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

Chapter 13

“Where the hell are you?” Cameron barked into the phone.

“Calm down,” I told him, turning the wheel of my truck as I pulled into the driveway at Dad and Sheila’s house. Sheila’s house, I reminded myself gently. “Had to bring Sage to school, and then I almost got into a fight with some coach guy, and now I’m grabbing something at the shop.”

My brother sighed wearily. “I don’t think I want to ask about the coach. I swear, between you and Greer, we need a whole new set of instruction manuals on how to be functioning adults when you get a child in your care.”

“What happened with Greer?”

He snorted. “I think she’s at Mom’s until tomorrow. Please ask her.”

“She’s not coming out to the site today?”

“No, she, Adaline, and Poppy are helping Mom organize all her craft stuff and albums on the shelves you built her. I saw all that crown molding and the backlighting by the way, you trying to gain son brownie points with all that extra shit?”

“Aren’t you the guy who added swings and skylights when you built her a chicken coop?”

Cameron let out a sharp exhale. “Fine, we’re even. Tell her I said hi if you go to the house.”

“Will do. I’ll be out there eventually,” I told him. “Let me know if you need anything from the shop.”

“Before I forget,” Cameron added, “Jax and I were thinking about grabbing a beer somewhere tonight. Want to join us?”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “I don’t know. Let me see how I feel after work.”

“Doing more face masks tonight? Please take a picture this time.”

I hung up on him with a grim smile and let myself into the shop.

After I’d grabbed the tool belt I’d forgotten, I left my truck by the shop and walked over to the main house. Greer’s car was in her usual spot in front of the house, Mom’s car was in the garage, and I paused a moment when I noticed Poppy’s vehicle where Dad used to park.

I clenched my jaw against a sharp stab of pain and jogged up the steps onto the wraparound front porch. This time, I couldn’t ignore the empty rocking chair, and I realized just how pleasant a distraction all this stuff with Harlow had been.

Maybe that’s why you invited her to stay with you,a voice whispered at the back of my mind, but I swatted it away because I damn well knew it wasn’t true. Distractions didn’t actually help you forget that you’d lost someone. No matter how big or loud they were, nothing was bigger or louder than the gaping hole left in your life. Not at first, at least.

The hole in our family’s life was a lot more apparent here, at this place, and it forced me to face that sticky coat of shame that I’d kept busy so that I didn’t notice it as much. I didn’t want to notice the rocking chair where he’d sit and have his morning coffee. Didn’t want to notice the brown recliner where he spent almost all his time the past couple of months. Didn’t want to notice the colorful crocheted blanket that was always covering his legs.

Because if I didn’t notice those things, I could ignore how much it fucking hurt that he was gone. It helped, though, walking into the house and hearing laughter bouncing through the room.

In the kitchen, Mom, Adaline, Poppy, and Greer were looking at some old photo albums, leaning over each other and wiping tears of laughter off their cheeks. At the table in the dining area, Greer’s stepdaughter, Olive—a shy, quiet little thing—kicked her legs as she colored in a coloring book, completely impervious to the antics in the kitchen.

She spotted me first, hopping off her chair and running up to me.

I crouched down. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school, young lady?”

Olive motioned me closer. “We have the day off,” she whispered next to my ear.

“Ahh. Lucky girl.” I tilted my head to the table. “What are you working on over there?” Instead of wrapping herself around my legs or reaching her arms up for a hug, she merely grabbed my hand and dragged me over to the table, then pointed at the coloring book with an expectant smile.

I crouched next to the table while she clambered back into her seat. Olive was drawing a garden—probably better than anything I could draw, if I was being honest—with a little orange cat sitting in front of the tall grass.

“Is that Clarence?” I asked. I’d heard all about the orange and white kitten she’d taken home from one of the barn cat litters last year.

She nodded. “He’s big now.”

“Maybe you can invite me over to meet him someday, huh?”

Her eyes shone, and she nodded again.

I ruffled her hair, then stood. The sight in the kitchen was a happy one as I hooked a stool out from the island separating the kitchen and the dining area. Mom’s head was bent down as she kept laughing, Greer, Adaline, and Poppy all with the same long, deep brown hair and wide smiles.

Adaline extricated herself from the tangle of arms and came around to give me a hug. “When did you get here?” I asked.

She tweaked my beard. “Drove down from Seattle last night. Poppy said Mom was having a rough day.”

Adaline lived in Seattle with her fiancé, Emmett, in some giant house they’d just finished building. Their wedding was finally in the works now that their house was done, and I took a second to study her face.

“You look really happy, kid,” I said.

She nudged me with her shoulder. “I am. I miss Dad, of course, and I’ll miss him even more when I walk down the aisle in the spring, but I feel like he was so at peace at the end. It’s hard for me to feel any other way but that.”

Slowly, I nodded. Dad was at peace. He was ready. He’d said his goodbyes to all his kids, to Sheila, and we knew with absolute certainty that he loved us and had lived well. Still, thinking about him made me feel like I was pressing my hands on a big, gaping wound that still wasn’t getting smaller. A desperate attempt to close that wasn’t quite ready to heal.

I wrapped an arm around her shoulder as we walked into the kitchen, and Greer shoved the album toward me so I could see what had them in hysterics.

“Good Lord,” I muttered. “Who let us go out in public like that?”

“Mom,” all three girls answered in tandem.

Sheila laughed, her eyes shining with a different kind of tears than I’d seen on her recently, and it was nice.

“I forgot about the matching clothes phase,” I said. “We look like the von Trapp family in their curtain outfits.”

Poppy bent over, hands braced on her knees. “Look at your face, Ian. You were so mad.”

“I was wearing red plaid overalls. Of course I was mad.”

Sheila tutted her tongue. “You all looked adorable, and you can never change my mind. It was so fun those first couple of years to put you kids in coordinating outfits. You should’ve seen the looks we got when we walked through town.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet people stared,” Greer said under her breath.

“At least I didn’t have a bowl cut,” I told her.

She leveled a glare in my direction, and I smirked.

“Those haircuts were very in style at the time,” Sheila said primly.

The girls all traded a look.

Sheila tugged the album back and clutched it to her chest. “I might blow that picture up and frame it, just to teach you kids a lesson.”

“Please don’t,” I begged.

She laughed. “I won’t. Now … what are you doing here, young man? I wasn’t expecting to see you today. Are you here to give me permission to stop by your house again?”

I gave her a look. “Not yet. Give them some more time before y’all descend on them like a pack of nosy wolves.”

Greer scoffed. “That’s blatantly misogynistic because I’d argue the men in this family are way nosier, but okay.” She turned away and started watching something Poppy had on her phone.

Sheila smiled, patting my hand consolingly. “What is it, Ian?”

Too many sisters were in the kitchen for this, but I’d come this far. After blowing out a slow breath, I said, “I came for some advice.”

Any talking, chattering, and laughing stopped immediately, and the vacuum of silence following my words was acute.

I slicked my tongue over my teeth while my three sisters and my stepmom gaped in my direction.

Poppy’s hand fluttered to her chest. “You … what?”

“I’ve asked for advice before,” I said, only a touch defensively.

“When?” Greer asked.

“Ten years ago,” Adaline answered. “When he was trying to decide about moving to London.”

“No, he didn’t even ask about that,” Sheila piped in. “He just told us he was doing it.”

Poppy held up a hand. “Didn’t he ask someone’s advice when he put in an offer on Ivy’s house?”

“Nope,” they all said in unison.

I exhaled. “You done yet?”

Sheila tapped her chin. “Maybe there was once in high school.”

I stood. “Forget it. I’m leaving.”

With a good-natured laugh, she came around the kitchen counter and wrapped her arm around my waist. “We’re just teasing. I’d love to help you with whatever it is that’s bothering you.”

Greer batted her eyelashes. “And we’d love to use it against you someday.”

I flipped her a middle finger, and Sheila sighed. “All right, you two. Enough.”

Adaline sat down again and rested her chin on her hands. “Ignore Greer. We’re very good at advice.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t ignore Greer because she’s the most qualified to give advice outside of Mom,” I said, to which the sister in question made a victorious fist pump into the air. I rolled my eyes.

Mom’s gaze sharpened. “Well, the only thing Greer and I have in common, that your other sisters don’t, is that we have kids under our care who aren’t ours biologically.”

I clenched my molars together and nodded.

“Oooh,” Greer said. “It’s about Harlow’s daughter. She’s ten, right?”

Again, I nodded.

“What happened?” Mom asked.

“Before I tell you, Cameron said I needed to ask Greer about what happened at Olive’s school when you first married Beckett.”

Greer grimaced, then glanced back at where Olive was still happily coloring. “Wasn’t my best moment, I’ll tell you that.”

“Olive, did Greer get in trouble at your school?” I asked.

The little girl’s head popped up, and she nodded, eyes widening. “She said something bad to a bully, and his parents were really mad.”

Poppy snorted.

“How did I not hear this story?” Adaline asked.

“You live in Seattle,” Greer said. She folded her hands in front of her. “It was nothing. I just … had a minor bout with my temper when a little kid was being mean to Olive and I asked him a simple question.” She shrugged one shoulder lightly. “That’s all.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What was the question?”

The smile she gave me was placid, smooth, and peaceful, and completely fucking terrifying because I knew my sister. “I asked him if he knew what happened if you took a nail gun to someone’s balls. It was a rhetorical question. Not my fault if he heard it as a threat.”

As I stared her down, I slicked my tongue over my teeth. Adaline lost it first, laughing behind the hand covering her mouth.

“That sounds like something you’d say to a bully,” I told her.

She sniffed. “There is nothing wrong with being protective. Especially when that person can’t defend themselves.”

“Agreed.” I folded my arms over my chest. “How’d your husband feel about that?”

Now her smile held a wicked edge. “That answer is not fit for young ears,” she said smoothly. “But he was just fine with it.”

I didn’t think that would be Harlow’s response. But we weren’t married. And the likelihood that I’d overstepped was much greater than what Greer had done for Olive.

“I see.” I sighed. “I had something similar, but … it was a coach at the school.”

“Oooh,” they all said.

As I recapped what happened, all four of them listened intently, varying sounds of frustration and encouragement when they heard what Sage was trying to accomplish.

“So what’s your worry?” Greer asked when I was done.

“That I crossed a major line. I’m not her stepdad. Harlow’s not my girlfriend. She’s … my friend.”

Greer hummed. “I think you’re okay. It wasn’t malicious, and you did what anyone would’ve done in the moment. But you should tell her about it before Sage does. It might look worse if she hears about it from the coach or the school. Especially if the coach is pissed that you stepped in.”

I snorted. “He’s not going to be pissed. The dude got what he wanted because I roped in four professional football players for their indoor flag football practice next week.”

Adaline smiled. “I could see if Emmett can come with a couple of Wolves players too.”

“I appreciate it, but I think the guys coming with Parker is enough.” I nodded at Greer. “Pretty sure your husband is one of them.”

She grinned. “Naturally. He knows better than to say no to something that could help someone in our family.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Is Sage part of our family now?”

“Isn’t she?” my sister asked lightly. “You and Harlow were always attached at the hip. And now look at what you’re doing. No one in this family is capable of sitting idle when someone we love needs help. That makes her, and her daughter, part of the group.”

My cheeks felt hot. “I’m not in love with her.”

Greer’s eyes sharpened knowingly. “I didn’t say you were. Interesting if that’s what you heard, though,” she mused.

“Knock it off, Greer. Don’t you dare play matchmaker on this one. It’s Harlow.”

Adaline and Poppy watched our exchange with interest, and Mom was conspicuously not watching our exchange with interest—instead, she was staring down at the counter at her folded hands, her thumb moving her wedding ring back and forth.

“Indeed it is,” she said smoothly. “Your best friend, the only person you ever really talked to or trusted because you sure didn’t talk to any of us. You know who you went to for advice growing up? Her. I’m not trying to play matchmaker, Ian, but the fact that she’s here now, and it’s as easy as breathing for you to play roommate and best friend and be the protective guy with her daughter, I wouldn’t have to work very hard to build up her role in your life. She is your person, and she always has been.”

I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t. When my dad married Sheila, I felt slightly outside in our own family. I went from being the oldest of three to the second in a long line of kids who all needed something. They found it in each other. I already had what I needed in Harlow, and it created firm lines and roles in our family that had never really changed. Even now, we still had parts to play in how our new reality unfurled in the wake of losing Dad. And mine seemed, like always, to be tied to Harlow.

Slowly, I stood, because the change of direction in this conversation had my head feeling a little off-kilter, my thoughts fuzzy and disoriented. It’s not what I came for, and the need to defend myself, defend my friendship with Harlow, wouldn’t help anything. Knowing them, it would only make it worse.

“Thanks for your advice,” I told them. “I’ll try to talk to her before Sage gets home.”

Mom was watching me with worry clear on her face. Greer held my gaze, daring me to challenge what she’d said. Adaline and Poppy traded a look that I didn’t really want to decipher.

I gave them each a hug, then ruffled Olive’s hair as I passed.

When I got back into the truck, I thought about swinging by my house to talk to her, but I didn’t want to interrupt on the off chance she was writing.

Even after so long without her, was Harlow still my person?

As I sat in the silence, I thought about what that meant and how I might have defined it if someone asked. It was the one person you could be yourself with and drop any pretense or filter. It was the one person you could be vulnerable with and not worry about what they might see when you were. It was trust and intimacy in knowing the other person’s thoughts without sharing a single word.

In that way, yes, Harlow was my person. The years of my life when she wasn’t in it, I’d never filled her spot.

But, to me, your one person was also the one you wanted to create a family with. The one you kissed because you couldn’t not kiss them. That you shared dark nights and dirty words with. I’d never found that either. In London, I’d only tried a couple of times, and each attempt left me feeling just a little emptier, and even more sure that I’d never marry.

Had I ever imagined Harlow as that one person?

As I drove away, I caught my own gaze in the rearview mirror, refusing to answer that question, even in the privacy of my own mind.