Forever Starts Tonight (Wilder Family #4)

Chapter 7

Poppy

Patrice dropped me off at home with a high five and a mischievous gleam in her eye. Half our drive home was her begging me for salacious details, and I only gave her the bare bones ( no, he didn’t kick me out; yes, things happened; no, I am not telling you my sex story; you’re a stranger ), which seriously compromised our friendship, according to her.

“So it was worth it?” she asked as I opened the door to exit her car.

My answering grin had her laughing heartily.

God, I floated all the way to the front door. My body was the best kind of sore, and to my utter delight, I didn’t feel any embarrassment or regret. This was no morning-after walk of shame, I’ll tell you that.

I felt liberated, strutting my hot ass back into my house after a night of epic, atom-scrambling sex. I got good and railed, which I could confidently say had never happened before.

I felt empowered .

“Where were you?”

With a squeak, I dropped my keys, whirling at the sound of my sister’s voice in the kitchen.

My mom and my oldest sister sat in the kitchen, staring slack-jawed at my sneak arrival .

I felt like a kid who got caught sneaking in after curfew.

“Holy shit, Greer, you scared me.”

Her eyebrows rose slowly. “Imagine how Mom and I felt when we got back to the house, and you weren’t here. I thought you got murdered.”

“Why didn’t you call me, then?”

“Have you checked your phone in the last twenty minutes?” she asked, enunciating her words in that incredibly annoying older sister way that had me narrowing my eyes.

“No.” I shifted uncomfortably. “I was talking to my Uber driver. She’s very nice.” I glanced around the room. “Where’s Olive?”

Olive was Greer’s stepdaughter, and dammit if she wouldn’t be the perfect distraction right about now. What good was it to have all these kids coming into our family if they didn’t deflect when nosy people wanted to know about my night?

“She’s in the barn checking on the cats,” Greer answered.

My mom watched me over the rim of her coffee mug. “I take it your date went well.”

The skin on my cheeks was probably a thousand degrees, and I cleared my throat primly. “It was … fine.”

Greer snorted. “You’re coming back home the next day in the same clothes from the picture you texted me yesterday when you were getting ready for said date. I bet it was fine.”

Oh.

Oh .

They didn’t know I’d been home and left again. The wrinkled hem of my skirt brushed my legs as I slowly moved into the kitchen. If I told either of them about my little jaunt out to Jax’s, they’d lose their ever-loving shit. Then my brothers would be called, and it would be a whole thing. A thing I very much wanted to avoid.

My one night with Jax would go safely into my memories, to be played on repeat when I lay in bed for the next couple of weeks. Then I’d get back on the saddle—metaphorically—and find a nice, kind, funny, emotionally available guy.

Easy peasy.

“Is there more coffee?” I asked.

“Didn’t get much sleep?”

“Not really,” I muttered. With my back turned, I poured a generous mug of steaming black coffee, then wrenched open the fridge to get the creamer. When I turned around, Greer and my mom were trading sly grins. “Oh my gosh, stop it.”

With a laugh, Greer stood and wrapped her arms around me in a tight hug. “I can’t help it. Look at our little baby growing up and having sex on the first date!”

My mom sighed. “Greer…”

“What? She did.” Greer’s arm stayed around my shoulders as she steered me over to the couch. “Do I get details?”

“Dear Lord, not while I’m in the room,” Mom said firmly. “I love you girls, but I have limits.”

Greer laughed, but I kinda wanted to crawl under the couch and hide.

“I’m not going to share, Mom. Don’t worry.”

Greer pouted as we sat on the couch. She tugged a blanket up to cover our legs like we used to do when we were younger. She was married now, living with her husband and stepdaughter outside of Salem, so it was an easy drive when she wanted to come visit.

“How was your sleepover at the Coleman house, Mom?” I asked, quite desperate for the subject change. Greer’s eyes narrowed because she knew exactly what I was doing. I merely smiled back.

“It was wonderful,” Mom said. “Olive and I had the best night. She’s an absolute angel.”

I choked on my coffee, barely keeping it from coming out of my nose. Greer gave me a strange look. “You okay?”

You’re so good, angel, he’d said. So perfect .

I rolled my lips together, nodding frantically as I tried to breathe through my nose. “Totally okay,” I managed. “Swallowing is hard, you know.”

She smirked. “Have a little practice with that last night?”

I swatted her leg while Mom groaned. “Greer,” I hissed.

Mom raised her hands and left the room. “That’s it. I’m going to unpack. Greer, thank you for driving me home. You sticking around today?”

My big sister settled into the corner of the couch and pinned me with a thoughtful look. “Yup. At least through lunch.”

I pretended her look didn’t exist, sipping my coffee and ignoring the slightly stinging ache I felt between my legs. If she only knew. Even if my brothers knew about what happened, they weren’t the ones Jax would need to worry about.

Greer would destroy him if she thought he’d taken advantage of me. A slightly hysterical laugh threatened to climb up my throat. If she only knew. One person was climbing into a bed in the middle of the night, and it sure wasn’t Jax.

I still wasn’t entirely sure it wasn’t me taking all sorts of advantages.

Mom disappeared into her bedroom, and we sat quietly for a while.

“So,” Greer drawled. “You gonna make me beg for information?”

“Maybe. I didn’t make you tell me about your sex life when you married Beckett.”

“More’s the pity. It’s a good one.”

I gave her an incredulous look. “You didn’t have a sex life when you married him, he was basically a stranger.”

She waved that off. “Not for long, and we had very good reasons for that. Plus, he wasn’t a total stranger, he’s Parker’s teammate. I knew who he was. Sort of. ”

It was the truth. Before our dad passed away, Greer overheard him telling Mom he’d never get to walk any of his girls down the aisle. Naturally, this translated to my slightly impulsive sister to conjure a husband to be able to fulfill that wish—one of the teammates of our brother Parker, who played professional football for the Portland Voyagers.

Luckily for Greer, Beckett was perfect for her. The calm to her … not calm. They were a perfect fit, and there was no other way to describe it. Watching them together was the thing that made me question my longtime crush on Jax. Whether it was time to let it go and find someone who completed me in that same way. Who completed me in the way our parents had completed each other.

What I wanted was a soulmate. Someone who saw me. The real me. That was always the reason that dating had been hard for me—looking for that one perfect person where they may not exist. Clinging to a crush on someone who was so incredibly not perfect, but I still couldn’t dig him out of my head, no matter what I tried.

“Anyway,” Greer continued. “Who did you go out with last night? Do I know your mystery date man?”

I could do this. I wasn’t lying. I was just … subtly bending the truth.

I blew out a slow breath. “Umm, no, I don’t think you do. We went out to dinner in Redmond. He’s … he’s in finance or something.”

She gave me a soft smile. “You had fun?” she asked lightly.

Before answering, I licked my lips and chose my words very carefully. “Dinner was fine, like I said. But after…” My eyes closed, and I took a deep breath. “After was amazing.”

“Are you going to see Mr. Finance again?”

“No,” I said. Her brow pinched slightly in confusion, but I continued before she could ask why. “It was a fun night. I don’t regret it. But … that’s all it was. One night. And he and I both knew it. ”

Again, Greer studied my face, and I worried that the things I’d left unsaid were stamped all over my features.

You know, something like I had sex with Jax Cartwright stamped in neon letters on my forehead. But for once in her entire life, Greer didn’t push, and she simply smiled.

“Well, that’s okay too. Sometimes we need nights like that.”

I nodded. “Sometimes we do.”

She glanced at the watch on her wrist. “Parker and Beckett’s game is starting soon.”

“Playing on the East Coast?” I asked.

She nodded. “New York. Cameron and Ivy decided to fly out for that one,” she said.

Cameron and his girlfriend had been traveling a bit more since she moved in with him, and it was good to see my brother—who normally sacrificed so much of himself to take care of the rest of us, especially before our dad died—do some fun things for himself. Also … it meant he wasn’t anywhere close for Jax to accidentally let something slip.

Like, oh FYI, I got your sister off three times last night. Hope that’s all right.

“I’m going to go change,” I told her. “But I’ll watch it with you.”

With her attention diverted, I breathed a small sigh of relief, escaping upstairs to slip into comfy pants and a Voyagers sweatshirt. Before I left my bedroom—the same one I’d lived in my entire life—I couldn’t help but notice how young I looked in the mirror above my dresser.

Leaning forward, I brushed a fingertip along the edge of my jaw, looking for any marks that Jax might have left, but only the slightest abrasion marks had my stomach curling pleasantly.

Despite how much last night shifted things, I was still me. That wouldn’t change. Everything else in my life seemed to be changing at a head-spinning rate. My siblings were getting settled and falling in love, finding that thing that had always seemed so elusive to me.

Within the past four months, we buried our father, and that hole wasn’t any easier to fill now than it was on the day he died.

Our company was growing and expanding, offering opportunities I was excited about.

And here I was, still mooning over the same man, staring at my reflection in the same mirror with the chip in the corner from a particularly epic fight between Parker and me when I was in fourth grade. I ran my finger over the chip and took a deep breath, meeting my own eyes in the glass.

“Okay now, Poppy, your one night is over, and it’s time to move on.” I nodded firmly and walked out of the room, feeling lighter than I had in years.