Wilde at Heart (Wilde Security, #3)(45)

“What do you mean, were?” he said from the bottom of the stairs. “I still am.”

“You said it, not me.” She traced the frame of the photo. “Were you picked on a lot in school?” In her experience, high schoolers mercilessly teased anyone not like them. She’d certainly wanted to go all Carrie on more than one “cool” kid during those endless four years.

She turned to find him watching her with those unnervingly intense eyes of his. She sometimes wondered if he could see through her to the scared little girl she kept locked away inside.

“Were you?” Her voice wobbled, and she cleared her throat, infusing her words with as much cheer as she could muster. “Picked on, I mean?”

“No.” He came back up the stairs and tapped Greer’s picture on the wall next to his. It showed the same square jaw, hard mouth, and wide shoulders, but fewer shadows hid in the eldest Wilde brother’s dark eyes.

“Nobody ever wanted to piss off Greer. He was always big for his age. Takes after Dad that way.”

Shelby spotted a wedding photo farther down the stairs and moved closer to get a better look. “What were your parents’ names?”

“David Wilde, Sr. and Mom was Meredith.”

The groom in the wedding picture looked shockingly like Greer—or, more accurately, Greer looked like him. “He was a senior?”

“Greer’s the junior. David Greer Wilde.”

“Oh. Never knew Greer goes by his middle name.” She went back to studying the picture. The senior David Greer Wilde was a hulk of a man, all hard lines, with coal-dark eyes that should have been intimidating as hell, but beamed nothing but joy and love as he held his bride in a permanent spin, her white dress flaring out around her.

Exactly how Shelby had pictured him from Reece’s stories.

Shelby took a step down to see another photo, one showing Meredith Wilde in a hospital bed holding two swaddled bundles—the twins—and beaming at the camera with toddler-sized versions of Greer and Reece at each arm. Unlike the other brothers, who all strongly resembled their father, Reece took after his mother. He had her hazel eyes, her aquiline nose. And while he was by no means a small man, he was the smallest of his brothers, having inherited Meredith’s long, lean form rather than David’s bulk.

Another photo—Meredith holding a baby with a tuft of dark hair. The twins were still toddlers in diapers and sitting on their father’s lap. Greer would have been six when this photo was taken and Reece, already wearing glasses, would have been about three. He appeared utterly fascinated by his new baby brother, Jude.

They were all so happy. So…complete. A real family.

An ache Shelby didn’t want to explore lodged in her belly, and she spun away from the wall of memories and stalked down the stairs. She didn’t know the whys of her sudden burst of anger, but she embraced it. “Why bring me here, Reece? The real reason.”

Reece glanced away. “I’m not sure. I don’t often come here myself.”

“I’d like to go now.” The walls were closing in on her, all of the happy smiles like a mockery of her pathetic childhood. And if the hot pressure kept growing behind her eyes, she was going to embarrass herself and ugly-cry all over him.

“Okay.” Reece picked up her coat and held it out to her. As soon as she accepted it, he grabbed the notebooks he’d set down on a table and strode toward the front door like he was in just as much of a hurry to leave as she was.

But she didn’t move. Her boots stayed glued to the floor, and she found her gaze tracing over all of those photos once more.

Eva wanted this. She’d never understood her sister’s drive to find a man and start a family—until now. Staring at the Wilde family photos, she got it. She felt like an unwelcome stranger from the wrong side of the tracks, but she totally got it.

And, goddammit, she wanted it, too.

She just couldn’t have it with Reece.

Reece waited on the front porch for Shelby, but she barely looked at him as she strode from the house. She’d been rattled ever since that kiss upstairs in his bedroom, though he couldn’t put his finger on why.

Had he done something wrong?

The car door slammed shut behind him, and he winced. He must have. Why else would she be angry with him?

And this was exactly why he’d avoided relationships. Women were just too damn confusing.

Sighing, he took one last look around the living room of his childhood home.

Why had he brought her here? He didn’t know, except that he’d wanted to show her…himself. The real Reece and not the one he projected to the world. He kept expecting time to dull the pain, but the hurt never went away. Every time he came here the grief slapped him again. Because his parents should still be here, excited that Jude and Libby were trying to give them grandbabies, happy that Cam had finally married Eva, whom they’d have loved. They should still be here, dancing in the kitchen together.

But they weren’t.

Maybe it was time to pack everything up and sell the old house…

But his heart lurched at the thought. As painful as the bad memories were—he’d been standing right over there at the bottom of the stairs when Greer answered the door to the cops the night their parents were killed—there were far more good memories here, and he wasn’t ready to let them go. Not yet. Maybe not ever.