s been just you and me for a long time, brother, way too long for you to sit there and deny the terrible things you’ve done to women,” he murmurs.

  “I have never harmed a woman! Not one.”

  “Not physically, no, but you’re a menace when it comes to emotional manipulation. Angela eventually fell in love with some trucker down in Ohio. Marie decided she wasn’t into men, and she married her lover and adopted a baby with her. Tess got married to a minister in Lafayette, and Lana is still chasing that career of hers in a way that makes her happy, so you got off easy with them. What about Lori? You keep insisting she needs to be here, but hasn’t it crossed your mind that having her here will only make it harder for her to get over you?”

  Because I can’t stand the thought of her being alone. I just can’t. I may not be the most caring or sensitive guy, but Lori touched something in me that can’t just forget about her. I know her better than I have ever known another woman. She’ll stay down in Texas with her friends and keep living the same life that was suffocating her because she’s too afraid of failure to realize that security isn’t the most important thing. She’ll work her job, pay off her mortgage, and eventually marry some accountant with a receding hairline and a secret drug problem. She’ll go for safe and reliable when she should be living every day for the happiness of living.

  I don’t know why, but it pisses me off to think of her throwing her life away because she’s terrified of ending up back where she started, in a trailer with two rooms and not enough space for a family of seven.

  I want her here where Mom will nag her to look after herself and Pop will laugh at her crappy jokes. Danny will give her the girl-talk she needs, and Bear will kill any sonofabitch who so much as looks at her wrong.

  She isn’t alone, and if it’s hard to see her here without having her, that’s fine, as long as she has that family. I can’t give her anything else, but what I can give is a family who will love her and never let her down.

  “I’m not staying long. I’m just finishing off a few details Bear wants me to take care of with the Koreans, and then I’m bugging out.”

  “What?” he barks, sitting up to stare at me with a look that strips the skin from my bones.

  “I’ve taken a position with a Ranger team that’s going into dark ops. They aren’t even officially on the books, and as far as I can tell, I’ll have another shot at that military career I was shooting for, without having to pretend to be a freaking crook.”

  It’s an opportunity I couldn’t resist when an old friend made the offer. I only gave up my career because Bear needed me, and I couldn’t face leaving Mom and Dad until they were okay, but now that we’re free to do what we want and the government no longer wants to throw me in prison for some of the stuff I did as Marco, well, I guess it may be good for me.

  “What about our work?” Lyon asks slowly.

  I finish off my second beer and sit silently, peeling the label off the third before sighing and staring up at the stars, wondering if the universe hates me or if it’s just me.

  “Work? Lyon, we’re all ex-military men with a revenge plot behind us and nothing more to do than spy on freaking homegrown criminals and collect evidence on black market traders. I’m not a spy or some DEA agent with a chip on my shoulder. I just want to live a normal life and be done with the roles we had to adopt to get to Ariston. I want a chance to let go of the past, and I can’t do that with Bear insisting that we keep things the way they are.”

  “You want to move—you’re walking away from all of us, if that’s what you want.”

  “No—”

  “Yes, Wolf! You may need to drop the act, and yeah, I agree that it’s time that we left the ‘business.’ We only played those roles to catch Sparrow’s killer and avenge her, and I told Bear that. But what then? Because, you know, it’s not about the roles we played, and it isn’t about re-upping and going off to get your ass shot in a war zone. It’s about running from us. You can’t escape the past, Wolf, not if you keep us, your family.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “Is it? I know what you’re thinking, but you are completely wrong. You won’t forget Sparrow and what you saw left of her by chasing this life you seem to want. You won’t forget Dad trying to kill himself, and you won’t forget Ma crying herself to sleep every night. You can’t, because the memories are there every time you see us.”

  I know that. Goddammit, I know that, and I know that running away isn’t going to help a thing, but I can’t do this anymore. I need the chance to change my destiny. I don’t want to die alone and with my heart an empty sack in my chest.

  I want more, and if leaving them all behind for a while is the only way to get that, then I’ll try. It’s better than looking at them all and resenting them for the hell they put me through.

  “Thanks for the psychoanalysis, Lyon, but you’re dead wrong. I fulfilled my part, and now I want to try for the career I planned for. That’s all.”

  Lyon grunts, sucking at his teeth with a muttered cur
se, and leans back in his seat, thankfully taking his eyes off me. The fucker has always been way too perceptive, and every time he looks at me, I feel like he can see straight into my soul. Not good, because I think mine may not be there anymore.

  “You need to stay. Lori, she’s…”

  “What?” I bark, his hesitantly quiet tone setting off alarm bells that have me sitting up and glaring. “I knew there was something wrong when I saw her! She looks like hell and—”

  “And what did you expect, Wolf? You know Danny’s been seeing a shrink the last two months when she started having nightmares, and that was just a few dreams that had Bear freaking out. You put Lori in a cell in the basement and kept her there the whole time.”

  Yeah, okay, that’s true, but what the hell would I have done with her otherwise? Let her roam the house on the off chance she would have stayed? I wasn’t sure enough in the beginning, and then, when I was, I didn’t want to risk having her in my world where I could all too easily have seen her meddling with my life.

  “I kept her safe until the time was right to cut her free,” I defend.

  “You kept her as separate from Mom and Pop as you possibly could. You played a game that even I have to grudgingly respect for its ruthlessness. A lot of grudging because, damn, man, you are one cold mofo.”

  “What’s wrong with Lori?” I ask again, veering away from the truth of his words.

  I’ve already faced the ugliness of my actions; I wear them like a mantle. Right now, I need to know what’s really going on before I bug out.

  “I won’t talk to you about Lori, but I will tell you that she’s not doing as well as she wanted everyone to believe. Yeah, she took karate lessons. Yeah, she took up her old life, but that’s all she’s managed so far.”

  “Lyon.”

  “No, that’s all you’re getting and only because, despite all your shit, you’re still my brother and I love you. Go. Run away and pretend that you’re happy with this new life. Leave us all behind and let the past go. Forget everything and everyone here. Forget Lori.”