Forever Starts Tonight (Wilder Family #4)

Chapter 13

Poppy

Remember when I thought it sucked having the entire town of Sisters staring at me, wondering who went and knocked me up?

Feeling your family’s eyes on you was a million times worse once they knew. Really, actually knew who’d done it. In a messy corner of my jumbled brain, I told myself that it wouldn’t have felt like this if I’d been prepared, but despite the fact that Jax ostensibly fell off the face of the planet for months, I wasn’t really prepared for what I’d do when I saw his stupid, handsome face again.

An atomic bomb just went off at the forefront of my entire existence, blooming so high in the sky that it dwarfed everything around it, and the only thing that was left to do was deal with the messy fallout. We’d be feeling the effects of this for a long time, and that was if Jax and I could figure out a seamless way to co-parent.

If.

If.

If .

I didn’t even know for sure if he wanted to come to my appointment. That was one small question. A thousand more were behind it .

So many ifs in my life since I showed up on his doorstep. Where was Patrice now when I needed her sage advice?

I went the long way around the front of the store, trying to avoid Cameron and Greer, hoping they were back inside working. But I wasn’t quite so lucky. My mom was waiting by the car with her arms tight around her middle and a deeply thoughtful look on her face. Greer leaned against the passenger door, but her eyes locked on mine the moment I came into view.

She opened her mouth, and I held up a hand. “No,” I said firmly. “Not now, Greer.”

My big sister, one of my very best friends in the world, sucked in a sharp breath and blew it out oh-so slowly. “You don’t even know what I was going to say,” she replied softly.

“I don’t.” My stomach trembled, and everything inside my head felt like I was a Tilt-A-Whirl. “But not now, Greer. Please. I know I lied, and it was fucked up, but it wasn’t just him. I was there too, and… I can’t talk about this now,” I finished in a trembling voice.

Slowly, she nodded, then wrapped her arms around me in an impossibly tight squeeze that helped settle that unsettled swirling of my thoughts. Judging by the look on my mom’s face, she and Greer shared a look over my head, and once I’d pulled out of Greer’s embrace, I slid into the car and dropped my head back on the seat.

Once my mom was behind the driver’s seat, she took her time hooking her seat belt, and the weight of her concerned gaze almost broke me. Everything inside me wobbled like a tower of cards. The slightest pressure and I might crack.

His face.

Oh, his face when we stood outside.

Not once in all the years that I’d watched Jax had I ever seen him look lost. Overwhelmed. Like he was going to pass the hell out.

“Do you want to go home instead of lunch? ”

I pinched my eyes shut and nodded. “Please.”

Mom pulled out her phone and sent a quick text. We’d planned on meeting one of her friends she’d met in a grief support group, someone I hadn’t met yet.

Looking over at her, I studied her face, wondering if she was feeling the Jax-bombshell effect, but she looked surprisingly unruffled. “You can still go if you want,” I told her. “I’ll probably take a nap once we get home anyway.”

Mom smiled gently. “No, it’s okay. She’ll understand. I’d rather be home if you want to talk.”

I didn’t, though. Not yet, at least.

Once we were back at the house, I immediately went upstairs and burrowed straight under the covers, the tears that I’d held back threatening with a mighty vengeance. Mom tapped her knuckles against the door and crept in when I didn’t answer. Maybe she heard the pathetic little sniffle from underneath the covers.

She smoothed a hand over my back, pulling the blanket away from where I’d clutched it to my face. Her smile was small, but it was there.

“You used to do that when you were little,” she said. “Hide your face in the blanket when you napped.”

“I did?”

She hummed, playing with the strands of hair around my face. The gentle brush of her fingers had my eyelids fluttering closed. “You told me once you could focus on sleeping more when you couldn’t see things to distract you.”

“I have a lot more to distract me now,” I whispered. “Think it’ll still go away if I hide?”

“No, sweetheart.” The warm weight of her hand moved to my shoulder, and she squeezed, comforting and soft. “Is this the part where I tell you I’m not really all that surprised?”

A big, hot tear slid out of the corner of my eye, running over the bridge of my nose before it dripped into the pillow. I didn’t wipe it away. Neither did she .

“I just can’t talk about it yet, Mom. I thought … I thought I’d have time to figure out what to say to everyone, what to say to him , and this whole day has just gone upside down so fast.”

Mom rubbed my back, and the tension ebbed from my frame. Her soft shushing noise helped too. It was the kind of noise you’d make if a baby was crying, rocking them back and forth to try to make them feel better.

Except I was the one who needed consoling. Not because Jax had reacted badly, but holy shit, it was a less than ideal way for him to find out. For my family to find out.

I wanted to ask her if everyone would somehow be disappointed in me because I’d lied for so long, but I couldn’t make the words leave the base of my throat. They just sat there, and I’m telling you, if slightly hormonal, mildly insecure questions had a taste, it would be something bitter and chalky.

My entire life, I was one of those kids who never got in trouble. Always had good grades. Showed up whenever someone needed me. And my crush on Jax was almost unilaterally viewed as a “poor Poppy” type situation, like I was something to be pitied because I couldn’t quite move on.

Curling in a tighter ball, I settled my arm around my little bump and tried to imbue happy, low-stress thoughts down to the nugget. Could they feel what I felt? Today, I really hoped not.

Without saying anything else, my mom leaned down and brushed a soft kiss over my temple. “I love you.”

“Love you too,” I murmured, giving her a grateful smile. With a wink, she tugged the blanket back over my head, and I was fast asleep within a few minutes.

A couple of hours later, I woke with a dry mouth and a screaming bladder, and when I shuffled down the hallway to pee, I couldn’t hear any noise coming from downstairs. The house might have been quiet, but I didn’t have any texts on my phone from Mom letting me know she’d gone anywhere. What I did have, though, was texts in our sister thread, and I groaned when I saw the first couple.

Greer: Okay, just tell us how you want to proceed. Do you want to talk about it? Not talk about it? Jax left for the afternoon, so I’m a little calmer now.

Adaline: OMG, did you threaten someone again? GREER.

Greer: Listen, it was one little hammer, and if the man can’t handle it, maybe he shouldn’t have boinked the little sister.

Ivy: The little sister can read these texts, you know…

Ivy: Also, I, for one, would like to know how the boinking was after so many years of buildup.

Adaline: Who let you in this chat, Ivy?

Harlow: I did. We need some non-Wilder blood. I also wouldn’t mind knowing. Call it author research in case I write this into a book someday. The angst would be off the charts.

Greer: I swear, nothing is sacred anymore. I don’t know what my brothers see in you two.

Ivy: I’d answer that question, but I don’t think you want the answer.

Harlow: The sex aside, no one would be able to put up with Ian, which works out nicely for me.

Adaline: I’m covering my ears. And eyes. Feel free to redirect this conversation ANY TIME, Pops.

A quiet laugh escaped despite my best intentions, but I didn’t reply right away. I wandered downstairs, and no answer came when I called my mom’s name. I sat at the kitchen counter and sank my head into my hands. What did I need right now? What would help?

I wasn’t even sure what to say or how to address my big, certifiably insane family about any of this. They were nosy. Overprotective (especially of me). Loud with their opinions. Louder with their love. And now all of those things were one big, messy knot that needed to be untangled before Jax and I could move forward.

My hand grabbed for a notebook and a pen, and I took a deep breath before I started scrawling things down on the paper. I didn’t think about what I was writing or worry about anyone seeing it. I just word vomited everything I could think of that would help make this better.

After a couple of minutes, I read back through and already felt a settling in my brain.

I needed structure.

I needed control.

And I needed everyone to shut the hell up and listen to me before they jumped to conclusions and over-the-top reactions that we were already known for. The fact that this town had survived us for so many years was honestly one of its best features.

Me: Sorry, I took a feelings nap.

Me: This is what’s going to happen, and it’s not up for discussion, okay?

Ivy: I find it so hot when you get bossy.

Me: Family meeting tomorrow at seven thirty. If you’re in town, it’ll be in the big conference room at the warehouse. If you’re not, I’ll send you a Zoom link.

Greer: Yes, ma’am.

Me: NO WEAPONS, GREER. I’m serious.

Greer: I know, I know. It wasn’t my best moment. I’m really sorry.

Me: This will not be a particularly in-depth part of the meeting because I physically cannot stand in front of my brothers and talk about it, but I was the one who showed up at his house, okay? He wanted me to leave, but it was storming, so I couldn’t. There’s no need to cast him as the villain.

Ivy: I wasn’t. I knew you’d wear him down eventually.

Adaline: Honestly, I’m impressed you got him to cave.

Ivy: Were you naked under a trench coat when you showed up or something? Men have a tendency to lose a few IQ points when that happens.

Adaline: IVY.

Greer: Can we vote her off the island?

Ivy: I’d love to see you try.

Ivy: Poppy, just remember I live half a mile away if you want to tell me stories your sisters don’t want to hear.

Harlow: We can’t get rid of Ivy. She’s the only one who’s as scary as Greer when we need backup.

Me: I love all of you. No one is voting anyone off the island, and no, I wasn’t naked when I showed up, but there might have been alcohol involved. That’s all you get for now. I’m putting away my phone and getting a snack because the baby is hungry, and I need to make my meeting agenda.

Ivy: AN AGENDA ABOUT YOUR NIGHT OF SEX WITH JAX. This will be the best meeting we’ve ever had.

With a short laugh and a shake of my head, I tapped away from the thread with my sisters. I saw another unread text and muttered a curse when I saw it was from Dean. Oh God, what was I going to say to him ? My heart.

Dean: Started to worry when I didn’t hear from you after the appointment. Hope everything’s okay.

Me: Appointment went great. Sorry it took me so long. Went to see the store and took a nap. I’m pretty wiped today, so I think I’ll stay home tonight. Call you tomorrow?

Dean: Of course. Xx

In the jumble of the day, my boyfriend—sweet and kind and driven and almost unbearably attractive—completely slipped my mind.

Nicely done, Poppy.

Before today, I’d never actually felt like a horrible person before. Sure, I had moments just like everyone else—snappy moments and judgey moments and gossipy moments. But I still felt like, at my core, I was a decent, non-shitty human being.

Until today.

Tears welled in my eyes again, and I dashed them away ruthlessly.

No, I did not get to cry over this.

The list materialized in my head before I could stop it.

Lies to family.

Lies to boyfriend.

Forgets boyfriend’s existence the moment I laid eyes on Jax again .

Sits back while my family lays the blame at Jax’s feet without saying a word.

There was no denying that one hurt worse than all the others, a visceral shooting pain straight through the heart. But I wasn’t that woman, you know?

I wasn’t that person who spoke without thinking. I wasn’t the one who unleashed her temper without a script. Maybe to my detriment, I thought just a little bit too much before acting. Made sure that whatever those actions were, the waves I made as a result wouldn’t cause any damage.

And here I was. Hurricane fucking Poppy. Leveling the immediate area and leaving nothing but a heaping pile of drama in her wake.

With a groan, I got up from the table, notebook tucked under my arm and the pen between my teeth. The kitchen was clean, a plate of freshly baked muffins sat on a cooling rack underneath the kitchen window, and when I glanced out into the front, Mom’s car was still parked in its normal spot. In the fall, Cameron built her a fancy chicken coop, and she loved spending time out there, so with the safe assumption that she was with the chicks, I sliced up an apple and some sharp cheddar cheese, broke a muffin in half, and went out onto the front porch to wait for her to come back.

I always chose my dad’s favorite chair when I sat outside, which was maybe a silly way to feel closer to him on days when I missed him most, but it helped.

With the plate sitting on the side table, I ran my hands over the arms of the chair, felt the dings and scratches from years of sitting and taking his coffee there. I let my eyes flutter closed at the warmth of the sun on my face.

“Oh, Dad, if you could’ve seen this one,” I said with a tiny smile. “I’m sure you would’ve been the one making me laugh right now. God, Greer had a hammer .”

I always liked the idea that he could hear us. That he knew what was happening. Maybe it was naive, but sometimes the simple act of saying something that I’d want him to know out loud helped ease some of the twisting ache coiled in my chest since he died.

I’d asked myself a million times over the past few months what he’d think about all this. If he was alive, if I’d have confided in him about Jax. It was so easy to say that I would have. That if I’d had his calm, steady presence, I might have made different decisions. But the truth was much more complicated than a few simple questions, even if he had asked them.

There was a level of uncertainty that still clouded big decisions without my dad. How do we proceed? Who’s taking his place for this event and that event? That massive, empty spot where he always stood, who was going to fill it? At Christmas, there was a stilted moment of pause before Ian stood and slowly picked up the carving knife when Mom unthinkingly laid it next to the turkey and took her seat.

My hand curled around the notebook in my head, thinking about how many times Dad caught me making a list to help move through a situation that was stressing me out.

“Feel better now, Popsicle?”

He’d kiss the top of my head and pat my shoulder.

I laid my own hand on my shoulder and squeezed. It didn’t feel the same.

“Not yet,” I whispered to no one but the trees. “But hopefully soon.”

He’d have calmed everyone today. I knew it. He’d have spoken up in a way that I couldn’t quite manage, the sheer magnitude of how overwhelming it was to see him weighing my tongue down like an anchor, muting any words that I might have said if I was a little more prepared.

Protective to a fault, my family was. Usually just to put people outside of our circle.

This was someone inside it. Very inside of it. Maybe, somehow, that made all of this even worse to my siblings, no matter how much they loved Jax on any given day. No one, and I mean no one , saw this coming.

My phone dinged, and I pulled myself from my looping, swooping thoughts.

Jax: Are you home?

Jax: I’m heading to talk to Cameron, but I’d like to stop there first if that’s okay with you.

My heart stuttered at the sight of his name popping up on my phone’s screen.

“Better get used to it,” I muttered. I was staring down the barrel at years of interactions with Jax. Years . And that was before you started thinking about graduations and college and weddings and grandkids someday. I’d need eight thousand notebooks before this was over.

“Oh God,” I whispered shakily. “Settle the fuck down, Poppy.”

Maybe, maybe , I had a tendency to go a little overboard with my long-term projections.

Me: I’m home.

Doing my best calm pregnant person impersonation, I waited for Jax to appear, methodically eating the apple and cheese so there were no hungry freak-outs upon his arrival. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust myself to stay levelheaded, but until you feel those pregnancy hormones, you didn’t even know how little you were actually in control.

But the exact moment I heard the rumble of the motorcycle engine, that whole calm pregnant person was exposed for the utter bullshit it was. Would there ever be a time that I wasn’t so thoroughly affected by his presence?

I sat still, hand over my bump, watching him astride that beast of a machine, his eyes covered by aviator sunglasses and his jaw coated with dark hair. I’d never seen Jax with a full beard, but I was a fan .

“Knock it off, Poppy,” I hissed under my breath. Weren’t those the kinds of thoughts that got me in trouble in the first place?

Honestly, though, what could they hurt? It’s not like I could get more pregnant.

Jax eased his bike to a stop in the gravel driveway in front of the house, and from behind those mirrored lenses, I could feel the weight of his gaze. Patience was required in spades for this interaction, deep wells that I’d never accessed before. He had a point earlier at the jobsite. I’d had months to get used to the idea of this, but on that first day I found out? I was a hot-mess express.

When your life takes a sudden U-turn, it takes some adjusting. I’d had my family to lean on, but they’d had time to adjust as well. The only person who didn’t was the man whose super swimmers got us into this mess.

Okay, fine, me crawling into his bed kinda got us here too, but I digress.

Extending grace to him wasn’t just the kind thing to do. It was the only real option I had in order for us to move forward. We had time to make plans, and months to figure out the best course of action.

Maybe we could start just by being … friends. The thought helped, because I knew that despite Jax’s epic reserve, he was a good friend to Cameron.

Yes. I could totally, one hundred percent do this. Friends with Jax Cartwright.

Hell, he’d probably be relieved when I told him about Dean.

The sound of the engine cut off, and the sudden silence had me pulling in a deep breath. Instead of joining me in the empty chair on the other side of the table, Jax walked up the steps to the porch and leaned his big frame against the railing, tugging off his sunglasses with the tips of his fingers, then letting them dangle by his side while he studied me.

Unlike earlier, there was much more weight and attention to this look. Instead of the overwhelmed, lost glint to this eye, now Jax seemed focused and determined, and I couldn’t deny it had my heart racing just a little bit.

I waited for him to say something, anything, and he just … didn’t.

He just stared, at my face, at my bump, and all the while, those sunglasses tapped against the side of this thigh.

“What?” I finally asked when I couldn’t bear the thick silence anymore. “I know you didn’t come here just to stare at me.”

His lips were almost always in a firm line. The man was allergic to smiling. But if those lips softened even a tiny bit, if the edges of them hooked up into a hint of a smile, it never failed to make my stomach flip weightlessly, just like it did now.

“You were right earlier. I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t want a family.” He swallowed, finally dropping his gaze to the floor. “It’s not something I’ve ever imagined for myself.”

Why , I wanted to ask, but I tucked the questions away and just let him have his time to say what he needed to say. We had so much time for other questions, and this wasn’t it. In the space of the silence that followed, the discomfort of this entire exchange was almost impossible to sit with.

It wasn’t like this when I showed up at his house. There was an ease to that entire night, something we’d never really had to chance to explore, and as I waited not very patiently for him to find his big boy words, I desperately wanted that ease to return.

I didn’t know how to interact with Jax like this.

And he was probably feeling the same.

This was the man who’d avoided being alone with me for years. The man who kept his distance and worked very hard not to string me along. This was sober Jax, as well. That was one huge difference. But it was more than that. It was more than the absence of alcohol.

Maybe he didn’t know how to deal with me either. Didn’t know how to talk to me with this giant life change hanging over our heads like a guillotine.

Yet I kept watching the slight fidgeting, the darting eye contact with a growing sense of curiosity.

I was used to him being quiet. Used to him being a little grumpy. This was neither of those things.

The tap, tap, tap of those sunglasses was the thing that kept clueing me in. The way the thick line of his throat moved in a hard swallow. Then his eyes locked on mine.

Jax was nervous . I’d never seen Jax nervous in my entire life.

The realization hit like a lightning bolt, nothing short of awe cracking my chest wide open. As it did, he locked his eyes onto mine, and the determination I saw there sucked the air straight from my lungs.

I wanted to ask him what was wrong, but all the words got trapped somewhere in my throat.

His chest expanded on a deep breath, and he blew it out in a sharp puff.

“I think we should get married.”