Promise Me This: a friends to lovers, slow burn romance (Wilder Family Book 3)

Prologue

A very long time ago on the playground

The cold wind sliced at my cheeks, and because I didn’t want to get hit with another snowball from that jerk kid chasing everyone down, I ducked behind the slide and tried to make myself smaller. The moment he passed the slide, I’d get him from behind.

I did it to my brother once in the backyard, and he got so mad, but he never chased me like that again. When I shuffled backward, my boots making indentations in the fluffy snow, I bumped into someone behind me.

“Oops, sorry,” I said, turning to see who it was.

She was little, a lot smaller than me, and the first thing I noticed was her brown eyes staring up at me. They were big, and scared, so I quickly dropped the snowball I had gripped in my black gloves.

“I wasn’t gonna throw it at you,” I said quickly. “It was for Brady.”

“I know,” she said. Then her whole body shuddered. “H-he got me earlier too.”

“Is that why you’re hiding?” I asked. I puffed my little chest out. “Because I’ll get him for you. I have a good arm, and I’m bigger than him.”

The girl smiled. “N-no, but I’m out of the wind when I’m back here.”

Because she was in another class, I wasn’t sure what her name was. Her hair was long, and her smile made me happy. She was missing one of her front teeth. I hadn’t lost mine yet, but I wiggled it with my tongue to see if it was loose. Her bare hands clutched her sweatshirt tighter around her body.

My nose was running a little, so I swiped the back of my glove underneath it while I looked down at my brand-new coat. It was cool—much cooler than the one I’d had last year. Cameron and I both got new coats this year because we were “growing like weeds,” whatever that meant. Parker had our hand-me-downs, and everyone knew that was the worst part of being the youngest. Mine had a bright yellow and black pattern on the back and fuzzy lining on the inside. I was a little hot after all that running around.

Where was hers?

“Did you lose your coat?” I asked. “I can help you look for it.”

Her eyes were huge, her cheeks were bright red from the cold, and a few chunks of snow were stuck in the tangled ends of her hair from Brady’s snowball. My stomach felt hot, twisting all around itself when I noticed that, because why would he be chasing down girls smaller than him?

“I don’t have one yet,” she said, shifting those big, pretty eyes down to the snow. “M-my mom didn’t expect the cold so soon, and we have to wait for my dad’s next paycheck.”

I didn’t really know what to say to that, so I just nodded. Past the slide, I heard the shrieks and screams of kids running. Kicking my boot forward into the snow, I noticed the edge of a plastic grocery bag poked out from the top of her pink boots.

“Are you in Miss Bartholomew’s class?” she asked.

I nodded, staring down at the bag coming out of her boots.

My stomach felt funny again. Not the angry feeling when I thought about Brady hitting her in the back with a snowball. I really hated that kid. This was a different kind of funny. Seeing her so cold made me … sad.

I thought about something my mom always told us. We can’t fix all the world’s problems by ourselves, but even one small, nice thing can change someone’s world.

Using my teeth as an anchor, I tugged my gloves off my hands and shoved them at her. “Here. You can put those on.”

She clutched them to her chest, staring at me with her mouth wide open. “I can’t take your gloves.”

I shrugged. “Sure you can. We’ve got extra.”

Slowly, she tugged them on her small hands, and even though they were way too big for her, she gave me that little smile, and I felt a little bit better. A gust of wind cut underneath the slide, and she shivered again.

Before I knew what I was doing, I yanked on the zipper of my coat and pulled it open. “Here,” I said. “I can keep you warm until recess is over.”

Her hair had blown over her face, and she shoved at it with the gloves. “I don’t even know your name,” she said, her eyebrows going all high and funny on her face.

“I’m Ian,” I told her. “Ian Wilder.”

When she shivered again, she pinched her eyes closed and shuffled toward me. Keeping her arms tucked against her chest, she pressed tight to me, and carefully, I closed the edges of the coat together. Her forehead touched my chin, and my heart beat like a crazy drum.

“What’s your name?” I asked her.

She let out a big, deep breath, and her shivering finally stopped. “I’m Harlow Keaton.”

Harlow. It was kind of a funny name, but I liked it.

“Does that mean we’re friends now?” she asked, tilting her head to the side so she could look up at me.

“Sure,” I answered with a shrug. “I don’t have a lot of friends. Just my brothers. They bug me sometimes, though.”

She giggled. “My sister bugs me too. I think I’d like to be your friend. You don’t throw snowballs, and I’ve never seen you push down any girls.”

I scoffed. “No way.”

Harlow wrapped her arms around my waist, and we stood like that until the teacher blew the whistle for us to go inside. Without thinking, I took my coat off before she ran off to get in line. “Here, why don’t you keep it?”

Her eyes went all big in her face, and she blinked a few times. “What?”

“Take it,” I said. But she didn’t move, so I pushed it into her gloved hands. Slowly, she pulled it toward her, staring at it like she’d never seen a coat before.

“Won’t you get in trouble if you don’t come home with it?” she asked, clutching the black and yellow material to her chest.

“Nah.”

With a shy smile, she tugged it up over her arms, and it was so big on her, it came to her knees.

She gave me my gloves back, and we traded another smile. “Thanks, Ian,” she said. “I’ve never had a friend do something like this for me before.”

I puffed my chest out again and stood a little bit taller. “I promise you’ll never go cold as long as I’m around,” I told her with as much seriousness as I could muster because I was trying really hard not to shiver as soon as the coat was gone. But I was a man, so I’d never let it show.

She smiled so big, I saw that gap in her tooth.

The whistle blew again, and Harlow took off running.

Brady popped up behind me and whacked me in the back with a snowball. “Oooh, you were hugging her,” he teased. “Ian’s got a girlfriend.”

I bent down and scooped up a huge handful of snow and whirled around. He tried to duck, but I got him square in the chin.

“Hey,” he whined. “You’re not supposed to hit in the face.”

I grabbed his coat and yanked him closer. “Quit throwing snowballs at the girls, Brady, and I won’t knock you in the face with one tomorrow.”

He nodded, ripping out of my grasp and running away.

I walked to the class line and found my spot at the end. From across the playground, tucked safely in my coat, Harlow waved, and even though I was freezing, I smiled the whole way back inside.