Chapter 2
The nature of having a big family was that it only took one text to ruin your day. It didn’t matter how much you loved that sibling or how well you got along in any other given moment. Case in point? The message currently sitting on the home screen of my phone.
Poppy: Don’t be naked or anything when I show up at your house in about ten minutes. I promise, you won’t be happy if you are.
The temptation to strip down, wrap a towel around my waist and make Poppy regret all her life decisions was so strong. The entire reason I bought my own house was to preserve a modicum of privacy from nosy sisters and bossy brothers. I needed space. Quiet.
“One week,” I muttered. “I’ve been in this house for one week, and it’s already starting.”
The house itself was close to my parents’, which was a huge part of its appeal. My mom’s house, I corrected, my thoughts stuttering on the unconscious mistake. Not my parents. Not anymore. That proximity to her, in the wake of my dad’s passing, was a big reason I’d wanted it. I’d never intended to buy it, but when my brother’s girlfriend, Ivy, put the finished farmhouse on the market, after we’d spent weeks turning it into something updated and clean and appealing, I couldn’t shake the idea of making it my own.
Maybe it was impulsive, but I’d saved a lot during my years working in Chicago, and then London. At the moment, it was too big just for me. The entire upstairs—two bedrooms and a big bathroom—sat empty. Wasn’t that odd? An empty house felt more comfortable to me than sitting in my parents’, filled wall to wall with bittersweet memories that smacked me in the face every time I walked through the door.
Impulsive as it might have been, it was exactly what I needed to give myself a shot at being happy settled in this place with so many memories.
It had plenty of land, just shy of five acres, a huge barn that I could use for woodworking or whatever else came down the road, and the home lent itself to growth. To plans and a future, even if it was just me at the moment.
Being alone suited me fine. I’d spent years living in London, only sharing my living space for one ill-advised year with a girlfriend who was never going to become more. The day she moved out, she told me I was a shit for brains because I told her I wasn’t ready for marriage. All in all, the best reminder for celibacy and solitude I’d had in a good long time.
The solitude was welcome, yet here I was, my entire noisy, nosy family hovered close enough to pull shit like this.
The return text I sent to Poppy was done with violent taps of my thumbs like she might be able to read my annoyance through the way I smashed the buttons on the screen.
Me: No, Poppy.
Poppy: Does that mean you’re not home?
Me: It means no, Poppy. Whatever you have planned, whatever you’re about to spring on me, just NO. It’s my day off, I’m tired, and I finally have furniture, so I’m going to lie on the couch, watch football, and not have little sisters drop by unannounced.
Poppy: If I hadn’t sent the text, it would be unannounced. You’re welcome.
Me: No.
Me: Go bug Cameron and Ivy.
Poppy: I did that yesterday.
Me: Do it again. I’m sure they’d love it if you interrupted them two days in a row.
Poppy: Stop. I’m still a little scarred. I SAW OUR brOTHER’S ASS, Ian. This is why I’m warning you.
Poppy: About to get in the car. Bye, see you soon.
Poppy: DON’T BE NAKED, I’m so serious.
“Fucking hell,” I mumbled, lying back on the couch and closing my eyes. The hum of the TV in the background wasn’t enough of a distraction. Maybe if I locked the doors, she’d eventually give up.
I loved my youngest sister. But with our mom out of town on some grief retreat, Poppy was bored, and I needed her to take that boredom somewhere else. I’d moved home because my dad was sick, his battle with cancer slowly overtaking his body, and I wanted to be here for him. For the rest of them when he was finally at peace. I’d missed so much of Poppy growing up when I was gone in London, being able to spend time with her was another reason I wanted to stay.
But today? She was the last person I wanted to see. I didn’t want to see anyone.
I’d realized this was the downfall of working with your family when they already lived close.
My brother Cameron and stepsister Greer owned Wilder Homes, the construction business my dad had started more than forty years earlier. Poppy had taken over in the office since she finished her master’s in communication, and I was officially in charge of all custom woodworking, as well as helping with the crews when they were shorthanded.
We were always together.
Between a busy work schedule and our family’s new normal with the recent passing of my dad, the time we spent together was higher than average. And this was my first day off in the past two weeks, so the last people I wanted to see were my siblings. She’d get the hint eventually.
With a determined smirk, I hoisted myself off the brand-new couch, flipped the dead bolt on the front door, and grabbed a cold beer from the fridge. Then I paused and checked the time.
It was well past lunch, and it was a Saturday, for fuck’s sake. A man could have a beer on a Saturday afternoon.
Back on the couch, with my feet propped up on the plush ottoman, I took a long pull and sighed, knowing that the locked door and my own stubborn nature would keep Poppy at bay. The game held enough of my attention, and the ten-minute arrival that Poppy warned me of was incredibly accurate.
The truck’s engine approaching my house had me resting my head back on the couch and staring at the ceiling, and the footsteps on the front porch had me closing my eyes.
Bam, bam, bam!
My glare swiveled to the front door. Honestly, was she trying to break it off the frame?
Poppy peered into the house—damn the trend for larger panes of glass—and she arched an eyebrow when I didn’t immediately get up.
I held her gaze and took another leisurely sip of my beer.
She rolled her eyes, then raised her fist again.
Bam, bam, bam!
“I’m not leaving,” she called in a singsong voice, only slightly muffled through the door. “And if you’d open the door, you’d realize that you don’t actually want me to.”
“Wanna bet?” I whispered.
I swear she could read lips because her eyes narrowed dangerously.
I raised my beer in a mock salute, which she clearly didn’t appreciate.
At that moment, her face changed, a gleam in her eye and a self-satisfied tilt to her smile that caused a rolling sense of unease through my belly. And then Poppy turned, motioning to someone I couldn’t see.
The car door closing echoed through the woods surrounding my house, and despite my best effort not to be, I found myself curious. Poppy’s fingers flew across the screen of her phone, and as she hit send on the text, her eyes locked on mine through the glass of my front door.
Poppy: Trust me, you’ll want to unlock this door.
Me: Who’s out there, Poppy?
Poppy: You owe me, big brother.
Then she tucked her phone away and turned her attention toward her unseen guest, and the curiosity, unwelcome though it might be, sharpened into something more persistent. My legs moved before I gave them permission, and I stood for a moment in the middle of the family room.
From the windows flanking the front door, I could see all the way down my driveway and through the tall fir trees that dominated the stretch of land that separated me from the road. Whoever Poppy brought with her was out of view, but through the barrier of the home, an insistent tugging came from the inside of my ribs.
Something—someone—important waited outside of that door. Even with her minor bouts of little sister annoyances, Poppy would never play a game like this if it wasn’t important.
I swallowed around the block tightening my throat and moved toward the door. As I flipped the lock, my eyes moved past Poppy, and the breath snagged like flames in my lungs.
Harlow.
In a weaker moment, when I missed my friend and wasn’t sure how to reach out to her after so much silence, I calculated once how many days it had been since I last saw her. At the time, it was something staggering, like three thousand nine hundred and four. Even more than that now.
In my head, that growing list of days was an insurmountable barrier that I didn’t know how to hop over even though a simple phone call or email or message would’ve opened up a door to the person who knew me best.
Time had been kind to her, but that didn’t surprise me. I always knew it would be. Her face was still all high cheekbones and big, dark eyes, her body was softer curves now, and her expression held none of the surprise that mine likely did.
Fucking Poppy.
While I stood there and stared at my childhood best friend, time stretched out into something tactile. Whether I wanted it there or not and whether she’d admit its existence, some invisible rope had always tethered Harlow and me together. We’d both had to ignore it for a while because the truth of it kept us from creating the futures we wanted.
And right now, I wanted to grab onto it and pull, just to see if it was still there. It was an anchor lodged next to my heart, this person who’d always been so important to me.
My hand gripped the frame next to the door as I pulled it open, and Harlow’s mouth tugged to the side in a crooked smile.
The sight of that smile had something monstrously big brewing in my chest.
“I told her this was a terrible idea,” Harlow said. “I know how much you hate surprises.”
After so many years, her voice almost knocked me to my knees.
I stepped out onto the front porch, attempting to unlock all the tension I suddenly held in my jaw. “Poppy,” I said under my breath, “it’s time for you to go home.”
Maybe my sister’s face morphed into surprise or annoyance, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away from my friend’s long enough to check. Poppy, young though she was, could still read a room, and she let out a low whistle, then backed away with her keys jingling in her hand.
“Right,” she said slowly. “I’ll just … go elsewhere.”
Harlow let out a massive breath, hitching a laptop bag over her shoulder. Her eyes briefly darted to my sister so she could nod her assent. Like Poppy needed permission to go, to leave Harlow alone with me.
Which was laughable because the hours we’d spent alone in middle school and high school were beyond my ability to count. Talking when we were supposed to be studying. Playing video games when I let her win because I liked her smile when she did. Sharing our dreams and burdens.
When my dad died, hers was the voice I wanted to hear when I pulled my suit on for his funeral, and when I watched Mom toss her handful of dirt onto his sleek navy coffin.
Words crowded my throat, questions of where she’d been, what life had happened to her in my absence, what losses she’d had that I missed.
We stood like that, staring at each other until Harlow nudged her chin up slightly and took the remaining few steps up the front porch. Her willingness to close the gap between us reminded me exactly how strong she was. The gap was created and upheld by both of us, and now it was summarily destroyed by a meddling sister who I couldn’t bring myself to be mad at.
Harlow’s gaze touched lightly over my face, cataloging the same changes that time had wrought on me. My hair was long now, always tied back, and my face covered in a beard, something she’d never seen on me before.
Slowly, she eased the laptop bag off her shoulder and set it down on the porch.
I waited for a snarky comment about a man bun, or my lumberjack shirt or the beard. I waited for her to give me shit, for that sharp tongue of hers to talk to me like nothing had changed between us, but she stayed silent. Those dark chocolate eyes pulled away from mine and focused on the porch, a soft smile curling her lips.
“Your house is?—”
I didn’t let her finish. “Get over here, Harlow.”
At the urgent request, her head snapped up. My arms opened wide.
The sound she exhaled was part laugh, part ragged sob of relief, and I swept her up into my embrace on a sigh that held the weight of seventeen years.
God, she felt good. I’d missed her. I’d missed my friend so fucking much.
Harlow’s arms were tight around my neck, and with my arms banded around her middle, I squeezed, lifting her slightly until her feet didn’t touch the floor. In my ear, she laughed.
When I set her down, her smile was so wide and happy that I found myself mirroring her expression.
She cupped my face in her hands. They were warm and soft, and I couldn’t help but notice. “You have a man bun, Ian, what the hell?”
Despite my laugh, I rolled my eyes. “I was waiting for that.”
Harlow shook her head, her gaze warm and open and full of amazement. “You inviting me in or not?”
“I don’t know, sparky, can you be nice about my complete lack of decor? I moved in a week ago, so it’s a little sparse.”
“I’ll do my best, but I make no promises,” she said gravely, but her eyes glittered at my old nickname for her.
Instinct clawed at me as we walked to the door, the urge strong to wrap my arm around her shoulders like I used to, see if she’d wrap an arm around my waist like she used to. But I didn’t. Instead, I pulled the door open for her, my hand hovering awkwardly behind her back, not daring to settle just yet.
When she walked into the house, she stopped so quickly that I almost ran into her.
“A little sparse?” she said.
“It’s a work in progress.”
She snorted, wandering through the room with a discerning eye. It was just a couch plopped into the middle of the room, facing a TV sitting on the floor. In the spacious kitchen—with creamy white cabinets and a deep farmhouse sink—I’d set a big circular table with a turned pedestal base that I’d finished just a few days earlier, and my chest swelled with pride when she stopped and studied it with wide eyes and a slightly open mouth.
Then she shuttered her expression. “Table’s fine, I guess.”
I hid my smile. That was high praise from her, so I decided not to tell her I was the one who made it.
“Imagine if you had chairs here,” she said, fingertips dancing lightly over the edge of the knotty alder edge. “People could sit down and everything.”
“Imagine.”
At my dry response, she rolled her lips together, but a dimple popped in her cheek, so I knew she was hiding a smile of her own. I stayed quiet as she took in the kitchen, then wandered down the small hallway so she could poke her head into my bedroom and bathroom. I stood in the family room, arms crossed over my chest while I waited for her to satisfy her curiosity, which ended at the staircase that led up to the other bedrooms and bathroom. There was a gleam in her eye as she looked up those stairs, but she stopped, leaning her shoulder against the wall as her gaze came to rest on mine.
Neither of us said anything, and I waffled between delirious happiness and extreme worry that I’d lost my ability to talk to her.
No. The dynamic between us always rested in our brutal honesty. It was why our friendship worked.
“You come here to stare at my house, or are we going to converse at some point?”
One dark eyebrow arched slowly. “Still the friendliest of your family, I see.”
“Undisputed king.”
“I bet you make little kids and sweet old ladies cry when you go out in public.”
I tilted my head. “Only on Sundays.”
She nodded gravely. “It’s why you’re not married, isn’t it? I always worried that you stopped developing people skills in the first grade.”
A low growling sound came from deep in my chest, and after a brief twitch of her lips, Harlow lost her battle against her laughter.
The sound of it—in my home—had my lips softening into a reluctant grin.
“I might have missed you a little bit, Keaton,” I told her.
Her laughter slowly ebbed, and at my quiet admission, her eyes went all soft and shit.
“I might have missed you a little bit too.”
I blew out a slow breath. “Dammit, this means I’ll have to forgive Poppy, doesn’t it?”
Harlow smiled. “I’m guessing the big house with a barn and a mediocre table with no chairs means you’re back for good?”
With a glance around the room, I nodded. “Looks like it.” Then I eyed her. “What about you?”
“I think so,” she said. “My digs aren’t quite this roomy, though. Just a guest room at my parents’ and no privacy to go with the daily dose of judgment about my life choices.”
“Now we get to the meat of it,” I murmured, and Harlow laughed under her breath.
She opened her mouth to say something, and her phone dinged. She pulled it out of the back pocket of her jeans and briefly closed her eyes. “Dammit.”
“Something wrong?”
When she opened her eyes again, the disappointment was stamped clear as day. “I might need to beg for a ride home. I’m being summoned,” she said lightly.
Now the disappointment was likely stamped on my face too. It wasn’t enough time. It was impossible to erase seventeen years in one visit, but hell if I didn’t want to try.
“I can take you.” Then I took a step closer. “But before we get in that car, tell me the most important thing I need to know about Harlow Keaton since we last talked.”
The change in her face, her eyes, was immediate. Then she tapped on the screen of her phone.
“I have a daughter,” she said, voice hushed and awed like we were in some centuries-old holy place, and she didn’t want to disturb the peace. “Sage. She’s … she’s everything. My whole world. And the only reason I came back here.”
“Show me,” I asked, my stomach tied in knots at the thought of her as a mother. That I’d missed all this.
Her teeth held down her lower lip while she flipped through her camera roll and then gave the phone over.
“Holy shit, she looks like you,” I whispered. Their smiles were identical, and the big dark eyes. Sage had reddish hair and freckles dotting the bridge of her nose, but her face was like looking into my past. I handed the phone back and held Harlow’s gaze. “She’s beautiful.”
Pink dusted her cheekbones and she swallowed. “That’s my most important thing. Nothing else in my life comes close.”
“All the best moms would say something like that.”
Her eyes brimmed with sudden tears, and she looked away, blowing out a slow breath. “I don’t feel like the best mom most days.”
I glanced at her empty ring finger. “No partner to go with that daughter of yours?”
She snorted. “No. He hardly hung out past the positive pregnancy test.” But then her face softened. “Just her and me. We’re a pretty good team, though.”
“Tell me about her in the car?” I asked.
Tell me everything,I wanted to say. Just stay and I’ll listen to you talk for the rest of the night. One story for every day we missed. I swallowed that down, reminding myself that we were both here now.
For the first time in seventeen years, we were both here.
Holy hell.
Harlow nodded. “Yeah, I can do that.”
I took the long way to her parents’ house, and if she noticed, she didn’t say anything. She told me about Sage, who sounded like a really fricken awesome kid. As I took another detour down a gently winding road, I happily listened until she fell into a thoughtful silence. Her gaze was heavy on the side of my face.
I knew what was coming next, and even though I didn’t want to talk about it, I still let her ask.
“When were you going to tell me your dad passed away?” she asked quietly.
Harlow had her knees tucked up against her chest as I drove, and suddenly, I was glad we weren’t facing each other. My throat was tight, and my heart was probably the thing doing it because it crawled up much higher in my body than it had any right to be.
When I felt like the grip loosened enough to let words out, my voice was a little rough at the edges.
“Would’ve gotten there eventually.” I glanced at her briefly, and her eyes were big and sad. “How long have you known?”
“My mom told me when I moved back for good,” she said. “She didn’t know much, just that he had cancer again. She said practically the whole town showed up for his memorial service.”
It was impossible to answer right away, so I simply nodded, and she respected it, carefully reaching over to lay her hand on mine where it was resting on the console.
“I’m so sorry, Ian.” She shook her head. “I wish I’d been here.”
I wish she had been too, but I kept that truth locked up tight because it led to a bigger conversation that she and I would still need to have. And there wasn’t enough time for that. Not when I took the last turn toward her parents’ house.
It looked exactly the same as in high school—the same faded light blue siding and black shutters, though the front door had been painted with a fresh coat of white. It was small but tidily kept, and in the single-stall garage was an old black truck with a few rust spots on the bumper.
“Like a time warp, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Yeah.” My voice was a little gruff, my emotions still a little unsteady after the mention of my dad. “Your daughter here? I’d love to meet her.”
Harlow’s eyes cut to mine. “Does that mean you’ve learned to be nice to strangers now?”
I gave her a dry look that had her exhaling a quiet laugh.
“Depends on the stranger,” I told her. “But I think I could manage for your kid.”
She swiped her hand over her forehead. “Phew. That’s a relief. I’d hate to beat you up if you were mean to her.”
I snorted. “I’d like to see you try.”
Harlow eyed my chest. “If you’re still ticklish, then I stand a chance.”
“That was one time, and you pinched me so fucking hard that I was bruised for a week, Harlow.” Her smile did strange things to my chest, likely because I hadn’t seen it in so damn long. “I need one thing before you get out of this truck.”
As she unhooked her seat belt, she raised a brow in question.
I leaned in slightly. “Your number.”
Harlow’s eyes held mine for a long moment, and then her smile spread until I saw her straight white teeth. “You know, if someone told me that a handsome lumberjack with questionable people skills would want my phone number, I might have moved back here sooner. I’ve been in a hell of a dry spell.”
I rolled my eyes. “Phone, please.”
She handed it over, and I typed in my number. As I watched, she saved it with a tiny smile on her face.
A text came through on my phone, with a GIF of a man with a flowing beard down to his navel.
“Cute,” I muttered. “I don’t even know how to send those stupid things.”
Harlow patted my arm. “I’ll show you.”
“Please don’t.”
Her mom appeared at the front door, the same slicked-back hair and pinched expression on her face. She’d never liked me, and from the looks of it, that hadn’t changed either.
“Nothing like getting a stare down that makes me feel like a teenager again,” I said. “Tell your parents I said hi.”
With a laugh, she hooked her laptop bag over her shoulder. “I’ll see you soon, right?”
I’d see her tomorrow if she’d let me.
Maybe she saw that answer in my eyes because her smile deepened. Then she leaned over and hugged me again. It was quick, and I hardly had time to set my arm around her lower back before she pulled away.
Before I could say another word, Harlow hopped out of the truck. Instead of backing up right away, I watched her walk up to the house and then sighed as she gave me a tiny wave over her shoulder before disappearing inside.
My head sank back on the seat rest. “Holy shit,” I muttered. “Did not see that coming.”
All of a sudden, being back in town didn’t seem quite so daunting.