These Reckless Hearts
Contents
Also By E. M. Moore
Wilder Treasure Map
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Epilogue
Facebook Group & Newsletter
Heights Crew
The Ballers of Rockport High
The Rockstars of Hollywood Hill Series
Safe Haven Academy Series
About the Author
These Reckless Hearts
Saint Clary’s University
Book Three
By
E. M. Moore
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by E. M. Moore. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact E. M. Moore at emmoorewrites@hotmail.com.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition February 2021
PA’s: Affinity Author Services (Bibiane Lybaek & Ashton Reid)
Cover by 2nd Life Designs
Edited by Chinah Mercer of The Editor & the Quill, LLC
Also By E. M. Moore
Saint Clary’s University
Those Heartless Boys
This Fearless Girl
These Reckless Hearts
The Heights Crew Series
Uppercut Princess
Arm Candy Warrior
Beautiful Soldier
Knockout Queen
Crowned Crew (Heights POVs & Stories)
The Ballers of Rockport High Series
Game On
Foul Line
At the Buzzer
Rockstars of Hollywood Hill
Rock On
Spring Hill Blue Series
Free Fall
Catch Me
Ravana Clan Vampires Series
Chosen By Darkness
Into the Darkness
Falling For Darkness
Surrender To Darkness
Ravana Clan Legacy Series
A New Genesis
Tracking Fate
Cursed Gift
Veiled History
Fractured Vision
Chosen Destiny
Order of the Akasha Series
Stripped (Prequel)
Summoned By Magic
Tempted By Magic
Ravished By Magic
Indulged By Magic
Enraged By Magic
Her Alien Scouts Series
Kain Encounters
Kain Seduction
Rise of the Morphings Series
Of Blood and Twisted Roots
Safe Haven Academy Series
A Sky So Dark
A Dawn So Quiet
Chronicles of Cas Series
Reawakened
Hidden
Power
Severed
Rogue
The Adams’ Witch Series
Bound In Blood
Cursed In Love
Witchy Librarian Cozy Mystery Series
Wicked Witchcraft
One Wicked Sister
Wicked Cool
Wicked Wiccans
1
I have a story to tell you, baby girl.
Cole’s words repeat in my head like a skipping record. Everyone I’ve ever loved—bar the three most important men in my life—has let me down. Dickie cheated my family. My dad...isn’t my dad. What do I call him now? Clark Wilder? I’m a fucking Wilder. It’s all I know. The treasure is all I know, and Cole yanked out the stable footing of the only thing in this life I was sure of.
I’m Dakota Wilder.
I come from a long line of treasure hunters.
I will find the Wilder treasure.
I’ve been lying to myself for years, and my dad—Fuck. Clark—is behind all of it. Not only that, but I can’t even rage at him because he’s fucking dead.
I wrap my arms tighter around Lucas, the beeping of the hospital machine next to us the perfect backdrop to the rampant thoughts strangling me. Cole and Stone are dealing with the shitshow back at the mansion. Two of Cole’s bodyguards dropped me off at the hospital so I could be with Lucas and Wyatt, and they’re now thankfully stationed outside the room, providing me peace of mind from the clusterfuck that the last twelve hours have been.
I haven’t told Lucas and Wyatt what happened yet. I simply slipped into Lucas’ hospital room on my tiptoes and slid in next to him on the bed without a word. He held me to him, welcoming me with open arms and zero questions. Wyatt, too, pulled his chair closer to silently comfort me with a gentle hand on my hip.
Their wordless comfort is exactly what I needed, and not having to voice my wants but having them taken care of anyway, is a blessing.
I keep waiting for the tears to come, but they’re blocked by a bitterness I can’t escape. I lost the man I believed was my dad. He’s gone. Murdered. Taken from me with no hesitation. Yet I’m a dried-up well.
The nurses, for some reason or another, don’t balk at me being in the room, no less my spot on the bed right next to Lucas. They do their rounds, and I don’t even lift my head away from Lucas’ chest when they take his vitals. They want him to rest his vocal cords, so he communicates via marker and a lined, yellow pad. Even laid out in a hospital bed, he’s my rock. He’s the surest thing I have. With his palms wrapped in gauze, he runs his hands up and down my arm and through my hair.
The only other movement is Wyatt pulling the blankets over me when the nurses come in so they don’t spy my blood-stained clothes and arms. Though, I have a feeling that Stone or Cole arranged their silence, so the precaution is probably unnecessary.
I must’ve fallen asleep at some point because I wake to low whispers from the two men in the room. They’re discussing me as I lay here, keeping my eyes closed. “She’s so beautiful,” Wyatt murmurs, and his fingers trail over my hip bone in soft caresses.
“Strong, too,” Lucas replies, his whisper hoarse, and I pray to God that he gets his smooth, rich voice back. I need to hear it again.
Those assholes Lance hired hurt him. They tried to kill us. Anger courses through me at their blatant disrespect for human life.
My mouth parts, and a wash of reality hits me in the chest. I killed someone today. Funnily enough, I haven’t dissected killing Marissa’s dad until this very moment. I wait for some emotion to wrack me but it never comes. I feel absolutely no regret. I saw him pointing a gun at someone who didn’t deserve to die, and I didn’t hesitate. Replaying the scene doesn’t do anything to me either. Bloodshed and all, I’m numb.
“Stone’s asking if she’s talking yet.” Short clicks of Wyatt’s fingers over his phone screen sound. “He’ll be on his way soon. He’s trying to get his mother settled.”
/> I tense. “He better not be bringing her here,” I blurt, speaking for the first time. I lift my head and stare at Wyatt. “I don’t want her at the house either.”
I swallow. Man, I’ve got some balls today. Let me just tell Stone who he can and cannot have in his own house. Oh well. He owes me for standing at an altar with a girl who wasn’t me.
“You’re awake.” Wyatt’s fingers stop flying over his phone. He tucks it away, drags me off the bed, and onto his lap, blanket and all. “Let’s give Lucas a rest.”
Lucas all but snorts. “You’ve been chomping at the bit to hold her. Just be real.”
“Fine. I’m jealous as fuck, and I need a little Dakota time.” Wyatt props his feet up on the metal frame of the bed and holds me to his chest, tucked into a ball with my head on his shoulder. His cowboy hat is nowhere to be seen. I reach up to run my fingers through his dark hair, my nails gently scraping the raised ridge on his head.
My family scars can’t be felt like Wyatt’s but they’re still present all the same.
Lucas’s private room is fairly large. It’s like we’re in a bubble, separated from the chaos out in the hospital proper which only drifts in when the nurses appear. The tinge of sterile cleaning supplies burns my nose. In the corner, a flat screen TV is angled toward us, hanging mere inches from the ceiling, but it stays off.
We have enough of our own drama. We don’t need to watch TV for it.
Wyatt’s phone rings, and he shifts, lifting his hips to grab it out of his pocket before bringing the device to his ear. “Yeah?” A voice permeates the phone’s speakers on the other end of the line but it’s not one I expected. It’s Cole. Wyatt’s gaze darts to me. “The gangster wants to meet with you.” He holds the phone away from his ear and gives me his full attention. “Is that acceptable?”
I’m not ready to see Cole yet, but I also don’t want to play phone tag either. Since this is my burden to take on, I hold my hand out for Wyatt’s phone, and he places it in my palm. “Hello?”
“Hey, baby girl,” Cole breathes, a thread of relief washing over his words. “Are you okay?”
I bite the inside of my lip. How in the hell do I answer that question when nothing’s really wrong with me physically but mentally is a whole different story? “What do you want, Cole?”
He takes a moment to reply, and I have this image in my head of him fretting over what to say. It’s kind of cute, actually. Or would be, you know, if he hadn’t killed the man I knew as my father. “Stone’s on his way to the hospital, and I wanted to know if I’m allowed to come too?”
Now that’s interesting. Cole’s not the type to ask permission.
“There are things I have to tell you, Dakota,” he reminds me, not shying away from the information he started to give me when we were at Jacobs mansion.
I close my eyes as if doing so will ward off everything that’s happened. I’m not that lucky, though, because when I open them back up, I’m still in a stark hospital room with the beeping machine like an alarm for my brain that tells me with each high-pitched sound that I am now fatherless. Or I guess I always was? I actually don’t know. Who is my real father? Or mother? Was my actual mother my mother? Or was that a lie, too?
Pain lashes at my heart like a stinging whip, and even though Cole has the answers I need to all of these questions, I’m not ready to hear them yet. I need time to digest what the fuck is happening before I jump down a rabbit hole of the life I should’ve had. “I need some time,” I choke out.
“Understandable.” Silence engulfs us. The only thing I hear is his steady breathing on the other end of the line.
I chew on my lip. “Are you okay?” I hedge. “You were shot?”
“Don’t worry about me.” After a few moments of silence, he murmurs, “Don’t think too badly of me, baby girl.” Then, he hangs up.
I pull the phone away from my ear. Call Ended displays on the screen before it vanishes, and Wyatt’s screensaver moves into view. It’s a picture of me I didn’t know he’d taken. I’m sitting on the beautiful horse I rode the day we went for a trail ride, staring out at the river with the mountains as a backdrop. The sun is streaming in behind me, lighting up my brown curls in a crown of gold.
“I couldn’t not take that picture,” Wyatt remarks. His fingers brush the screen where there’s a smile on my face. “You looked absolutely stunning.”
I don’t have many pictures of me. Barely any, actually. My father—I mentally clear my throat. Clark—wasn’t the type to shell out money for school pictures, so the only ones I have are from newspaper clippings about the Wilder treasure. Seeing myself lit up in these bright colors, it appears as if I’m on top of the world, staring out over my kingdom. A queen. Right now, I don’t feel any of that but to know I have it in me makes me sit up in Wyatt’s lap. “It’s really pretty,” I confess before finding the camera icon.
I’ve seen people take selfies, but in the short amount of time I’ve had a phone, I haven’t tried it. I press the camera, and a view of the blanket on my lap appears on the screen. I start hitting random icons until I see myself. It’s a really unflattering view, staring in concentration at the phone.
Also, I look a mess. Smears of dirt and dried blood mar my face and shirt. Instead of fretting over my appearance, I pick the phone up and center Wyatt and I on the screen. I smile, and he does the same, reaching up to hit the shutter button. Then, I turn my head and kiss Wyatt’s cheek while he hits the button again. There, I think to myself. At least now there are three colored pictures of me out in the world.
“You’ll have to send me those,” Lucas tells us from the bed. “And when I get better, I want selfies with Wild Girl, too.”
“Too bad,” Wyatt teases. “Selfies are now a me and Tits thing. You can suck it.”
Lucas lifts his hand to flip Wyatt off, and I laugh for the first time since finding out that my dead dad isn’t really my dad. I sober up in an instant. If it weren’t for Lucas, Wyatt, and Stone, I’d literally have no one right now. That’s a bitter pill to swallow, but on the other hand, having them has turned out to be the highlight of my life.
The door clicks open, and Wyatt wraps his arms around me, preparing for a medical visit, but we turn to find Stone striding in instead. He’s changed out of his tux and is wearing a dark blue polo and light khakis. He bumps fists with Wyatt, drags his thin-lipped gaze over me, then immediately moves toward Lucas. He bends over, wrapping his arms around his friend. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.”
Lucas pats his back. “I know, man. We’re good.” They embrace for another minute before Lucas moves the head of the bed into a sitting position and Stone takes a seat on the edge facing Wyatt and me.
“Well, I don’t see a ring on your finger, so I’m guessing you’re not married?” Wyatt quizzes.
“Nope. Wrong girl.” Stone meets my stare, his gray-blue eyes bright in the stark lights of the hospital room.
“Well, that’s a relief,” Lucas comments, shifting his weight so he can face us. He’s adorable in his baby blue hospital gown. My heart starts to melt but then he hisses and it breaks all over again. The image of him struggling on that wire will haunt me forever. I’ve told this boy that I love him, and I almost lost him. Just like everyone else.
Wyatt breaks the drawn-out silence by updating Stone on what happened in the mountains. As predicted, Stone’s going to send the traps off to get tested for prints and anything else they might be able to tell us about who set them. Though we’re positive it’s someone Lance hired, it would be better knowing exactly who we’re dealing with because we all agree that Lance only pushes paper around his desk and makes phone calls. He’s not the one out there doing the shit that gets people hurt.
After that part of the story is over, it’s my turn to talk. With Wyatt’s arms fully surrounding me, I recount what happened at Jacobs mansion.
Lucas and Wyatt are speechless when I finish. I’m not sure which part shocked them more: the fact that I killed Marissa’s father o
r the fact that Cole killed my father or possibly the part about my dad not being my dad. It’s a lot to take in, and as the silence lengthens, I feel justified in the emotional torrent I’ve been in since it happened.
Wyatt leans close to my ear, lips brushing my skin. “You know it doesn’t matter, right? Family or no family, you’re still you. Names are just names. They don’t represent who we truly are inside. You’re the same girl who walked into that wedding. Never doubt that.”
Of course Wyatt would be the first to pinpoint what’s going on in my head. We both have fucked up families.
“You’ll get through this,” he reassures me.
The beeping machine softens in my head, no longer taunting me with the truth about my dad. It’s a reminder that I’m still living, and despite who I really am and where I might have come from, I’m still Dakota. The me inside is still very much me, and like Wyatt said, no one can take that away.