Chapter 21
I didn’t notice her coming into the shop at first because the piece of wood on the table in front of me was taking all my attention. I’d finally worked the lamp base into the shape I wanted on the lathe and smoothed it out to finish it.
When I was almost done, there was movement by the door—a flash of dark hair and a familiar NYU sweatshirt—and I kept my attention down because the last thing I needed was to screw it up right at the end.
But the draw was too much. She’d only come to the shop twice when I was working, so she probably needed something or had something weighing on her.
Briefly, I glanced up to weigh the look on her face, but she was watching my hands. Her brows were bent in concentration, her eyes bright with interest, and when she caught me staring, I gestured her to come closer with a tilt of my head.
Harlow tucked her hands into the pocket of her sweatshirt as she rounded the main work table. The loud whirring of the tools ebbed away when I flipped the off switch, and she smiled as I pulled the piece off the machine.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Mango wood. I like the natural coloring for things like this.” Slowly, I turned the piece in my hand, studying all the striations of the surface. “Eventually, it’ll be a lamp.” I tapped my finger along the top. “Just need to cut through here to the bottom, work the wiring through, add a linen shade. One of the few ideas I had for the store that Ivy hadn’t thought of herself.” I studied her face again. “Practice run long tonight?”
“No,” she said carefully. “Coach Scott wanted to talk to me about something. He’s a nice guy.”
“Seems like it.” Oh look. My voice sounded normal, good for me.
Harlow kept her focus on the lathe. “He asked me out to dinner to talk about girls’ flag football. I just have to decide whether that’s a good idea to go or not.”
Some invisible being dropped a million bricks on my chest, a hard, unyielding pressure that I struggled to breathe through, and the slick, oily feeling of jealousy clawed up my throat.
“Dinner, huh?”
“Yup.” She laughed quietly. “I’m probably reading too much into it.”
Somehow, impossibly, I answered with an even voice. “You’re probably not. A man asks a woman out to dinner when he wants her.”
Her eyes snapped to mine, her chest heaving on a deep breath.
It took every shred of self-discipline I possessed, but I turned my eyes back to the lamp and kept my hands gentle while I studied it.
Harlow reached out, and I handed it over to her. She turned it over, studying the curved lines of the bottom with a slow shake of her head.
“You come up with all these designs yourself?” she asked.
Right. No belaboring the possibility with the tall guy with the wimpy fucking handshake and questionable listening skills. I let out a steadying breath.
“Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m making until the shape appears on the machine. I just … pick a tool and start.”
“Amazing,” she murmured.
My cheeks felt warm, and I took it back, setting it down where she’d leaned her hip against the edge of the table. “Gotta do something with my hands, or I’ll lose it.”
“I know. You used to fidget in school all the time. Couldn’t ever sit still unless you were messing with something.”
As I tugged my safety glasses off, my mouth hooked into a smile. “I didn’t even notice until you pointed it out.”
She ran a fingertip along the top edge of a stack of crown molding left on the table. “Remember when I gave you those paper clips? I felt like the smartest person in the world, like I’d single-handedly fixed it.”
I didn’t answer. I simply kept my eyes on her face.
We were in third grade, maybe. And she’d saved up her chore money to buy sparkly pens for school and found these matching paper clips that she said made her feel like a grown-up.
When our teacher repeatedly chastised me for shredding paper, spinning pencils on the desk, or whatever I found to keep my hands busy, Harlow started handing me her paper clips, one at a time. I’d fold them into shapes and work them with my hands under the desk, and I stopped getting into trouble.
They were pink plastic, and I’d been teased relentlessly by the other dipshit boys in our class for carrying them around in my pocket. I guess I was lost in the memory too, because I blinked, and she had noticed my silence. Her eyes locked with mine for a moment, then she edged herself onto the table, a safe distance from where I was working, her legs swinging forward slowly.
I reached for the next chunk of wood to be done, much smaller than the last one because of the simpler design, and handed her an extra set of glasses, which she dutifully set onto her face. A few stray pieces of hair fell around her cheeks, and I tore my eyes away.
The machinery sound filled the space again, and she sat perfectly still while I used the spindle gouge to cut the edge of the wood piece into a concave curve. I held the tool lightly, turning it in my hand as wood shavings covered my fingers and the front of my apron. Any closer and Harlow might have wood shavings on her clothes, but it didn’t seem to bother her, because she stayed right where she was as I finished.
As the lathe slowed and silence filled the shop again, Harlow was still staring at the surface of the table, and I had to fight the strangest impulse to dig into her thoughts. Pry through the things that brought her over here, because there had to be something bothering her with the way she sat so thoughtfully.
“Did you achieve the thing you set out to when you moved away?” she asked. “Or do you still feel like you’re working on it?”
The direction had me sucking in a slightly surprised breath, and I didn’t answer right away, giving her question proper weight. With careful hands, I picked up the two pieces I’d just cut and moved them to their proper spot on the shelves along the wall.
“We talking business or personal?” I asked.
“Either, I suppose.”
It felt too precarious to talk to Harlow about any of the things I still wished for in my personal life. How they’d changed quite rapidly in the past month. How the loss of my father and her reappearance in my life had priorities shifting far quicker than I could have anticipated. The things I pictured about that future when my filter was gone. And why all of it scared the absolute shit out of me for reasons that I refused to dig into.
Verbalizing even the smallest part of that felt like walking out onto a frozen lake, despite knowing there was a slight crack somewhere in the surface. One wrong step, and everything would splinter. But take the right steps, and on the other side was safety.
And right now, the right steps felt like staying far, far away from the personal side of that question. Away from sex and love and intimacy and the future. Away from thoughts of marriage and children someday. Of a partner who felt like home.
When I turned back around, there was an expectant look on her face, those dark eyes of hers thoughtful and a little sad. The recognition of that sadness had me breathing through the urge to fix that too. Wipe it away by any means necessary. Hadn’t that always been my issue with her? I couldn’t be around her and not want to make everything better, even if I should let her do it herself.
I set my hands on the table and stared at it for another minute.
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “When I applied for the job in London, I don’t think I was going there for any big life purpose. It was different. And it was … space from what I’d always known. If I’m being truthful, both of those things were the goal.”
“And your family understood?”
My eyebrows rose slowly. “I’m not sure they did. I was the only one who moved far, my siblings always wanted to stay close. But understanding is different from support, isn’t it?”
She conceded that with a small hum. “I suppose.”
“My parents always supported me, even if they didn’t dig into the why.” I swallowed around the thick lump of emotion clogging my throat. It was still so fucking hard to talk about them because any stories we told now, he was only part of them if it was revisiting the past. And what a good past he’d given us.
It was what made them magic. With all of us kids. We were so different. Wanting different things, different talents and passions. But they never got too rattled when we chased them. They were just there for us, in whatever way we needed. And talking about that now, it was more than I could handle.
It had been years since I’d thought about how he’d reacted when I left, and for a few moments, I worried I would break down in the wood shop.
“The day I told my dad and Sheila I was moving to London for a job, he just hugged me,” I said, voice more than a little rough. “He asked if I was excited, and when I said yes, he just squeezed me even tighter and said, ‘Then that’s all that matters, son. It’s just a plane ride away.’”
Her eyes were glossy when I risked a glance at her. “That sounds like him.”
“They visited a few times,” I told her. “Christmastime was his favorite, though. We’d walk for miles and miles to look at all the lights and the decorations.” It felt like someone pressed a great, heavy weight on my chest, and I took a deep breath to try to make it disappear, but the lingering memory of my dad was a bit too fresh for that.
“You’re not ready to talk about him yet, are you?” she asked quietly, her eyes unerring on mine. They were still soft and kind and understanding.
My voice was rough when I answered, and that was nothing compared to the tearing I felt in my chest. “No. I’m not.”
Harlow dropped her chin to her chest and let out a slow breath. “You and your siblings are so damn lucky to have them,” she whispered. “But I guess anyone welcomed into your home kinda has them too, huh?”
I smiled a little. “Yeah. This isn’t why you came in here, though.” Gently, I nudged her thigh with the back of my hand. “Talk to me, Keaton.”
Her dimple peeked out when she grinned. “Would you buy it if I said I was curious?”
“Not for a second.”
At that, she laughed under her breath. “Didn’t think so.” Then she was quiet again for a few moments. “Just thinking about something my dad said to me today at Sage’s practice. He came to ask if I was coming over on Sunday for my birthday, and I said I would. But then he got all … insightful. About parents and kids, moms and daughters. And understanding someone else’s dreams,” she added quietly. “I spend so much of my time trying to figure out why my characters do what they do. And not once have I ever tried to pick apart why she’s so disappointed in me. Feels weird to have someone shed light on it, I guess.”
Ahh. I tapped my finger on the table while I waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t. Sometimes it was like that with her. She needed to let those thoughts untangle in their own time.
“You’ve achieved some amazing things, Harlow. Do you need your parents, need her, to understand them, to be at peace?”
“No,” she answered immediately. Her eyes slowly rose back to mine again, they were clearer, brighter, some of that sadness gone with her instant answer. “No, I don’t. But I do wish I felt more comfortable around them. When I’m with them, it doesn’t feel like they’re my family, you know. More like, we’ve become a mutual obligation, and there’s no way to tell what the other side really thinks about it. Because her disapproval of me is so loud, even when they don’t say much.”
“About your writing?”
“Everything, really. That I moved in the first place. My writing. That I can’t just get a normal job to support Sage. That I moved in with you instead of staying with them.” She smiled, but that did hold an edge of bittersweet to it. “I’m almost thirty-five, and I’ve never been married. The one guy who I had a serious relationship with left months before his daughter was born, and I think, to them, all of that adds up to disappointment, you know? Even if they love Sage, which they do. They’ve never treated her like less, and I think that’s the only reason I was able to come back.”
“You shouldn’t be a disappointment because he’s the asshole who left,” I said steadily. “He didn’t want to be a father? Maybe he should’ve been a little bit more careful.”
My steady tone didn’t fool her, though, not for a second. She studied my face with a thoughtful look in her eyes. “I can only imagine the things you’d want to say to him.”
After I unclenched my jaw, I let my eyebrows climb briefly on my forehead. “Not much, really.”
She snorted. “Seriously?”
This was a step on the ice I was willing to take. “Seriously. He’s missing out on an amazing kid. And you’re back in no small part because he’s not around. I think that about takes the wind out of any of my anger, yeah?”
After a beat of silence, her lip trembled, and a quick tear fell down her cheek, but she dashed it away. “Oh fuck you for always saying the perfect thing. It’s not even fair.”
I laughed under my breath. “Sorry?”
“No, you’re not.”
“You’re right, I’m not.” I nudged her leg again. “I’m not trying to say the perfect thing, Harlow. I’m just saying what I think. It’s his loss. My gain. Your parents’ gain too, if they’d unclench long enough to realize it.”
She slapped her hand over her mouth, but it didn’t hide the loud burst of laughter.
“You know it’s true.”
“I suppose.” She sighed, dropping her hand into her lap. “I’m happy with the life I’ve built for me and Sage. Her disappointment doesn’t change that. But it still makes me question, I guess. Because it’s not like there aren’t still things I want. Things I … yearn for.”
I wanted to ask her what that yearning was like. What was on the other side of such a powerful word.
Where could I apply that word in my own life? Yearning tugged on a string wrapped tight under your ribs, hooked directly onto your heart. Something you couldn’t quite reach on your own, something you wanted so desperately that you felt it deeper than your blood. It was the kind of want settled in the marrow of your bones, painful to extract and intrinsic to who you were.
I didn’t ask that, though.
That was the wrong step, and I knew it. So I asked something else instead.
“Makes you question what?”
Her smile was sad. “Everything.”
“That why you came over here? Because they’re making you feel like shit about what you want from life?”
Her eyes were unwavering. Searching, searching, searching for something.
What was she looking for?
“No.” Her chest rose and fell on a deep breath. “I came because you’re always the person I want to be around when life feels unsteady.”
There was no way for her to know what that did to me, or how the responsibility of that was the easiest weight I’d ever carried in my life. I’d shoulder it with ease, no matter what else I had to juggle in the meantime. My heart expanded dangerously behind my ribs, and I ignored it, because I wanted to give her all my attention, all my focus.
There was only one reason her happiness would matter this much to me. Why I’d face down everything that came her way.
Not because I was the prince or the knight in her story—but because I was the dragon wrapping itself around the thing it loved most. Breathing fire and providing armor and ripping down every stronghold with the snap of jaws and fueled by the fierce way she’d embedded herself into me.
“That okay?” she whispered.
With my gaze fixed on hers, my thoughts racing a million miles a minute, all I could manage was a nod, and even though a blaring warning siren went off in the back of my head, I slid my hand over the top of where hers sat on the table. My fingers curled around Harlow’s, her pinky edging around mine. We both stared down at where they tangled.
My heart raced from that single touch, and I couldn’t find it in me to drop the big, black wall back down into place.
When I finally dragged my gaze away from our hands, she was smiling. A secret, pleased little smile too.
“What?” I asked.
“Holding hands,” she said quietly, plucking hers out from underneath mine so she could study my fingers with a shrewd look. “I just had an idea. Do you have to work tomorrow night?”
With a slight shake of my head, I watched as she eased herself off the table, swiping at the sawdust on the back of her leggings. “Free as a bird.”
“We’re taking Sage somewhere fun after school. It’s exactly what we need right now.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Care to elaborate where that is?”
“Nope. I get a great thrill from that look of apprehension on your face.”
I sighed slowly through my nose. Her eyes gleamed, and fuck if I didn’t feel them like a slice to my skin.
“You’ll love it,” she promised.