Chapter 4
Harlow: Just making sure I didn’t hallucinate your offer because it’s not too late to take it back.
Me: Do you feel like your subconscious would manufacture that?
Harlow: Good point. If I were hallucinating anything, it would be a winning Powerball ticket and a kindly housekeeper who bakes cookies and does my laundry.
Harlow: Which reminds me, you’re probably not offering laundry services with this gig, are you?
Me: My goodwill only extends so far.
Harlow: Worth asking. If you said yes, I wouldn’t give Sage a vote.
Me: Cookies are negotiable, though. Sheila can’t help herself when she knows someone new is in her immediate vicinity.
Harlow: OMG, I didn’t even think about that. I’m ninety percent there.
Me: Why didn’t you come over last night? I had to eat all the pizza by myself.
Harlow: What a hardship. I didn’t tell you to buy pizza, so that’s on you, buddy.
Harlow: I needed a little time to process it. Overthinker, remember?
Me: Right. Did we come to any conclusions?
Harlow: Ugh. Well, dinner was awkward, so that was a few points in your favor. My mom is frustrated with me, as per usual. I swear, I try to stay out of her way, Sage and I cleaned up all the dinner dishes, and she still sat in her chair and watched us like we were going to blow up her kitchen if I loaded the dishwasher incorrectly.
Harlow: I’m telling you, I’ve been an inconvenience since the day I was born, Ian. I’m just glad they don’t treat Sage that way because I wouldn’t have lasted twenty-four hours here.
Harlow: Where’d you go?
Me: Sorry, had to walk away for a second. You’re not an inconvenience to me, Keaton. And if they make you feel that way, it says more about them than it does about you.
The replies stopped for a few minutes after that, and I was glad for it. There was a special sort of anger buried deep under the surface of my skin, something only reserved for Harlow’s parents. I was six years old the first time I felt it, and throughout the years, I’d witnessed more than my fair share of them, wishing she’d fit into whatever definition they held for the right way to live. The right way to support yourself. The right roles for a wife and mother.
Maybe it was part of my unforgiving nature or the skepticism that I always wielded like a weapon, but even all these years later, I could never understand how they made her feel. Had always made her feel.
While I stood in the kitchen and finished my cereal, I kept a close eye on my phone screen, but it seemed like we’d found a natural stopping point in our morning texts. I finished getting ready for work, raking my hair back and winding a tie around it to stay anchored at the back of my head. In the mirror, I angled my head, studying the beard covering my jaw.
Maybe I’d find time to sneak into the barber shop downtown, trim up the beard, and take a couple of inches off my hair. Enough that I could still tie it back, but just … clean it up a little. Not for any particular reason, of course, but my entire family had been giving me shit about needing a haircut since the moment I arrived.
My phone rang, and my heart jumped, then settled back into place when I saw my brother’s name instead of Harlow’s.
“What’s up?” I said after punching the button to answer his call.
“Need you in the shop this week,” Cameron said. The sounds of a humming jobsite were already loud in the background. Looks like he was trying to beat me this time, which had me smiling. “Ivy is going to meet you over there in a little bit. She’s got some ideas for the store and wants to talk to you about floor samples.”
Cameron’s girlfriend was the new family mogul, which meant a different sort of busy for all of us. Cameron and my stepsister Greer had been running the family construction business for a solid decade already but lacked the time to bump that business up a level.
Enter Ivy Lynch, who had all the subtlety of a semitruck when she set her mind to something. Ivy and I had formed a begrudging truce after not getting off on the right foot when she’d first moved to town. But with her giant inheritance and somewhat frightening business acumen, she was transforming an empty spot of land on the outskirts of downtown Sisters into a storefront for Wilder Homes.
One meeting as a family was all it took, where she handed us individual binders with profit/loss projections and explained how the responsibilities would be distributed, especially in the first couple of years of getting it up and running.
The moment she showed us the branding ideas, with one name possibility of T. Wilder and Co. or The Wilder House, Sheila started crying and gave an enthusiastic yes.
Ivy was the money and the connections, Poppy would manage the store once it opened, and my sister Greer and I would be the ones filling the store. Home decor, artwork, design services, and—thanks to me—custom-built furniture. I did it for years in London, so I was happy to stick close to what I loved.
“Fine with me. As long as I have something to do.” I set my empty coffee mug in the dishwasher and knocked the door shut with a press of my hip. “I’ll head over there now.”
Cameron paused. “Poppy told me about bringing Harlow to your house.”
“Of course she did.” Immediately, I could feel the defensive prickles along the back of my neck, because my brother never let it drop in high school that Harlow and I were just friends. We’d come to more than one shoving match because he was a dick and couldn’t believe that we’d never … anything.
A memory of my dad turning on the hose in the back of the house and spraying us both down when the shoving got a bit too heated for his liking hit me like a two-by-four to the back of my head. Never yelled at us. Didn’t punish us. Just sprayed us with ice-cold fucking water, smiled when we finally stopped, turned off the water, and walked away.
There was no one to separate us now, though, and that had my chin jutting out defiantly even though he couldn’t see me.
“You okay?”
“Of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?” I said tersely. “Everyone ask you that when you see a friend from high school?”
“No,” he drawled. “Because I never had any friends like her. But okay, we can pretend it’s not a big deal.”
“Cameron, I mean this with utmost sincerity.” I stopped and made sure he was listening. “Fuck off. It’s nothing. She was my friend then, and she’s my friend now.”
And miracle of miracles, my brother dropped it. We discussed the plan for the week, and I tossed the phone onto the counter when we hung up.
I should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy, though. Later at the shop, I stood next to the desk while Ivy sketched out some head-scratching designs that I tried to make sense of.
“And where are these going again?”
She made a puzzling gesture with her hand like I could see the invisible picture in front of us. “Lining the wall. I want people to be able to browse styles of table bases and chair backs but not have it take up space in the store itself.” She stood, holding up the paper, but her chicken scratches made me tilt my head in confusion. “See?”
“Is that a dead body?” I asked.
She sighed dramatically. “You just need to make all the table bases but not affix them to tables, Ian.”
“Ahh.” I walked over to an existing order and picked up the base. “So you want this, but sliced in half, so we can mount it to the wall?”
“Yes,” she said with a smile. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“Probably harder than it needed to be,” I mumbled.
Ivy smacked my stomach. “Don’t be a dick.”
It went unsaid between us, but I’d sort of been a dick to Ivy since the day she showed up in town. I’d never quite been able to explain it, but whenever someone new came into the orbit of this family, I felt like one of those junkyard dogs that met any unfamiliar face with their hackles raised.
Ivy had been oddly similar, unwilling to relax around our family until she’d been here for a bit, and my stubborn-ass brother didn’t back down. Now they were in love, blah blah blah, and I’d buried the hatchet with the intimidating blond woman currently bossing me around. We weren’t close, but I respected her. Liked her, even. This was why I kept it to myself when I made an offer on the house she was selling. I refused to guilt her into cutting me a deal if a better offer was on the table.
Turned out, there wasn’t. So when I walked into the closing, her jaw dropped open, and the satisfaction I felt at shocking Ivy warmed the cockles of my cold, distrustful heart. Another few months of having to deal with each other, and maybe Ivy and I might even be friends.
Idly, I flipped through a couple of her sketch ideas for the store. It would be a while before it was ready, but even I had to admit, I was getting excited about this new phase of our family business.
“And you want these now?” I asked. “I didn’t think we’d have a building to fill for at least eight months.”
She stared down at her giant stack of binders, flipping pages and scrawling notes in the margins with her fancy pen. “Website,” she said in an offhand tone. “I want that up and running a couple of months before the storefront opens. Then we can focus on building a social media presence.” Her attention moved from the papers to me, and the evil glint in her eye had me shifting. “Just wait until I make you guys do TikToks.”
“Absolutely fucking not,” I said evenly.
She merely smiled. “We’ll see. Oh, and I can’t wait to meet your friend. Poppy told me all about her. Cameron said he’s curious too. I mean, you’re like, nice to her, right? This is something I have to see.”
My eyes narrowed. “If anyone comes near my house tonight…”
Ivy’s lips split into a wide grin. “Tonight, huh?”
Why were my cheeks hot? This was ridiculous. I set the base down and pinned her with my fiercest glare. “Ivy. I’m glad we’re getting along. Don’t blow it by sending your boyfriend over to appease his morbid curiosity about my friendship. He always used to ride my ass about it, and I don’t particularly feel like dealing with that again.”
She whistled. “Touchy. We’ll stay away, I promise.” As she gathered her binders into her arms, her expression was a bit too innocent. Before she left the shop, Ivy paused and gave me a meaningful look. “Can’t say the same about your mom, though.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and reevaluated all the life choices that brought me here.
“Nosy fucking family,” I muttered. “No one cared what I did when I lived across an ocean.”
But the buzz of my phone with the appearance of another text from Harlow had me rescinding that frustration.
Harlow: Okay. We’ll be there around five thirty. Sage will likely eat more than you, just be prepared.
Me: Congratulations on completing your overthinking.
Harlow: Thank you. I’ll take riotous applause and wild praise later.
And with a lingering smile, I slid my safety goggles back on and finished the rest of my workday with an undeniable sense of anticipation rumbling under my skin.
At five twenty-five, I walked in the door with two boxes of hot pizza balanced on one arm and sawdust still stuck in my beard.
Occupational hazard.
The pizza went onto the counter, and I did a quick splash of water onto my face in the kitchen sink, then tugged my shirt up to my nose for a smell test. There was no time for a shower, but hopefully, Harlow’s daughter didn’t walk in and wrinkle her nose because I smelled like a construction zone.
The quiet knock on the door had me blowing out a quick breath, and I snagged a piece of paper towel to wipe off my face. But when I approached, the sight of my mom holding a plate covered in aluminum foil had me swallowing back many curse words.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved Sheila.
She stepped into our life when I wasn’t even a teenager yet and tucked three boys who were missing their mom right under her wing. She had the biggest, most welcoming heart of anyone I’d met in my life, and she was the absolute last person I wanted to see at the moment.
Based on the look on her face when I swung the door open, she knew it too.
“Now don’t be mad,” she said. “I’m just dropping it off.”
Wordlessly, I gestured her into the house and took the plate, then dropped a kiss on her cheek. “I could never be mad at you.”
She snorted. “Liar. Do you remember yourself in high school?”
I decided to ignore that. “What did you bring us?”
“Some chocolate mint cookies. Had a recipe I wanted to try.” She glanced around the house, shaking her head a little when she saw the lack of furniture. “Lord, Ian, you’re having a girl over with it like this?”
I set the cookies on the counter. “I’m having Harlow over. It’s different.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Don’t get that tone,” I told her. “Her daughter is coming too.”
Mom’s face lit up. “Is she? How old?”
A voice came from the still-open doorway. “Ten going on twenty-one. Or that’s what my mom says, at least.”
Harlow had her hands on Sage’s skinny shoulders, and the girl in question met my gaze unflinchingly. I thought she might be nervous, or shy, but … she was Harlow’s daughter, so I didn’t know why I expected anything other than complete fearlessness.
Harlow’s smile when she saw my mom was the kind of smile you stamped somewhere deep in your memory.
“Sheila,” she said, shifting around her daughter to step straight into my mom’s tight hug.
“Oh, honey, you grew into such a beautiful woman,” my mom said, pulling back slightly to cup Harlow’s face, much like she’d done to me only a couple of nights earlier. “I can’t tell you how nice it is to see you again.”
God, had it only been a few days since she was dropped back into my life?
Harlow leaned back in, hugging my mom again. “I was sorry to hear about Tim,” she said quietly. “He was so kind to me whenever I was at your house. Both of you were.”
Both of their eyes were shining when they broke apart.
“Thank you, dear. House has seemed awfully quiet without him.” A tear slid down my mom’s cheek, and she dashed at it quickly. “No one to argue with me or ask me to make him food ten times a day. Thankfully, I have all these kids to keep me busy.”
Sage watched them with a curious expression on her face. My mom noticed and held out her hand.
“And who are you, young lady?”
Sage straightened, her long legs and lanky build just like her mom’s had been at that age. “Sage Keaton, ma’am. My mom told me on the way here that you guys are the nicest family she’s ever met, and I have to be on my best behavior.”
When my mom laughed with delight, Harlow and I locked eyes, and her impish smile tightened a screw hidden under my ribs.
“Was I included in the nicest you’ve ever met?” I asked Harlow.
Before she could answer, Sage’s gaze moved from my mom to me, and her study was far more in-depth than I expected out of a ten-year-old. “No, she said you’re only nice to people you trust.”
With my eyebrows raised, I crossed my arms over my chest. “Can’t argue with that, I suppose.”
Sage nodded. “We’ll get along just fine. I’m the same way.” She looked into the family room. “Do you mind if I put on SportsCenter?”
“Uh, no. Go ahead. Remote’s on the couch.”
She sprawled out on the couch, making herself at home while she scrolled the channels. When the show came on, she settled back, with a determined look.
Harlow and my mom spoke quietly in the kitchen, and I tossed a couple of pieces of pizza on a plate and walked it toward the couch. When I held it out to Sage, she blinked in surprise.
“For me?”
“Only if you want it. Your mom said you’d eat as much as me, so now I have to see if she’s right.”
Sage sat up, taking the plate with a quiet thank you.
From the corner of my eye, I watched her, a little unsure of what I was supposed to talk about with this kid who might be living with me. I’d never really known how to deal with little kids. What to say. What to ask them. But this wasn’t just any kid. She was half Harlow. Half someone else I’d never met. One of the hundreds of stories I had yet to hear.
“SportsCenter, huh?” Internally, I rolled my eyes because that was the best I could come up with? Might as well ask her if she liked school.
“Yeah,” she said around a mouthful of pepperoni pizza. “I’m a Jets fan, but Portland isn’t all bad. Wanted to catch the pregame for the Thursday night matchup. Their offense is great, but if they don’t fix the defensive line, they’re screwed.” She shook her head. “The blocking against the run is pathetic.”
I smothered a grin. My brother played tight end with the Portland Voyagers, but I didn’t want to seem like I was showing off.
“So you like football,” I said.
She nodded seriously. “I love it. I mean, it’s not the only thing I love. I like makeup and clothes and stuff too. And sports. Women can be complicated like that,” she said. “Or at least that’s what my mom says.”
I smothered my smile under the guise of wiping my napkin over my mouth. “Ain’t that the truth,” I muttered. “You ever been to a game?”
Sage finished chewing a bite of pizza. “Just one. My mom’s agent gave us tickets to a Jets–Patriots game last year for Christmas, and it was the best day of my entire life,” she answered with wide, serious eyes.
My mom came and tapped me on the shoulder. “I’m going to leave you three to your dinner,” she said.
“I told her she was welcome to stay,” Harlow added, curling an arm around my mom’s back.
Mom waved off the suggestion with a friendly smile. “I’ve got Poppy waiting. She was going to cook for me tonight for a change.”
“Ahh, so she does pull her weight at home,” I mused. “How nice.”
My mom rolled her eyes. “Never changes, Harlow. It never changes.”
Her answering smile was wide, her dimple peeking out to the side of her lips. “There’s something comforting about that, isn’t there?”
“I suppose,” Mom answered. “Sage, it was nice to meet you, honey. You’re always welcome at my home, okay?”
Sage nodded, her first glimpse of shyness popping through. “Nice to meet you too, ma’am.”
With my mom gone, I followed Harlow into the kitchen, and we got our own plates of food. As she stood in the kitchen, she stared at the dining table she’d admired the other night.
“You made that, didn’t you?” she asked. “Just admit it.”
I didn’t answer, just held her gaze.
Harlow shook her head. “Unbelievable. Do you know how unfair it is that you look like an actual lumberjack, and you make these gorgeous things out of hunks of wood?”
Around my pizza, I smiled. “That’s unfair?”
“Yes. For the rest of the male species, it is. It’s like the most primitive part of my brain lights up and goes … oooh, this one can build you important things, stick close to him.”
Her dark hair was piled on the top of her head tonight, and a few stray pieces escaped as she talked. It was bizarre that she looked the same yet somehow looked different.
Someone new. But not new.
She still spoke her mind and didn’t filter her thoughts around me, but things like that—viewing me as a provider—never would’ve crossed her mind before.
“Does your primitive brain want you to move in here?” I asked, conscious of my volume so Sage didn’t hear.
Harlow finished her first piece of pizza and set down her plate before folding her arms over the simple black shirt she wore. Her eyes were so incredibly direct. There was no escaping the intense way she stared me down.
“Are you doing that thing again where you’re trying to save me, even to your own detriment?”
The accusation stung, but fuck if there wasn’t truth behind why she asked.
I’d always done that. It’s why we stopped talking all those years ago. She and I both knew that I would’ve given up an incredible opportunity just to be here if she needed me.
Our lives would’ve turned out so differently. If Harlow had more of my impulsive side, she might have packed her bags and come home. I might have stayed right where I was, content to stay in this place that never quite felt right without her.
So I answered as honestly as possible. “I don’t know. Would it be so bad if I was?”
“If it hurts you in the process, yes.” Her gaze was unflinching. “I won’t be responsible for that. I’m the only one who can take ownership of my choices, and if I can’t write, then getting another job is what I’ll do to provide for my daughter. She didn’t ask to be born, you know? I’ll do what I need to do to take care of her.”
“How would this take me down, Harlow?” I set my plate down and matched her pose, crossing my arms and leaning a hip against the counter. “How would it hurt me to let you guys stay here?”
“I don’t know.” She sighed, then she rubbed her forehead. “I just don’t want to be in the way of you living your life.”
I stepped closer, and she inhaled sharply through her nose. Then I ducked down to make sure she didn’t look away. “I’m offering this because you’re my friend. And I have the space. If your kid wants to school me on football every day after dinner, I’m good with that. If you two want to hide upstairs and keep to yourselves while I’m home, I’m good with that too. Don’t stay somewhere that makes you feel like you’re taking up too much space just by being yourself. That’s a really quick way to feel like shit, Harlow.”
The graceful line of her throat worked on a swallow. “When did you get such a way with words, Ian Wilder?” she whispered.
My mouth hooked up in a grin. “My friend’s a writer. She taught me a thing or two.”
Harlow laughed, and a little bit of tension unlocked in my chest. Then she blew out a slow breath.
“I’ll talk to Sage on the drive home,” she said under her breath. “Make sure she’s okay with this.”
The girl in question hopped off the couch and joined us in the kitchen. “Ooh, can I have one of those cookies?”
“Go ahead,” I told her, stepping back a little from her mom.
Sage snagged one from the top and moaned after one bite. “Mom, you’ve gotta try one of these.”
“One?” Harlow asked. “Half that plate is mine, kid.”
Sage laughed, then returned to the couch.
Because the plate was uncovered, Harlow plucked half a cookie from the edge and took a delicate bite. Her eyes fluttered closed, and she moaned deep in her throat.
“Holy shit,” she whispered.
“Should I leave you alone with the cookie?” I asked dryly.
She took another bite. “Maybe.” Then she shook her head. “Honestly, I’d say yes because I know your mom will make things like this on a weekly basis. You should’ve led with the baked goods.”
Before she could finish it, I snagged the rest of the cookie out of her hand and popped it in my mouth.
“Hey,” she said. “That was mine.”
I finished the cookie with a moan that echoed hers, then licked at my bottom lip. “Just making sure your presence here isn’t to my detriment.”
Harlow rolled her eyes. “Ass.”
I hooked an arm around her shoulders. “Is that a yes?”
In the pause before she answered, I found myself holding my breath. I wanted her to say yes. No matter how complicated that might be or what it might look like to anyone else, I wanted my best friend around because I missed her.
Her eyes darted up to mine, her cheekbones a little pink and her smile a lot mischievous. “You might regret it, but yeah, I think it’s a yes.”