Chapter 6
A few things became very clear upon the Keaton girls relocating to Ian Wilder’s home.
First, the water pressure in the upstairs bathroom alone made it the best life choice I’d made in at least two years. The moment that blissfully hard spray hit my always-tense shoulders, I moaned so loudly that I was scared Ian would overhear and think I was enjoying myself a bit too much.
I mean, I was enjoying myself, but not the self-induced orgasm kind of enjoyment.
Second, Sage and I got along roughly seventy-five percent better when we weren’t sharing a bedroom. I loved my daughter. Would stand down a moving train for her, take a bullet, all the beastly things that mothers would face in a heartbeat for their offspring. But holy shit, sharing a bed with her was enough to test even the strongest maternal bonds.
She was a violent sleeper, that girl was. At least four times a night, I was woken up by an appendage smacking me in the face or stomach or chest. It reminded me of when she was little. She always wanted to sleep with me when she was sick, and I could never say no.
No matter how exhausted I’d be the following morning, it was worth it to be able to lay next to her and watch the soft rise and fall of her chest. But when she wasn’t sick? Momma needed her space to get some good sleep.
Not only did we get along better, but she was happier, too. She immediately begged for some posters for the walls, and when I asked Ian, he gave me this look like I was crazy for asking.
That was the third thing I’d realized. He was so fucking unflappable he didn’t even seem real.
“Why would I say no to some posters on the wall?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Remember when I put those glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling, and my mom freaked out because the green shit stained the paint?”
He shook his head, exhaling a short laugh. “Yeah, I was the one who had to help you paint over the stains. Of course I remember.” Then he gave me a raised-eyebrow glance. “Is Sage going to put that crap on my bedroom ceiling?”
I rolled my eyes. “Not that I’m aware of.”
“Then she can do whatever she wants.”
I crossed my arms. “Whatever she wants? What if she wants sparkly pink paint? Or sparkly black paint?”
Because he was on his way out the door for work, Ian hooked his work jacket under his arm and pinned me with an inscrutable look. Gawd, he was so good at those.
“I don’t care if she wants black or pink or sparkles,” he said. “It’s just paint. Can change it anytime, no matter how long you stay.”
Then he was gone, like he wasn’t saying all the perfect things.
Had I always been so suspicious when he did that? Hell, had I even noticed that he’d done it?
The last thing made very clear in the passage of our first week living with Ian was that he was doing everything in his power to stay the hell out of our way, and I didn’t know whether it was because he thought we wanted that, or if it was because he wanted that.
He was out the door before sunrise most mornings, whether he was at the shop or on a jobsite. The shop, where he apparently built all the amazing tables and chairs, was next door on his mom’s property.
Tim and Sheila Wilder owned fifteen acres of gorgeous Oregon wooded land, and it had been well-used by that entire family. The main cabin sat nestled in a clearing of fir trees, along with a barn and the shop used as the headquarters for Wilder Homes. Cameron Wilder and his girlfriend, Ivy, had a home tucked a few acres away from where Sheila still lived, and there was a small guesthouse where Ian’s siblings stayed when they cycled in and out of town.
For my entire childhood, the Wilder family felt like a fairy tale. Watching from the edges of Ian’s life, I couldn’t imagine anything better than what they’d created out of a second chance for both Tim and Sheila.
Being a Wilder, to me, meant acceptance and welcome. It meant love and a landing place. Maybe Ian had always taken that a little bit for granted simply because he had it. When your landing place came tied up with strings and disappointment and I told you so, it didn’t feel like such a soft, friendly place to settle.
But Ian’s house had that same quality for Sage and me that his family’s home had always had for everyone else.
My bedroom set—a sturdy wooden thing with the yellowish stain heralding it a product of the ‘90s—came courtesy of Sheila Wilder, who’d cleaned out one of the home’s bedrooms to make a craft room, and the white-framed twin bed Sage was sleeping in was from Ian’s sister Greer—an old bed frame that her stepdaughter Olive wasn’t using anymore.
During the day, when Ian was at work and Sage was at school, I did whatever I could to make our spaces look like a home. And with Ian’s permission, I’d found some fuzzy blankets and a few throw pillows for the couch, and some large prints to hang on the blank spots on the walls.
My favorite was a painting done by a local artist—a big, bold, colorful rendering of the Three Sisters mountain range. Instead of browns and blacks and greens and whites to keep it realistic, it looked like the mountain peaks were on fire with bold oranges and reds and pinks and blues, the puffy clouds edged with vivid sunset colors. I always texted him before I purchased anything, and he always said yes. Thank goodness, because the man’s decorating skills were sparse.
Slowly, it was feeling more like a home.
My word count? Zero.
But holy shit, were our closets organized, and that was still being productive, no matter what anyone said.
Every once in a while, I’d get a thread of a story idea, pause in whatever I was doing and try to tug on it to see what unraveled, but the moment I sat down at my computer, it was like a giant iron wall slammed shut between my brain and my fingers.
I tried dictating into a stupid little speaker while I wandered Ian’s property, and only managed to feel like a tool when I realized audio narration was nowhere in my future. My last attempt went a little something like, “The night sky was ink black and thick with silence umm, when she … uh … oh shit, where did that branch come from, ouch.”
A bit of heavy breathing punctuated the silence, a painful reminder that I should spend some more time on the treadmill when a walk on flat ground had me out of breath. Then I tripped on a rock, said a couple more curse words, and scraped my hand on the tree that caught my fall.
Dictation, as it turned out, wasn’t for me.
I binged a couple of true crime documentaries, hoping that would jar something loose, to no avail.
Bea, the author coach, emailed me to check in, and I accidentally on purpose forgot to reply to her, because it only served as a reminder of my continued failure. Somewhere in the middle of that, I stopped at my parents’ one day when I was out running errands, and from his favorite threadbare recliner in the family room, my dad told me he could still get me in at the mill with a single phone call.
He meant well, and maybe that was the hardest part of all. As far back as I could remember, my dad came home smelling like fresh-cut wood and sawdust, his back aching and his hands sore. There was a stoic strength to him that was intimidating as a little girl because even though he probably could’ve worked his way up to management or found a different, less physically taxing job somewhere else, he was the guy who stayed and did the hard thing because it’s what he knew and it was what he was good at.
He didn’t smile much, and he was never the dad who held us when we cried, but he’d worked himself to the bone—sometimes literally—to keep a roof over our head and food on the table, even if there wasn’t much extra.
The day that happened, the not-so-subtle reminder that I should be doing something else, I had one overwhelming thought—I can’t wait to talk to Ian about this when he gets home. Except he’d already started not being home very much. And when we did cross paths, it was in the kitchen or he’d walk into the house just as Sage and I were getting ready for bed.
For a few days after the paint conversation, I paid attention to his patterns with increasing interest. Not alarm yet, I knew the man well enough to know that he wanted us there. He never would’ve asked us if he didn’t. No, there was something else.
He rarely ate breakfast, just a cup of black coffee in the morning before he left for work.
After our first night, Ian hadn’t been home for dinner the rest of the week. But the fridge stayed stocked, and it was like a food fairy dropped off some loot because I’d never actually seen him walk in the door with groceries.
He showered in the evenings because the house was old enough that the sound of his shower turning on echoed upstairs. Sage and I both liked to shower in the mornings, and I wondered if he could hear the water running in his room too, and if he noticed the difference in our routines.
He wore approximately four colors, and four colors only. Black, white, dark brown and gray. Honestly, the man was allergic to color and pattern. Solid T-shirts, solid sweatshirts, and solid Henleys.
Sage hardly ever saw him, and if she noticed, she hadn’t mentioned it.
But I was noticing. And because I noticed, I couldn’t help but press. Just a little. This was one of the times to push, I could feel it screaming in my gut. And since words weren’t magically pouring from my head, I closed my laptop and grabbed my phone.
Me: I could’ve sworn you also lived here.
Ian: I do. Just been busy with work, and Sheila wanted some cabinets built into her new craft room. That’s been my evenings this whole week.
He attached a picture of some spectacular built-ins, the crop of the picture off center, so only half of Sheila’s smiling face showed. My smile hung around for a lot longer than it should have.
Me: You must have gained a lot of son brownie points with those.
Ian: Indeed. Eventually, I’ll edge out Cameron. He’s been banking them for years.
Me: Will you be around for dinner tonight? I can make something.
Ian: Don’t wait for me. I can heat something up later.
“Hmm.” I tapped a finger against my chin and tucked my phone away. That night, Sage and I ate some spaghetti and garlic bread, and I made sure to set the leftovers at the front of the fridge so that he wouldn’t miss them.
I did some out-of-genre reading—a vivid, lush fantasy about dragons and faes and civil war—while Sage did her homework. Thank goodness she was born with a brain that was naturally good at math because fifth grade was about where she was starting to lose my ability to help her.
While she changed into her pajamas, I wiped down the kitchen counters and dimmed the under-cabinet lights, watching the windows at the front of the house, just in case Ian decided to come home before I went upstairs.
But the driveway stayed dark, and when Sage was ready to be tucked in, I turned off all the lights except the ones in the kitchen and walked upstairs with a teeny tiny sigh.
I walked past my bedroom, the first and smaller of the two, and found Sage sitting on the side of her bed and straightening the books on her nightstand. The room could easily fit a queen-size bed, but that would be an upgrade that would have to wait, depending on how long we stayed there.
“Ready for bed, sleepyhead?”
With a nod, she slid under the covers of the pale blue comforter she’d picked at the store. “Ian’s like, never here,” she said.
I smoothed out some flyaway hairs on the top of her head and smiled. “He’s been busy. I wasn’t even sure you’d noticed.”
She gave me a look like I was crazy. “It’s his house. How could I not notice?”
“Fair enough.” I leaned down to kiss her forehead. She smelled like her shampoo, and I breathed it in when she gave me a tight squeeze. “You’re my favorite thing in the world, you know that?”
“You haven’t experienced everything in the world. How could you know I’m your favorite?”
I leaned back and tweaked her nose. “Trust me. I know.”
“I’m still going to Aunt Rachel’s after school tomorrow, right?”
I nodded. “I’ll pick you up before five.”
“You’ll get words tomorrow. I know it.” Then she yawned. “Good night, Mom. I love you.”
Slowly, I pulled the covers up near her chin and fought the desperate urge to climb in next to her like I used to when she was little, just to watch her fall asleep. “Love you too, kid.”
I sat there for a few more minutes until she cracked her eyes open. “Mom. You’re staring.”
“Sorry, sorry.”
I crept out of the room, and when I glanced back over my shoulder, her eyes were already closed again. The little blue star lamp on her nightstand cast a pretty, soft glow over the room, and I stood in the doorway while she turned onto her side and tucked her hands under her pillow.
I pulled her door shut quietly and then paused before going into my room, just in case I heard anything downstairs, but the house was still. You’d think that a quiet house would be a playground for a writer’s best thinking, but I was proof that wasn’t the case.
First, I’d lived in New York for too damn long. There was a soundtrack to that city that never really abated, even in the middle of the night. And I was still getting used to the absolute stillness of living in the country again.
I lay awake for a good long while and never heard Ian come in. So either he slept elsewhere—my brain refused to go there, thank you very much—or he had ninja skills in creeping in quietly. The following day, he was gone before I walked blearily into the kitchen to start Sage’s breakfast, but there was coffee in the pot and his favorite mug in the sink.
My thumb tapped against the edge of the counter while I stared at that mug. Without thinking about it too much, I picked it up. It was big, with an oversized handle to fit his oversized hands comfortably. The white ceramic coating was flecked with dark blue specks, and the Union Jack flag was wrapped around the entirety of the mug.
In my harder weeks in New York, I would sit on a bench in Central Park and imagine showing up in London to visit Ian. Imagined him showing up in New York. My body reacted to the memory, and a dull pinch in my chest had me thrown back to that phase of my life.
Pregnant and alone and wondering what the hell I was going to do with a tiny little person in my tiny little apartment. Those were the moments I missed Ian most. Missed his calm and steady presence, the way he listened, the way we balanced each other out.
Throat working on a tight swallow, I gripped that mug and closed my eyes and remembered crying as I put together Sage’s crib because I couldn’t figure out the directions.
Ian would be better at this, I thought at the time, pressing the heels of my hand into my eye sockets and trying to calm my breathing. And it took everything in me not to see if he had the same number. If he used his old email address. The thing that stopped me was how sure I was in what he’d do if he knew the position I was in.
If he saw me like this. With swollen ankles and a big belly and a tendency to skip important parts of the assembly directions.
He’d wrap himself in knots to take care of me, and sometimes being a good friend to someone was knowing when not to let them do that. It was knowing that I could do this myself, even if it was hard.
Well … the crib I didn’t do myself. An eight-month-pregnant woman riding the hormonal roller coaster had limits. My super, a kind man in his sixties, came over the next day with his red metal toolbox and finished it for me. When Sage outgrew it, I gave it to him so that his granddaughter had a place to sleep when she visited.
Blinking out of the memory, I set the London mug back down in the sink and fished out my own from the cupboard.
I got Sage ready for school and out the door; the bus driver had only forgotten her once since we moved. As I watched the yellow vehicle drive away, I curled my arms around my middle and walked slowly back to the house.
The black siding was sharp and clean against the backdrop of the trees, with solid wood posts holding up the generous front porch and the same warm-stain-color shutters framing all the windows. The big barn tucked back behind the house was in the same color scheme, and I wondered what he stored in there. The door remained closed all week, and I’d never seen him coming and going.
It was a home fit for a growing family, for spreading out and enjoying the best part of living in the Pacific Northwest. Beautiful scenery and space to breathe, the crisp, fragrant air something I’d forgotten about living on a tiny island crammed with millions of people. But I breathed it in now, and along with it, filled my lungs with a healthy dose of guilt and frustration that we seemed to have wedged Ian out of this beautiful new place.
“One more day,” I said as I walked back into the house. “I give you one more day, Ian Wilder, and then I’m hunting you down.”
That one day came and went—complete with a math homework breakdown from Sage, and zero words for me—with only the briefest sighting of him climbing into his work truck the next morning. I stood in the window facing out to the driveway, with my robe wrapped around me. He caught my eye and gave a little wave, and folded his big body into the truck.
White shirt today. My eyes narrowed as he drove away.
Busy, my ass. The man was avoiding us.
Once Sage was on the bus, I took a shower and slicked my hair into a low bun because sometimes doing a blow-dry was just more effort than I was willing to make. A coat of mascara and a dab of cream blush was all I managed for makeup, and I dressed in my work uniform (a stunning rotation of black leggings and black joggers and black cotton shorts paired with a slogan T-shirt or cotton tank). When I glanced into my closet, I realized with a grimace that I probably couldn’t judge Ian’s lack of variety in his clothing choices.
I reached for a soft blue v-neck shirt and tugged it on over my leggings and pretended to write until lunchtime. All I had to show for those hours were some scribbled notes, a few balled-up pieces of paper, and a blank document. With a groan, I stood from the kitchen table and stretched my arms over my head. A dull ache in my shoulders meant I had been sitting in a bad position, so I took a few minutes to do the stretches for my neck and back that I knew would help.
When I finished those, I ate a quick bowl of cereal and snatched the keys to the car he left behind on the days he was using the work truck. Sheila’s cabin was quiet when I drove past, and my eyes narrowed when I realized that none of his family had stopped by that first week either.
This was getting curiouser and curiouser.
When I approached the main shop, my shoulders sank when no big white truck was in sight even though the lights were on, and I could hear the loud buzz of machinery. I thought about not going in for a moment, but maybe whoever was working would know whether he was coming back soon.
I let out a slow breath as I got out of the car and knocked gently before walking in. The space was huge, the entire back wall filled with wood stacked on shelves in varying shapes and sizes. There were huge saws and dangerous-looking equipment along the other wall, and the hum of something loud filled the building.
At a table, with safety goggles on and headphones covering his ears, was Ian. He hadn’t seen me, and I stood back to watch as he used an innocuous-looking piece of equipment to shave a pattern into a huge piece of wood as it spun at a dizzying speed. Wood flew everywhere, coating the front of the work apron he wore and the arms of his long-sleeved shirt.
The pattern emerged slowly, something beautiful and curved, and it was so easy to move my gaze from the piece he was working on to the focused expression on his face.
“Almost done,” he said, and I almost jumped because he hadn’t so much as blinked when I walked in, let alone given away that he’d seen me.
I hadn’t practiced what I was going to say to him if I’d actually found him, so I sifted through all my thoughts while he finished up what he was doing. I could ease into it. Small talk first. Maybe ask him how his week had been going. What he was working on. How he got into doing this work in the first place.
Then the hum of the machine wound down, and he eased the piece off the machine. Maybe the leg of a chair? Ian set it down and then pulled the apron off, wiping the sawdust off his shirt before tugging the safety glasses off his face.
At the sight of me, he looked … guarded.
Ian Wilder had never looked guarded with me in his entire life. He was guarded with everyone else but never me. I didn’t quite know what to do with that.
“What’s up? Everyone okay?”
Ease into it, Harlow. Small talk. Questions.
“Why are you avoiding us?”
Or … I could do that. My eyes slammed shut, and he exhaled a quiet chuckle at my expression.
When I peeled my eyes open, he watched me as he approached where I stood. When had it ever been hard for me to read his expression? Never. But it was now.
The ease from our first couple of days seemed to be in short supply, and that kicked off a spark of worry that I didn’t like very much.
“You been stewing on that for a while?” he asked. The low, steady tone to his voice eased some of the worry locking my chest tight, and I didn’t like that either. It screamed of a codependency, and I didn’t want Ian and I to fall back into the patterns that separated us to begin with.
“Maybe.”
His eyes tracked over my face, and he leaned his weight on one of the work tables. “I wanted to give you and Sage space,” he said. “Make sure you were feeling comfortable without feeling like someone was watching you.”
I couldn’t deny that there was a certain amount of truth to his words, but I caught the slightest flicker in his eyes as he said it.
Briefly, I chewed on my bottom lip and leaned back on the table behind me, mirroring his position. “I read this book once,” I told him. “About a profiler with the FBI. He talked about how he could always tell when someone was lying. People who aren’t being honest will make these little facial expressions. Almost like they can’t help themselves. It’s the briefest flash—a micro-expression, he called it—of guilt or regret that they can’t control, no matter what words are coming out of their mouth.”
Ian’s jaw hardened, and a tiny piece of his expression shuttered.
I took a deep breath when he didn’t say anything. “If you regret asking us?—”
He interrupted immediately. “I don’t,” he said, firm and unyielding. “I don’t regret it.”
“Then where the hell have you been? I miss my friend. I just got you back, and after one night, you’re ghosting your own damn house because we’re there.”
Ian swiped a hand over his mouth, staring at the floor for a moment before he swung his expression back up. “I did want to give you two space,” he said. “But … someone got in my head. Said that asking you to move in with me was the quickest way to wreck our friendship because it’s not something we’ve ever done before.” He clenched his jaw again, and the muscle bunched underneath the dark, trimmed beard. “That’s the last thing I want. Figured it was easier to just back off a bit until we both get our footing.”
For a long moment, I stared at him, trying to figure out a way to say what I was thinking without being too harsh.
“You idiot.” That was what I came up with.
His eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?”
“You ignore me to save our friendship?”
“I wasn’t ignoring you,” he argued. “I was…” He paused, clearly flustered and setting his hands on his hips. “Giving you breathing room.”
Maybe my eye roll was a bit much, based on the answering look he gave me, but honestly. This is why society would crumble without women, besides the whole procreation bit. Men would destroy everything, left to their own devices.
“Let me guess,” I said, “it was a man who gave you this shitty advice.”
Based on the immediate grimace, I knew I was right. I shook my head.
Ian spread his arms out. “Okay, fine, he’s the last person I should listen to. But I don’t … I didn’t want to find out the hard way that he was right.”
The earnest way he said it took all the wind out of my sails. Wouldn’t I feel the same way if someone had cautioned me? Maybe I didn’t allow conversation about it because deep down, I was worried someone would’ve said the same to me.
My parents always tiptoed around the topic of Ian. They’d never understood my friendship with him. And my sister and I weren’t close enough for her to venture an opinion. We survived on surface level, a relationship about as deep as a cookie sheet, and that was fine with both of us.
“We won’t let that happen,” I told him.
“No?”
“No. We’re both too damn stubborn.”
His stern mouth softened into a reluctant smile. “At least one of us is.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “I know you’re not referring to me.”
“I’d never.”
With a relieved smile on my face, I shook my head. “What are you working on?”
He started to answer, but the door swung open, and his brother Cameron walked in with a tall, dark-haired guy I didn’t recognize. They both froze when they saw me.
Ian’s brother was taller and broader than the last time I saw him, short golden-brown hair and chiseled good looks that the entire family was blessed with. Of the two men, he recovered first, a friendly smile splitting his face.
“Harlow,” Cameron said. “Good to see you.”
“Hey, Cameron. You too.” I gestured to Ian. “Just stopping by to ask him something, but I’ll get out of your way.”
Ian cleared his throat pointedly. “Jax there is the one who gave me the shit advice to ignore you.”
The guy in question widened his eyes. “That’s not what I said.” His gaze swung to me. “That’s not what I said.”
I quirked an eyebrow. “Let me guess, you’re single.”
Cameron snorted. “Terminally.”
Jax sighed. “I didn’t … I didn’t tell him to ignore you.”
I waved that off. “It’s fine. I’m incapable of letting something go when it comes to this guy, so we’re good now.” I skirted past them, pausing when I came face-to-face with Jax. “Just maybe stop giving people advice. You’re not very good at it.”
I patted him on the shoulder, and Cameron coughed to cover his laughter.
When I glanced back at Ian, he was grinning, the white flash of his teeth dissipating the remaining tension held in my chest.
“See you later?” I asked.
Ian’s smile softened. “Yeah, you will.”
“No wonder you two get along,” the guy next to Cameron mumbled. “She’s the female version of you.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said breezily.
Ian’s laughter made my chest warm and light as I left the shop.