Forever Starts Tonight (Wilder Family #4)

Chapter 3

Jax

In the back of my mind, the place where I shoved down all the things that I refused to think about, I think I knew this would happen eventually.

There was no way it wouldn’t happen.

It would’ve been too easy for me to just wait it out. Let her find someone else. No, because not a single person in that fucking Wilder family could let something go easily when they believed in it strongly enough. Poppy Wilder—though she came off as sweet and kind and innocent, everything I should avoid—was so fucking stubborn because you had to be the worst kind of stubborn not to let go of whatever her misplaced feelings were for me.

And a stubborn woman, a sweet and kind and innocent one, with big brown eyes and long eyelashes and a smile that lit up every fucking room she walked into, was the most dangerous thing in the world. Letting her walk into my house while it was dark and stormy and I’d been drinking, with a shirt damp from the rain and a skirt swishing around her thighs, was an awful lot like setting a grenade on the floor and hoping it didn’t blow the whole damn place down.

My hands tightened on the frame of the door as I stared her down. Her chin edged up, and that slight show of challenge had my lungs tightening.

Don’t do this , I begged silently. Don’t put me in this position. If I closed my eyes, I could only imagine what her six older siblings would plan to do with my body.

We stood there for an impossibly long moment that could’ve been seconds, could’ve been minutes. I wasn’t even fucking sure. She slowly dug her teeth into that lush bottom lip before speaking.

“Can I come in?” she asked.

The rain was coming down sideways now, and the ominous, clanking sound of water turning to sleet as it hit the side of my house intensified my glare.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea. I’ve had a few drinks,” I admitted.

She smiled—the bright, sunny smile that did things to me, and I had to tear my eyes away. “Perfect, me too.”

Then Poppy ducked underneath my arm, leaving a warm breeze of a sweet, clean scent that had me slamming the door shut. The walls trembled, and she was, naturally, completely unfazed.

Hands clasped behind her back, Poppy studied the main living space of my house. I found myself watching her reactions as her eyes tracked over the wood burning stove in the corner, the oversized couch and chair, the wood beams that ran across the ceiling, and the L-shaped kitchen where I usually ate takeout or something simple.

I’d never needed much. It was a place to lay my head and had a pretty view while I drank my coffee. The preserve behind my house reminded me of the meadow behind Henry’s yard.

But beyond the flowers and the meadow and the space, I was able to be alone out here, just the way I liked it.

Never, not once, had a woman wandered this space .

For it to be this one, I had to clench my teeth and prepare for whatever the hell she had planned by showing up here.

“It’s nice,” she said finally. She gave me a wry grin over her shoulder, a tiny dimple appearing in her cheek. “I can’t really see you in it anywhere, though.”

All she got in response to that was a low grunt of concession.

I tore my eyes away from that dimple, the whiskey in my veins making my head swim dangerously. Why, why did I think I could have a quiet weekend at home and enjoy a few drinks while I listened to the rain?

Poppy swayed slightly on her feet, and I resisted the urge to reach out to steady her. I kept my arms crossed over my chest, my eyes locked on the wall just past her when she started twisting all that dark, long hair into a knot at the top of her head.

It fell in a wavy curtain around her shoulders when she let it go, and with a sigh, she sat on the couch, crossing one leg over the other as she met my gaze head-on. If I looked, I’d see the slight flex of muscles in her upper thigh, so I didn’t look because I didn’t want to look.

“What do you want, Poppy?” I asked. God, why did my voice sound like I’d chewed glass? “Did something happen?”

She licked her lips and took a deep breath, her chest rising and falling along with that small bit of fortification. “I had a bad date tonight,” she said, her eyes big and wide and soft. “I’ve had a lot of bad dates recently, but this one might have been the worst.”

Don’t ask.

Do not ask, you asshole.

“Why was it bad?” The words crawled out of my mouth without permission from my stupid brain. This was the problem with whiskey. I’d never touch it again after tonight. I’d never be alone with her after tonight, if I could help it.

She sank back into the cushions but kept her slightly unfocused gaze very focused on me. “He tried to feel me up under the table, and when I told him I’d stab him with a steak knife if he tried that again, he left me with a huge bill.”

Whenever I was around her, safely buffered by her family, there was always a low hiss of a lit fuse in the back of my head.

I ignored that too.

Sometimes, especially moments like this, it was like someone dumped gasoline right on top of that fucker and my insides lit up in flames. My jaw twitched slightly before I unlocked the tension holding my teeth clenched together. “Name?”

All she did was smile. That was soft too. “I’m not telling you anything.” Then she leaned forward, the neckline of her shirt gapping so that the lush swells of her breasts pressed together. My throat went dry, and I kept my eyes right on hers, not dropping so much as a fucking inch. “You have no reason to want to know anything about my dates, right?” she asked lightly. “No reason at all.”

This was punishment. I wasn’t sure why I was being punished, but someone sitting up in some big, fluffy fucking cloud was undoubtedly laughing their ass off at my predicament.

Having her in my space, looking like that, smelling like that, I felt that screaming impulse again. It was always there, like a burner set so low that you can hardly tell if it was on. And the moment, the precise moment that my awareness of Poppy clicked into place, some giant, invisible hand turned the lever and the flames shot sky high.

Get out.

You need space to let this pass.

Go somewhere else. Anywhere else.

It’s all I ever wanted to do when my notice of her got to a level that was hard to ignore .

Her gaze was this glowing, otherworldly kind of thing. “I made a list,” she said.

I blinked. “For what?”

“Why I should come out here and talk to you.”

I scrubbed a hand over the lower part of my mouth. “You need to keep that list to yourself, Poppy.”

The line of her throat moved on a hard swallow. “I don’t know if I should, though.”

No.

No .

Whatever tension pulled tight across the room, binding this strange little moment together, I snapped it when I strode toward the door. “You need to go. I’m leaving on a trip soon,” I said, not even thinking about the words as they tumbled out of my mouth, “and I don’t have time for this.”

She tilted her head. “When is your trip?”

My eye twitched. The trip didn’t exist yet, and boy, she didn’t need to know that. “Soon. Call your Uber back.”

“Patrice can’t come back to get me,” she said on a sigh. She didn’t sound all that upset, and I pinched my eyes shut while my composure tried to claw itself back into place. Fuck, what I wouldn’t give for some magical pill that would make me sober. Poppy kept talking. “Plus, she said there was an ice storm coming in. I don’t think anyone will venture out tonight.”

No shit.

The rain pelting the side of the house had gotten louder, and when I marched to the kitchen window and looked out, it was already starting to form a silvery film on the glass, sticking ominously. Ice was the quickest way to shut anything down, even in places equipped to handle winter weather.

And I, at the moment, was not.

My work truck was at the shop, and even if I was sober, there was no way I could drive her back home on my bike in this kind of weather. The grip of my hands on the edge of the counter was so tight, I was surprised I didn’t grind it to dust.

“You plan it that way, angel?” I asked dangerously. Her eyes widened at the nickname, unconsciously spoken.

Fuck me, why did I go and say that? I held my breath while I waited for her to ask, to press, to push. And she didn’t.

“Nope.” She stood and joined me at the kitchen counter. Her bare shoulders brushed mine as she stared out at the storm, and my jaw tightened dangerously. “Admittedly, this whole thing wasn’t very well thought out, but no one will be looking for me tonight if that’s what you’re worried about.”

My early demise at the hand of her brother—my best friend—was what I was worried about.

A harsh laugh escaped my mouth. “You shouldn’t be here, Poppy. This is a very, very bad idea.”

With a too-innocent tilt to her head, she glanced up at me. “Why? We’re friends, aren’t we? Of a sort. And if we’re friends, why is it a very, very bad idea for me to be here?”

Why the fuck did she smell so good? She was so small. If she stood in front of me, I’d be able to notch her right under my chin. I thought that once before, too. A long time ago. I hated that I was thinking it again.

“No, we’re not,” I answered curtly. “You’re Cameron’s little sister, and that is it.”

“Does this mean you won’t answer my questions?” she asked.

Slowly, I turned, hitching my hip against the counter while I stared down at her.

Okay, so we were doing this. After years of knowing she was watching me. Years of very much not watching her, we were going to nip this shit in the bud. Unease curdled in my belly, mixing dangerously with the whiskey.

“So you like lists, huh?”

Her cheeks flushed pink, but she didn’t look away. “Yes. Th-they help me think more clearly. Sometimes I can’t…” Her fingers wiggled by the side of her head. “I can’t calm my thoughts long enough to make sense of what I need to do.”

“Sounds logical,” I told her. “Maybe I should try it sometime.”

Her brows furrowed.

“Like now, maybe,” I said smoothly. “I’ll give you a list of why this is a bad idea.” I started ticking off points on my fingers, voice calm and steady. At first. “You’re too young for me. I don’t want a girlfriend. I don’t want to get married. I don’t want a family. And you are too fucking young for me,” I finished on a yell. “You know all those things, yet you’re still here.”

By the time I finished, I was breathing hard, well aware that I was answering questions that she hadn’t yet asked. Every fucking time I was around Poppy, for years, the questions were stamped all over her face, buried deep in her eyes.

Why not me?

She’d been on the sidelines at bars when I found someone to go home with, the same kind of women I’d indulged in throughout the years. The kind who weren’t looking for anything serious, the kind I’d likely never see again. It was a Band-Aid, of sorts, to staunch the flow of blood temporarily. To drown out whatever creeping sense of loneliness hit me in the middle of the night, the kind that snuck up on me in my sleep and had me rolling over in bed, searching for someone warm and sweet, only to find a cold fucking bed.

Why not me?

God, I’d seen in it in her face for years. As soon as she turned twenty, really. Five years later, and her questions still lingered. I could see them linger right in front of me now, in the painfully small confines of my house.

It didn’t matter that she’d never said them out loud. Sometimes it felt like she was screaming them for how painfully the weight of those questions fell on my shoulders. We both damn well knew why she was out here, and part of me wished I could yank open the door and send her out in the rain without caring what happened to her.

I did, though.

No matter how stupid it was, no matter how long the list grew for all the reasons I was terrible for her, because every damn thing I said to her was true, no matter how much I locked it up in the back of my head and tried to ignore it, I cared far too much.

As my list of reasons hung in the air between us, Poppy’s pink cheeks flushed deeper, a sign of embarrassment maybe. But there was no argument, not like I’d expected.

I thought maybe she’d point out that the ten years between us wasn’t such a big deal, not now that she was in her mid-twenties. She wasn’t a teenager. She was a woman—a beautiful one, maybe even more beautiful than she even realized. But I felt each one of those years like a blow to my chest because mine were steeped in building a quiet life by myself, a staunch refusal to budge even a single inch to allow someone space.

Even someone like her.

It was so much easier that way.

Eventually, the silence stretched into something uncomfortable the longer we stood there. Never the one to fill silences with pointless words, I simply stared down at her and kept my face even. The graceful arch of her brows dipped into a thoughtful V, and I found myself fighting the urge to fidget under the astute gaze of Poppy Wilder.

Before tonight, I could always feel the weight of her eyes on me, but this was different. There was no hiding from her, no distraction to tug between us. It was simply me and her and an endless stretch of hours while we waited for the storm to pass.

Who was I kidding? Poppy was the storm I needed to wait out. Eventually, she’d figure out that I wasn’t the guy for her. That she needed someone good and kind just like herself.

The clouds would clear, and she’d go back home and realize what a mistake this was. What a mistake I was.

Everyone regretted me, eventually. Except Henry. There was only one other woman in my life before Poppy, the one who taught me exactly what I didn’t want out of life, and she thought I was a mistake too. Something to move on from in search of a better, easier life.

Poppy’s sigh was deep and dramatic, and to my utter shock, her pink lips edged up in a crooked, amused smile. “Well, I guess that settles it then,” she said breezily, waltzing past me to start pulling open cabinets, letting out a noise of satisfaction when she found the whiskey and a few other bottles. “Nothing left to do but play a drinking game with a sort-of friend who’s too old and grumpy for me, and then pass out so that I can allow my hangover tomorrow to be punishment for my stupid idea.”

I blinked.

“What?”

She fluttered her lashes as she passed. “Catch up, Jax. We’re drinking to moving on from old crushes. Right? You’re too old, too grumpy, too stubborn, etcetera, etcetera.”

My head reared back. “I never said I was too stubborn.”

Poppy snorted. “Those words may not have come out of your mouth, but believe me, you did.”

Absently, I rubbed at my chest because fuck, was it bad that I was praying this was all a drunk hallucination? “I don’t have an old crush. What am I drinking to?”

She sat down at my kitchen table and opened the bottle of whiskey, pouring us both a generous serving into two glasses. Then she knocked one back, shuddering as she coughed. She waved her hands in front of her face as her eyes watered, hunching over to curse through the burn in her throat.

“Oh, that’s terrible,” she gasped .

I tried to lock down my smile at the pinched look on her face, managing it just as she was able to pry her eyes open as the coughing settled down.

Hooking one of the chairs out from the table, I turned it around and sat down backward. “Where do you think you’re passing out, exactly?”

She waved her hand somewhere in the vicinity of the back of the house. “Guest bedroom.”

I snagged the glass meant for me and took a leisurely sip, enjoying the heat as it went down. “Don’t have one of those. Unless you plan on sleeping on my weight bench.”

“Oh.” She blinked. “Well, I guess we’ll figure that out before it’s bedtime, huh?”

Bedtime.

Bedtime in my home with Poppy underneath my roof.

It would take the authorities ten years to find all the pieces of my body.

I grunted. It was the only possible sound I was capable of.

Poppy set her chin in her hands, and even with the clear glaze of alcohol in her eyes, she studied my face leisurely like she had all the time in the world. The warmth of that hit my bloodstream like another shot, which is why I set the glass back down.

“Not agreeing to any games just yet,” I said as steadily as I could manage. “You eat dinner?”

Slowly, she shook her head. “Didn’t have much appetite on my shitty date.”

I took one more sip of the whiskey, stood and opened the fridge, frowning when I saw the meager options on the empty shelves. “I have some leftover pizza. A couple of eggs. And cereal.”

She laughed. God, what a sound it was. Light and delicate, another punch to my already swimming senses, and I shook my head slightly to try to shake that off.

“Surprise me,” she said .

I took a deep breath, steeling myself for the fact that she was here, she was staying here, and I was about to face the greatest threat to my sanity I’d ever experienced: an entire night alone with Poppy Wilder.