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

Chapter 22

“Oh Em Gee,” Sage breathed. “Is it abandoned? Is it safe?”

“Good question,” I muttered, eyeing Harlow as she wiggled excitedly in the passenger seat. “You bring us to a homicide scene, Keaton?”

She smacked my arm.

“Ouch.”

“I could’ve pinched you. Don’t even pretend you’re not ticklish. I know you are.” When I conceded that with a slight eye roll, she grinned. “Okay, it needs a new paint job, but it’s a skating rink. It’s supposed to be a nostalgic throwback.”

Only one other car was in the parking lot, which didn’t help the ghost-town appearance of the short, squatty, concrete-block building. The layers of bricks were painted in colors that were probably bright at one time—red and blue and orange and white—but over time, they’d chipped and faded with the sun, and the purple metal door leading to the inside hadn’t fared much better.

“It’s … something. Don’t know if nostalgic is the right word. This isn’t where you and I used to come skating, is it?”

Harlow shook her head. “That place closed.”

“This is the new one?” I asked.

At my tone, she smacked me in the chest.

Sage unhooked her seat belt and leaned forward, resting her elbows on the center console. “And why are we here?”

“Because this is exactly the kind of thing kids did for fun when Ian and I were your age. The skating parties at school were my favorite thing in the entire year.”

I gave her a quick look. “You kept up on your roller-skating skills?”

She snorted. “No. But how hard can it be?”

Turns out, it was a lot harder than Harlow remembered. We were the only three people on the large, gleaming wood rink, and thankfully, the inside was much nicer than the outside.

Sage was wobbly at first, clutching to the side of the wall as she shuffled on the four bright orange wheels of the tan suede skates. The man working the counter had a seventies and eighties mix playing, the pulsing lights throwing bright, glittering lights along the walls to Abba and a Whitney Houston song that I vividly remembered Sheila listening to on repeat when she first married my dad. I found myself humming along as I did a lap around the rink and caught back up with Sage.

“I’m gonna fall,” she cried.

“Not that far if you do,” I said, skating backward in front of her.

She glared. “How are you so good?”

“I played hockey in high school and was in a league when I lived in London.” As I answered this question, we passed the section of the rink where the half-wall stopped, and Harlow sat on a wide circular seat, lacing up her skates. I spun my body so I could skate forward, catching Harlow’s expression as I did. “Don’t you roll your eyes at me,” I called over my shoulder. “This was your idea.”

“Show-off,” she yelled.

Cutting through the middle of the rink, I paused in front of her. “You forget how to tie your laces? Or are you just trying to set a record for the slowest entry to the rink?”

The answer to that lay in the dangerous narrowing of her eyes. With a laugh, I backed away and slowed when I approached Sage again.

Her tongue was tucked between her teeth as she concentrated, and she cut me a quick, nervous glance when I nudged her arm.

“Try squatting your butt down a little more. Yeah, like that. Now push your feet out a little as you try to glide forward,” I told her. Then I slowed, circling next to her and exaggerating the movement of my feet in the skates.

Sage loosened her grip on the wall, her eyes flicking back and forth from the empty stretch of rink in front of her down to my feet. As I’d instructed, she bent her knees slightly, lowering her center of gravity. It helped, and within just a few short pushes of her skates, she started getting more comfortable.

By the time the next song started, she’d let go of the wall, an excited grin on her face.

“How do you turn backward like that?” she asked, yelling a bit over the music. The guy working smiled as we skated past and fiddled with the mix, easing into some newer songs, and Sage started nodding her head along to the beat.

“Lots of practice, kid.”

“I hate that answer,” she grumbled. “Adults always say that when they don’t want to show you something.”

I laughed, then did a quick pivot so that I was skating backward in front of her. Her eyes never moved from my feet, and then she sighed. “Okay, fine, I’ll keep practicing.”

The music was thumping bass now, and with a look over my shoulder, I caught a glimpse of Harlow shuffling forward with her hand tight on the half-wall. Her legs looked longer with the skates tight to her feet, and I paused to watch her while her concentration was elsewhere. She was holding her legs so stiff, and as Sage whipped past her, she waved with her free hand.

“Come on, Mom,” Sage yelled. “You can do it!”

Harlow’s teeth were locked on her bottom lip, and when she tried to let go of the wall, her arm flailed out so wide, she almost fell backward. Chuckling under my breath, I skated slowly over toward her, easing to a stop a few feet away.

“Why do I remember this being a lot easier?” she asked, eyes darting up to mine before she shuffled forward a few feet.

“We’re old now.”

She snorted. “No shit.” Then she pinned me with an accusatory glare. “Yet, look at you. When did you turn into Wayne fucking Gretzky?”

“I still played when I lived in London.” I pursed my lips when she put one arm straight out, keeping the edge of her fingers on the wall as we inched—literally moved inches at a time—around the rink. “What’s happening with your arms there, sparky? You look like a plane that’s about to land.”

“Oh fuck off,” she breathed on a laugh. “I do not.”

“You sort of do.”

Her eyes were big and slightly terrified, but slowly, very, very slowly, she relaxed her stance, and tried to mimic the way my feet were moving. We made a lap, and I turned around her slowly, coming to her side. Sage lapped us a few times, gaining speed each time.

“Great, I’m with two show-offs,” Harlow mumbled. Then she held up her hand. “I know, I know, it was my idea.”

“She’s having fun though,” I said.

Harlow smiled, casting a quick glance at her daughter as she skated up to the counter and asked the worker for a couple of specific songs. “She is.”

“You have to admit, it’s a lot better when it’s not full of people.”

She snorted. “You think everything’s better when it’s not full of people.”

“Can’t argue with that.” Carefully, I watched her knees bend a bit, and her arms eventually relaxed, her fingers brushing against mine as we made another lap. “What made you want to come do this?”

“Figured Sage would get a kick out of it. The way we used to entertain ourselves a million years ago.”

It was a good enough answer. But I found myself studying her profile. “That’s it?”

She didn’t answer right away. “Being back here is kinda weird, isn’t it?”

“A little.”

“It feels new and different, but not,” she said, accompanied by a slight tilt of her head. “I guess it’s got me thinking about how it used to be. Simple things that made us happy.”

Harlow wobbled a little, her hands jutting out the side again. I set a hand on her lower back, the heat of her skin seeping through the thin layer of the very clingy, long-sleeve white top.

“Back when you had balance?” I asked.

She laughed loudly. “Yeah, like that.”

Sage whizzed past, and the whoosh of air had Harlow emitting a short squeak of surprise. Her hand swung, and her upper body pitched forward. I pushed forward and snatched her elbow before she fell.

Her body was stiff as a board as she tried to gain her bearings, her fingers clutched at my chest as she wobbled. Her breath was coming in short pants, but when the song changed, the bass and guitar shifting to something I hadn’t heard in a million years, I smiled.

“If I fall and break my hip to this song, I’ll never recover,” she said, grasping at my hand when I offered it to her. We stood there for a few more seconds, and eventually, she locked her eyes on mine.

“Breathe,” I told her quietly. “You’ve got it. You just need to relax a little bit.”

Harlow nodded. Weaving my fingers through hers, I gently moved in front of her so I could hold her hands while she eased back into her slow progress on the rink.

“Can I check out the arcade part?” Sage yelled from the side.

“I’d give her a thumbs-up, but I can’t let go of your hands,” Harlow said.

With a laugh, I looked over at Sage and nodded.

We skated like that for a little, and slowly, Harlow relaxed again, but she didn’t release my hands. I didn’t let go of hers. Her fingers were linked so firmly around mine that when I pulled her around the curve a little faster than we’d been moving, she gripped me so tight, I winced.

She loosened her grip. Sort of. “Sorry. I don’t know if this makes it better or worse,” she admitted.

“It’s fine. Blood flow to my appendages is highly overrated.”

When Harlow laughed, her shoulders dropped an inch, and she held her hands more loosely in mine, but still, I didn’t let go.

“Didn’t we skate to this song once?” I asked.

Her face transformed with the mention of a simple memory. “Once or twice,” she answered with a smile.

Harlow’s eyes fluttered shut and she let me pull her a little closer before I shifted my grip on her hand to just the one between us, so that I could skate next to her again.

It was simple, wasn’t it? Two friends skating to a song she used to love, probably still did. She’d made me listen to it a million times or more, and somehow like this, in a dark room with the occasional colorful burst of lights playing across her face, it distilled the moment into something a little more meaningful.

It fit us too, I realized. I’d always done everything for her, and even now, that hadn’t changed. I could look over at her now, clock the way she’d grown and changed in ways that I could see. Ways that I couldn’t. But what I couldn’t quantify just yet were the days and weeks and months of memories that I had missed.

Now it was my hand that tightened on hers. It was my breath that started coming just a little faster, and my legs that stiffened as I started pulling on threads in my mind that I had no right to pull on.

What if, what if, what if….

My throat was bone-dry as I tried to swallow, tried to quash the quick rise of fear at how good it felt to hold her hand, at how right it was to be here with her, and how deeply fucked I would be if I lost her again.

Harlow shifted sideways, her arm brushing against mine, and because I was distracted, her shift caused the slightest stumble in the movement of my skates.

When I started pitching forward, I whirled, overcorrecting the motion of my body, and as I did, Harlow lost her balance too. My hand immediately snaked around her waist, fingers digging into her hips, and she squeaked as we started to topple, her hand clutching at my arm.

I angled so that we aimed toward the wall instead of the ground, my hand shooting out to brace next to her head so she didn’t slam into it. But her feet still whipped out from underneath her, and her back slammed into it all the same, her legs sliding straight between mine as I held us up. My arm was still tight around her waist, her hands anchored around the back of my arms as she caught her breath, staring wide-eyed up into my face.

The way I held her made me want to shake my head and clear my vision because even if this was an accident, even if it mirrored what happened before the bar, it was viscerally, brutally different.

Because this wasn’t cloaked in darkness. My senses weren’t drilled down to one or two. Everything about this was heightened. Amplified. The music provided a soundtrack that matched my pulse, lending an air of intention to the way we were pressed against each other. The lights over her face made her cheekbones seem higher, her lips softer, and her eyes deeper.

Fuck, if I didn’t want to fall straight into them.

In the dark, it was easier to ignore all manner of things, simply from being robbed of your sight. But I couldn’t ignore this.

My hips were locked tight to hers, my legs bracketing hers as I held her entire weight close to my body. Harlow’s eyes were wide, and the way her lips fell open on a gentle O, I couldn’t help but stare at them. Her tongue darted out to lick at her bottom lip, and my blood screamed at that tiny flash of pink tongue and white teeth.

Unthinkingly, I tightened my fingers where they held her. Just like in the hallway, it was right at the curve of her waist, just above her hips, and her breath caught. My heart thrashed wildly in my chest as I imagined what might happen if I dipped my head and brushed my lips against hers.

We were so close, and the aching press of her breasts against my chest had me hardening instantly.

Harlow’s eyes flitted closed, and the slight lift of her chin had me slamming my own eyes closed. It would be so easy. And it would shatter whatever structure our day-to-day was built on. It wasn’t a fragile one, but even the strongest steel frames had a point of weakness. Ours was the time we’d spent apart. The new feeling of being around each other again. And the fear that kept me in an unbreakable chokehold.

I let out a harsh breath and steadied my weight onto the skates, slowly shifting her so she could stand. Harlow’s hands were still wrapped tight around my arms, but her eyes wouldn’t meet mine.

Once she was steady, I released her, rubbing a hand over the back of my neck. “You okay?”

Jerkily, she nodded. “I think I’ll, umm, take a break from skating for a little. Go see what Sage is doing.”

As she skated away, I clenched my jaw so tightly I was shocked it didn’t crack any bones. When I looked over at the counter, the old man working motioned me closer. I skated over to the counter, my eyebrows raised.

He had a twinkle in his eyes as he studied me.

“Maybe next time, young man,” he said, “if a beautiful woman is looking at you like that, don’t be the one pulling away.”

I blew out a harsh breath, swiping a hand over my mouth as I left the rink.