Page 69 of Wild Heart

She really was the best friend a girl could have. “Is everyone ready to go? Don’t tell me the whole group is waiting on me.”

Ivy shook her head. “Not at all. We have something else we need to take care of before we go.”

“Oh. What’s going on?”

While Rhea sat on the small chair in the corner of the room, the rest of the women came toward the bed. “That’s kind of what we were wondering,” Jules returned.

My eyes moved through the group. “I don’t understand.”

“We’ve been trying to give you time to get things worked out, but our curiosity is getting the better of us. What’s going on withyou and my brother? Things have taken a rather drastic turn since Christmas Day.”

“Yeah, and we’re inclined to say that it’s gotten even cozier between the two of you since we’ve been on this trip,” Ivy added.

While I hadn’t been foolish enough to believe that nobody noticed anything happening between Tate and me, I thought we’d done a good job of pulling back on the public displays. Tate had followed through and done precisely what he said he would when I confronted him days ago during the game of Trivial Pursuit. He continued to flirt with me, but he was mindful of where we were when he did it.

That these women were now sitting in my room with me with hopeful looks on their faces as they inquired about the status of my relationship with Tate, it became clear that Tate and I might not have done as good of a job at hiding as I might have initially believed.

“We’ve been trying to get ourselves back to a good place,” I answered honestly.

“It certainly seems like you’ve accomplished that,” Rhea reasoned.

“What makes you say that?”

Before Rhea could respond, Ivy cut in. “You mean, simply being on speaking terms, being able to look at one another without wanting to kill each other, and laughing as much as you both have hasn’t been enough proof?”

Skye, having lived out her very own fairytale, said, “Don’t forget that he called her wild one.”

My cheeks burned with embarrassment. “I still can’t believe he said that in front of everyone,” I murmured.

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Ivy questioned me. “I would have thought you’d be thrilled about it.”

“Well, I mean, it’s better than the alternative of us not getting along at all.”

“Yes, but I’m not talking about that aspect of it, Ava.”

I didn’t know what else she could be referring to. “What do you mean?”

“I’m talking about the change in Tate.”

My brows furrowed. Even with her clarification, I was still just as confused as I’d been before. “I still don’t understand.”

Jules didn’t give Ivy the chance to offer any additional explanation, choosing to do it herself. “Tate is the most reserved of the family. He sticks to schedules and routines. He doesn’t step outside of his shell. But he’s been different ever since things went down between the two of you. Never, not in a million years, would he have ever called you wild one in front of us before all of this happened.”

She was right.

Maybe that was why I’d reacted the way I had by it. Sure, I’d been so accustomed for years to being the one who was overly flirtatious with him, so it wasn’t as though he’d done anything differently or worse than I’d ever done. When it happened days ago, I hadn’t realized what it must have taken for him to do that. Worse, I’d taken that moment and thrown it in his face.

Tate was making the effort to do things that would have normally been considered outside of his comfort level, and it was likely he was doing it to make up for having turned me down for so many years. He wanted to prove to me that he was serious about me, and there was no better way for him to do it than to take the kind of steps he had in front of not just his siblings but his parents and grandparents, too.

“Oh, God,” I murmured, my hand clutching my stomach.

I felt sick.

“What’s wrong?” Rhea asked.

I’d made it seem like Tate had only one thing on his mind when he’d been doing everything that he’d been doing thatnight. And the explanation he provided after we were alone and I addressed it led me to believe I was right.

I thought he was simply trying to get our physical relationship back, to get us to a place where we could experience what we had the night of Wyatt’s and Rhea’s wedding. I’d made it seem like he had only one thing on his mind, when the reality was that he was making real changes to prove to me how much he cared, how important I was to him.