Chapter 1
As a single woman—and up-until-last-week resident of New York—I had a well-honed instinct for when someone stared at me. All the little hairs stood up on the back of my neck, and if I’d been on the subway, I might have dug into my giant purse for a can of pepper spray.
But being back in Sisters, Oregon, the most likely culprit of anyone’s undivided attention would be something along the lines of, Oh, I wonder if that’s Estelle and Robert’s youngest, I heard she had a kid a few years ago and never heard from the father again when she found out she was pregnant.
If that was the reason behind the look, walking around with a sign taped to my back would be easier.
Yes, I am Estelle and Rob’s youngest, less-perfect daughter.
Yes, I am a single mom.
Yes, I write books about serial killers, much to my mother’s dismay.
Yes, I’ve had to slink my way back to town because Manhattan rent is expensive, my daughter begged to live by family, and unfortunately, books don’t write themselves.
The look lingered, pressing like a weight on the side of my face, and I had to curl my nails into my palm to fight the urge not to bolt from the coffee house. But I’d done enough hunkering down the last two weeks I’d been in town, and even an introvert has their limits of hiding in their parents’ house.
My phone buzzed in my hand, and I glanced at the screen, smiling when I saw my daughter’s name. She’d gotten one of those kiddie phones that could only message pre-approved numbers, and at ten years old, Sage felt like the coolest person in the universe since she could send texts now.
Sage: Hiiiiii
Me: What’s up, buttercup? You having fun with your cousins?
Sage: Yup. We played hide-and-seek, and I kicked their ass. They have zero imagination when it comes to picking their spots.
Me: Sage…
Sage: Sorry. I kicked their butt.
Sage: Aunt Rachel said we can pick you up whenever, and I told her that we could come anytime because you never get words done at coffee shops even though you pretend you do.
Sage: No offense.
I huffed a disbelieving laugh under my breath. The kid was ten years old going on eighteen in terms of painfully blunt observations, but I couldn’t fault the truth of her statement. Apparently, I couldn’t get words done at my parents’ house either, probably from the stifling weight of their disappointments. That made it a wee bit hard to focus.
But Sage, as usual, nailed it in one. The table in the back corner of the coffee shop where I’d been sitting all afternoon, cluttered with all my shit, was indeed holding a laptop with an ominously blinking cursor and a blank document that seemed to hold every ounce of my stress.
And as much as I tried to protect Sage from that stress, it was almost impossible. Ten years of it being the two of us against the world, she knew me too damn well.
Me: None taken, my darling child. I’ll send you a text when I’m ready.
Sage: Okay. Love you times a thousand.
Me: Love you times a million.
With my phone tucked away again, I sighed quietly as the smiling employees made drinks and the line for orders dwindled slowly to just me and one other guy. I didn’t mind the wait, though. The coffee shop wasn’t busy by New York standards, so if I listened carefully enough, I could pluck out strains of the conversations happening around me.
“I couldn’t believe it,” someone said to my left. “I thought he was a shoo-in for that job. I bet he didn’t get it because of that wife of his.”
To my right. “Just ask her. You’ll never know how she feels unless you ask.”
“Easy for you to say,” came the mumbled reply. “You’ve had a girlfriend for the last three years, and she manhandled you into your first date. You’ve never had to make the first move.”
Faintly, I smiled. Context didn’t really matter when you were diving briefly into strangers’ interactions.
Eavesdropping was a horrible way to phrase it, so I liked to view it as the natural side effect of being a writer. Studying human interaction was part of the gig because literally anything could spark an idea. And holy shit did my brain need some sparkage.
And as I thought it, a woman’s voice cut through the rest of the noise even though she spoke quietly.
“I’m telling you, it’s her,” she said in a hushed, insistent voice. “Didn’t I tell you that when we were in Redmond whenever that was?” A lengthy pause. “No, I know he hasn’t said anything, but maybe he doesn’t know she’s back. I’m going to text him.” Another pause. “I’m not meddling, Ivy. I’m being thoughtful.”
My spidey sense wasn’t just tingling. It was a blaring siren in my ear.
A bit over a month ago, Sage and I had taken a weekend to visit my parents because there was no friggin’ way I was agreeing to move back here without a brief trial run. But it didn’t take long for my daughter to beg for the cross-country relocation—the allure of a couple of cousins and a pair of grandparents (how entirely un-fun they were didn’t seem to matter) was too much for her to ignore. And in that weekend visit, I’d done all my errands in the neighboring town of Redmond because I didn’t want to deal with any stares, or gossip, or speculation about why I was back in Sisters after so many years—especially if it turned out to be a one-weekend deal only.
I kept my gaze forward, waiting patiently for my drink order because the promise of pumpkin spice coffee with a sinful amount of whipped cream and cinnamon was enough to keep me from figuring out who the hell was trying to figure out if I was whoever she thought I was.
It wasn’t some inflated sense of self; all signs pointed to this mystery woman talking about me to another mystery woman named Ivy.
Did I know an Ivy in Sisters?
I racked what was left of my exhausted brain and came up short.
The truth was, I wasn’t close to anyone in Sisters. The only person I’d been close to before I moved had been out of town as long as me. So the he she mentioned couldn’t possibly be Ian Wilder—my childhood best friend, the hero of my youth, and the only man I’d ever really trusted.
The man who, to the best of my knowledge, still called London home.
My ribs squeezed a little when I thought about him, but I blew out a slow breath and shoved it aside.
Along with this spidey sense, I also had a killer bullshit meter, and it was so very common to have the two screaming in tandem if the staring happened to come hand in hand with a creepy dude. That wasn’t this, though. From the moment I felt the attention on me, I’d known that it wasn’t anything nefarious.
But now, paired with the conversation I’d heard, I had to wonder exactly who she was, and who he was.
The bright-eyed barista behind the counter looked up and scanned the line. “Harlow?”
I stepped forward and accepted the cup with a polite smile. “Thank you,” I said.
With the cup pressed to my lips, I took my first sip and turned, then promptly choked on the mouthful of whipped cream and coffee when I found myself face-to-face with a very pretty young woman with dark chestnut-colored hair and a wide smile.
As I coughed, her face bent into a grimace. “I’m so sorry,” she gushed. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Once my windpipe was unblocked, I managed to smile. “It’s all right. I don’t think I’ll meet my demise thanks to pumpkin spice and too much whipped cream.”
She laughed, studying my face with open curiosity. “Are you … Harlow Keaton?” she asked. Then she rushed to speak again when my expression must have betrayed a bit of my hesitancy. “I heard her say your name, and I wasn’t sure if it was you before that. You probably won’t recognize me. I was little when you left town.”
I straightened, giving her facial features a closer once-over. Something about her tugged on a thread in the back of my mind. The shape of her smile. The color of her hair. The eyes.
“Holy shit,” I whispered. “You’re a Wilder, aren’t you?”
She stuck out her hand. “Guilty as charged. I’m Poppy,” she said. “I recognized you from pictures.”
“You know, I didn’t feel old until this very moment,” I admitted. “Thanks for that.”
Again, she laughed. But it was a sweet, unassuming laugh, and even though my skepticism of new people was deeply ingrained, I found myself unable to conjure a shred of it aimed toward her.
“Did I see you in Redmond?” she asked. “I was shopping with my brother’s girlfriend, and I could’ve sworn it was you.”
Because the Wilder family was huge, Poppy had no shortage of brothers. If I remembered correctly, she had four. The temptation to clarify which brother’s girlfriend danced on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it down. There was no way Ian was single, not after all this time.
“You might have.” I gestured toward my table. “Do you want to sit?”
She eyed the computer and stack of notebooks. “Are you working? I don’t want to interrupt.”
I sighed dramatically. “I’m pretending to work,” I said. “The coffee was a desperate attempt to see if copious amounts of sugar would help. I should probably just have my sister pick me up because it’s not going to happen.”
Poppy’s face lit up. “I can drive you. I was about to leave anyway, and we can catch up in the car.”
As I took a careful sip of my drink, I weighed the sincerity in her words and her eyes, and good Lord, she meant it. Being without a car in Manhattan was the norm, but here, it required a bit more juggling, and here was this woman who hadn’t seen me since she was a kid … willing to cart me around simply because I used to be friends with her brother.
Small towns were a whole vibe, and I still hadn’t quite adjusted.
“Are you sure?” I asked her.
“I’d be happy to.”
My head spinning from the sudden shift in my day, I packed up my laptop bag and hitched it over my shoulder. I tapped out a quick text to my sister that she could drop off Sage at our parents’ house whenever they were done playing and slipped my cell into the front pocket of my bag. Poppy waited by the door, tapping away on her phone with a tiny smile on her face.
With my coffee in hand, I approached, my eyes narrowing when she quickly tucked her phone away and adopted a very innocent expression.
“Why does that look make me nervous?” I asked.
She grinned. “It shouldn’t. I just had to send a few texts. First, to let Ivy know I was right.”
I followed her out of the coffee shop, the bell above the door dinging gently. “The brother’s girlfriend?”
Poppy nodded. “Cameron’s, I’m sure you remember him. She’s new in town, so I’m constantly having to give her everyone’s background.”
I chuckled. “The Wilder family should come with a brochure for newcomers.”
Poppy’s grin was infectious, and I saw hints of her parents and siblings in her wide smile. Setting a hand on her arm, I stopped walking. She turned with a question in her eyes. “I’m sorry about your dad,” I said. “I should have led with that as soon as I saw you.”
There was a specific way the face changed when someone was reminded of their grief. A pinch of pain in the brows, a straightening of the shoulders when they took a great deep breath.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “Some days, I wake up and have a minute or two when I forget he’s gone.” Her eyes glossed over, and she blinked rapidly until it dissipated. “Then I remember, and…” Poppy sighed. “It’s not easy, even if it was expected.”
“I’m sure.” I swallowed. “How’s the rest of your family doing?”
The way Poppy glanced at me with an understanding curl of her lips, she saw right through my question.
How is he?
“We’re doing okay.” She gave me a meaningful look. “But I’m sure he’d love an extra friend right now.”
My eyes pinched shut, heat blooming through my cheeks. “I wasn’t even sure if he checked his old email address. He always hated phones and computers.”
Poppy laughed. “That has not changed, believe me.” She paused, pulling a key fob from her purse and clicking the button.
My eyebrows arched slowly while she unlocked the doors of a massive white truck with a Wilder Homes logo on the side. “Big truck.”
“Obnoxious, right? Mine is in the shop, so I’m borrowing this until it’s fixed.”
Even though my legs were long, I grabbed the bar on the inside of the truck to hoist myself in. The interior was immaculate and smelled like hot guy. It had been so long since I’d smelled an actual hot guy who came with a scent profile this good—crisp and clean and woodsy and wonderful—so I didn’t feel too terribly embarrassed to inhale deeply.
The truck’s engine rumbled loudly when she turned it on, and she started backing out of the spot, turning the wheel so she could head down Main Street.
When she went in the opposite direction of the one I needed to be going, I arched an eyebrow. “I can text you the address,” I told her. “My parents are about ten minutes south.” I pointed behind us. “Thataway.”
Poppy blinked. “Oh. Your parents, right.”
I eyed her suspiciously. “You are driving me home, right?”
“Mm-hmm.” Her gaze cut in my direction. “Eventually.”
“Poppy,” I said in a warning tone.
She sighed, shoulders deflating a little. “I was hoping to surprise you both.”
“Surprise who?”
“Did I mention my brother moved back here recently too?” she asked innocently.
This time, I didn’t have to ask which brother. There was no need for clarification. It was written all over her face. It was my actual job to string together words for a living. Clever words and interesting sentences had no place at this moment because any semblance of rational thought flew the fucking coop.
He was here.
He was here.
Oh good Lord, Ian Wilder was here, within a ten-minute radius, and I wasn’t entirely sure my breakable bones and fragile skin could hold back the supersonic boom of everything happening under the surface.
So many years, I thought, sadness and nostalgia and elation surging in a big, messy clash. For so many years, he’d been the anchor of my life. And so many years had passed without him in it.
Despite the bright thread of anticipation surging to the lead, I sighed. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
She was undeterred. “It’s a great idea. I know he’s at home. He just bought it, actually. Moved in last week. Not that he had much. I swear, he came home from London with like, two duffel bags, and that’s it.” She spoke in a rush, excitement bleeding from every word. “He’d love to see you, Harlow, I know it.”
I rubbed at my chest, wondering if some visible manifestation of my nerves poured from my skin. Did Ian want to see me? I wasn’t so sure.
We didn’t part on bad terms. It had been a necessary separation for so many reasons, but there was so much distance, so much silence over so many years, that it was hard to remember the man who’d once been the most important person in my entire life. He was the first person who truly took care of me—without expectation and without strings.
Our last phone call, a few years after I’d left, echoed in my head. Me in tears because I was ready to pack up and come home. Him doing that silent, broody thing that he was so damn good at until he’d figured out exactly what he wanted to say.
“You cannot give up, Keaton,”he’d said. “I’ll never forgive you if you do.”
“It’s not like I want to prove them right, I told him through my frustrated tears. I’m just … tired. I’m so fucking tired, and I just want to hide under a blanket and watch a movie with my friend, and if I was home, I could do that.”
He paused then, and I could practically see him rubbing the back of his neck. “I got a job offer in Chicago, Harlow.” While I processed that, he continued. “It’s a good one, too. Everyone who starts there ends up working out of their London offices, and I’ve kinda been thinking about moving since you left. But maybe I could … maybe I could ask about an extension, or?—”
I dashed at the tears on my face, pinching my eyes shut. “Don’t you dare turn that down, Ian Wilder. I’ll never forgive you if you do.”
He exhaled a sharp puff of air. “But if you come back…”
“I’ll stay here,” I said quietly. “Maybe, maybe we’re just making it harder on ourselves because it’s always easier if we’re together.”
“Fuck,” he said harshly. “I know.”
My voice trembled as I spoke, but I forced the words out. “Maybe these Sunday night calls are just making everything worse. Because I’ll come home if I know you’re there. And you won’t want to leave if you know I’m coming home…”
And like it always did, Ian’s silence screamed loud and clear into my heart. He knew I was right. I knew I was right. And even knowing that, it didn’t make it easier when the weekly phone calls dropped to every other. And every other to once a month. The occasional emails sputtered out. Because for both of us, it was too damn hard not to want to swoop in and save each other.
I could’ve written a book about the things my friendship with Ian Wilder taught me. The very first being the real and true heartbreak you could experience from the self-sacrificing distance between two slightly codependent friends.
There was every indication that he wanted nothing to do with me. That we’d stand in the same room and have nothing to say to each other. Awkwardness would ensue, and I’d end up blurting out something stupid because that was what I always did when I was uncomfortable, and yet…
Yet there was no way on God’s green earth that I’d be able to resist the urge to lay eyes on him again.
“He moved back?” I heard myself asking.
She nodded, eyes bright and fervent. “Yes, and he’s got this gorgeous farmhouse he just bought from Cameron’s girlfriend. Shocked the hell out of all of us when he did it. Didn’t tell anyone he put in an offer.” She paused, giving me an encouraging smile. “I texted him to see if he’s home, and he is.”
My throat went tight, and holy hell, I wanted to fidget with my hair or something. Had I put on mascara that morning?
I wasn’t the same girl who’d left Sisters seventeen years earlier. I’d had a child, for shit’s sake. And he likely had just as many stories.
“He’s home, but he has no idea you’re bringing me over?” I asked.
“Ian loves surprises.”
I scoffed. “He hates them.”
She paused. “Okay, fine. He hates surprises, but this one, he’ll love.”
My stomach turned to ice. “It feels like a recipe for disaster, Poppy.”
She bounced excitedly. “It’s going to be great.”
I sank in my seat and sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Great.”