Forever Starts Tonight (Wilder Family #4)

Chapter 28

Poppy

The very best thing about a house full of Wilders was that there was no shortage of distractions.

My house—I’d finally started calling it such a couple of days before I moved in—was a few trains shy of Grand Central Station for all the noise, chaos, and people filing in and out. Because I was pregnant and thereby viewed as useless for heavy lifting by everyone in my family, I stood at the front door, directing the traffic with my notebook in hand and my phone ready for scanning.

“Stop,” I yelled at Cameron as he tried to go past with a big box.

“I can read, Poppy,” he said. “It says Main bedroom right on the top.”

Ignoring his complaints, I ran my finger along my master spreadsheet and double-checked the number on the box with the number on the sheet. “Main bedroom,” I said sweetly.

He rolled his eyes as he walked past me through the door, his big boots pounding on the stairs as he delivered it to the correct place.

“Told you,” he yelled over his shoulder.

“There’s a system for a reason,” I yelled back. “Measure twice, cut once, right? ”

My brother muttered something, but he was too far up the stairs for me to hear it.

Ian followed him, a smug smile on his face. “There is literally nothing I love more than someone throwing Cameron’s own life advice back in his face.”

Behind him, Harlow paused, arms full of grocery totes. “Nothing you love more, huh?”

He gave her a heated look, and she ducked her face closer to his so he could sneak a sweet kiss. “Almost nothing,” he murmured against her mouth. “You’re a close second, at least.”

She gave him a mocking glare, ignoring his smirk as she brushed past him to deliver the food into the kitchen, where Greer and Adaline unloaded dishes.

I double-checked the sheet for Ian’s box and tapped the side of it. “Laundry room,” I said.

There was no need for a moving truck, but my driveway and the cul-de-sac were lined with Wilder Homes work trucks, each packed to the gills with boxes earlier that morning before we departed from my mom’s house.

After my brothers left, Greer and Adaline followed in another big vehicle. Mom and I took a moment alone in my suddenly empty room. The walls were now devoid of all the artwork I’d accumulated over the years—family photos and splashes of color in the art I favored. My closets were bare, and so were the bathroom drawers across the hall. My dresser was in the back of Ian’s truck, the mattress and bed frame in Cameron’s. They’d unload those first, then return for the boxes lining the front porch.

While I took a moment to say goodbye to the room I grew up in, in the only home I’d ever known, my phone dinged with a text.

Parker: Heard I’m missing all the fun today. Does this mean your bedroom is up for grabs? I could really use an off-site trophy room…

Me: Oh, do you have trophies to display now? I must’ve missed that.

Parker followed that up with a middle finger emoji, and I laughed under my breath, tucking my phone away and allowing that moment of levity to act as an anchor on a day when my emotions were rioting.

Over moving, over moving on , and which one was clawing to be at the forefront of my mind. Leaving something big in your past was gut-wrenching, even if good was to be gained from it.

A bedroom. A house. A person.

Packing up my entire life over the past week made me feel like someone entirely new was the one making the move across town. I could hardly recognize myself now, not just because of the physical changes, but also through the intentional setting aside of things that I knew weren’t good for me. Things that weren’t right for me.

It was that little piece of hard-to-swallow wisdom that had me viciously blocking out that moment with Jax, the tiptoeing of a necessary line.

There was no room here for big, heart-breaking errors between us, and he knew it as well as I did. When I looked down the road at all the ways we’d need to be there for each other, I couldn’t handle the thought that a brief flare of heat from some untapped chemistry would be the reason we couldn’t coexist well.

It didn’t even really make me feel any better to know that I wasn’t the only one feeling it. Somehow it only made me feel worse .

All of it heaped on an already very emotional day had me crying before a single box was unloaded into the new house.

My mom had her arm wrapped around my shoulders as I cried silent tears standing in the middle of that room. The mirror stayed mounted on the wall, and while I leaned my head against hers, I touched my finger to the chip in the bottom right corner.

“You sure you’re going to be okay?” I whispered.

“Oh honey,” Mom said, “that’s supposed to be my question to you when I leave your house later tonight, you know.”

I closed my eyes and sniffed piteously. “I know, but I’ll still worry about you.”

With firm hands, Mom turned me to face her. Then she cupped my face, drawing her thumbs along my wet cheeks. “This is what’s supposed to happen, my darling girl.” Her eyes were bright with unshed tears as she wrapped me in a tight hug. “This will always be your home, Poppy. Just like it’ll always be home to Cameron and Ian and Parker, to Erik and Greer and Adaline. Doesn’t matter how old you get, or how far away you move, or what changes in your life.” She pulled her face back and smiled through her tears. “Even better is that you’ll have more than one. You have the home you’ll create yourself, and you have the one that will welcome you back whenever you need it.”

Pregnancy hormones didn’t stand a chance against a Sheila Wilder pep talk, and I melted into her embrace again, and the two of us cried for a few minutes. Mourning the inevitable change in our lives, and just how different everything looked now than it had a year ago.

By the time I pulled up to my house, our eyes were dry, and we were ready to work. The bed got set up first, my dresser moved in next, followed by the couch and two chairs I’d found at a cute little secondhand store in Redmond.

Greer and Adaline tackled making my bed with clean sheets and a gorgeous white bedding set I’d splurged on from one of our suppliers at Wilder House, moving downstairs into the kitchen once that was done. Ivy took it upon herself to unpack my clothes in the double closets while the boys returned to Mom’s house to get the rest of the boxes.

Jax joined them on that second trip, and I only allowed myself one—just one—lingering glimpse at the pop of his arms and the hard line of his jaw when he carried a box into the kitchen. At the look in his eyes as he actively avoided glancing back in my direction. I hadn’t seen him all week, the longest stretch we’d gone since he arrived home, and all friggin day, my eyes had the horrifying tendency to seek him out when I entered one of the rooms.

We made it two hours.

Two hours and nine minutes.

I walked into the family room, sidestepping a couple of boxes next to the base of the stairs, just as he was walking out. He stopped dead in his tracks. So did I.

When Jax’s eyes met mine, everything else around us disappeared in a great big whoosh, a sudden vacuum of sound so staggering that I could only imagine what we must have looked like. Standing on opposite ends of the room, we were unable to look anywhere else.

Would it always be like this?

Would there ever be peace in my heart when it came to this man?

After this many years, I should be immune to something as simple as a look, but I wasn’t . I could hardly find a thread of logic in any piece of my reaction to him, and I hated that more than anything.

I broke first, yanking my gaze away from his.

“I, uh, have the first rent check,” I told him. “I stuck it on the fridge with a magnet. You never gave me the address for where to send it. ”

His brow was slightly furrowed when I glanced back. “It’s a … PO Box downtown. But I’ll grab this one today.”

I managed a short nod over the thundering of my heart, turning toward the kitchen when Greer asked me a question about where I wanted my cups. Jax’s footsteps receded quickly like he couldn’t leave the room fast enough.

Running a hand over my forehead, I swallowed against a bone-dry throat and a tidal wave of frustration before answering. “Umm, that one in front of you is fine.”

Her brows furrowed. “You feel okay, Pops?”

I couldn’t answer for a minute because my thoughts felt so messy in my head, which kept clear words from forming.

Adaline came up behind me, wrapping her arm around my waist. “Do you need to rest?”

“No,” I said. “I’m just a little overwhelmed, I think.”

She smoothed her hand up and down my back. “I think they’ve got that reading chair in the spare bedroom upstairs. Maybe take ten minutes in there?”

Eyes heavy with exhaustion, I nodded.

Greer stopped me with a hand to my arm. “Side note. I didn’t know you were going for dark, sexy, and moody.”

Oh fuck, was I that obvious? I blinked, not so much as a single word able to climb past the block in my throat. “What?”

She gave me a strange look. “The color you chose in that room. I thought you were going light and airy.”

I laughed—but the sound came out like I was choking on my own spit—and my sisters shared a telling glance, like I was losing my mind.

Wasn’t I, though?

“I, uh, had a change of heart at the hardware store.”

Greer smiled. “It was a good change. Sometimes our gut leads us somewhere very unexpected.”

“No shit,” I muttered under my breath.

“What was that?” Adaline asked .

I glanced up to find them both watching me with that awful big sister sharp-eyed look.

It was knowing.

Big sisters who thought they knew things were the worst because more often than not, they were right. Which led to smug, knowing, obnoxious big sisters.

“I don’t need to rest,” I told them. “I promise.”

Greer finished loading the glasses. “We’re almost done anyway,” she said. “Cameron is helping Ivy with your clothes. I think Jax was doing some yard work, Ian was going to hook up your TV, and Mom went back to the house to watch Sage and Olive and make some dinner. Do you want to join us or bask in your empty house without all of us watching your every move?”

An empty house , I thought with a bone-melting sigh of relief.

I’d have an empty house every single night.

The sisters heard that sigh too, and their smug, knowing grins widened into something else.

They were happy for me.

Adaline squeezed my arm. “Enjoy it,” she whispered, kissing me on the temple.

We worked in the kitchen, finishing up the last box, and I wandered upstairs to find Ivy flattening the last of the wardrobe boxes. “All done.”

I stared at my closet with my mouth hanging open. “Holy shit, Ivy. How am I ever going to keep it looking like this?”

Cameron gave her a look. “See? I told you.”

Ivy sniffed. “It’s a highly logical organization system, and you are the kind of person to appreciate it, so don’t even pretend you don’t.” She swept her hands over each section of clothes. “Sleeveless here, then short sleeved, then long sleeved, then dresses, grouped by color within a subsection. In the mood to wear a black sweater?” Ivy did her best Vanna White impression. “Look no further. How about a purple tank top? It’s right here. ”

“You are very impressive,” I told her. “Thank you.” Then I smacked my brother’s arm. “And you zip it, just because you’ve never organized anything in your entire life.”

“Except his toolbox,” Ivy whispered. “He’s really particular about that. I borrowed one of those wrenchy things once and put it back in the wrong spot and it was a whole ordeal.”

Cameron rolled his eyes, gently setting his hands on her shoulders. “Come on, let’s go see if Ian needs help downstairs. Plugging in that TV might tax his brain too much.”

Ivy laughed, and they left me alone in my bedroom. I could tell Greer had spent some time in here because it was the room that looked the most finished. The soft white bedding was perfectly fluffed, a furry blanket draped just so along the foot of the bed. A mountain of pillows in different shades of white and cream looked so inviting I almost cried.

Above the bed, she’d mounted the framed painting she’d done for me when she was in art school, a watercolor of mountains and towering green trees, an abstract representation of what we’d see from the front porch at Mom and Dad’s house. And on my dresser, a framed picture of the whole family a few weeks before Dad died.

My eyes filled with tears as I traced the image of his face. He was so thin, so tired, and so happy.

“I wish you could see all this, Dad,” I whispered.

And for the first time, I had a breath-stealing thought. If he’d still been alive, it was entirely possible that none of this would have happened.

Not my night with Jax.

Not the baby.

This house or Dean or the tension with my siblings. The house that already felt like it was mine down to my bones.

None of it.

There’d be no building of this messy, little life. No glimpses of a future that I could see without trying very hard .

And the force of how wrong that all felt, to even think it, had my knees feeling weak. With my hand gripping the edge of the dresser, I tried to breathe steadily, because the last thing I needed was to toss myself straight into a existential panic attack.

If I’d gone home from that date and had my dad to talk to … I never would have gone to Jax’s. Never would have talked myself into that, hanging that decision on the precipice of avoiding regrets.

There was nothing I’d undo about this. Not one piece, no matter how unclear things seemed, how quickly they changed, and how much it was forcing me to learn about myself.

No matter how much this was tilting my nicely planned world on its head.

The baby executed a strong kick, and I pressed the tips of my fingers to the side of my belly.

“You are worth everything,” I whispered. They moved again, and I laughed. “You’ve been quiet today, huh?” I rubbed my palm over the press of a little foot or an elbow or something, wondering how much they could feel when I pushed back. “I know, it’s a lot of excitement.”

I tilted my head back, willing the tears to go back the hell wherever they came from.

A burst of laughter filtered upstairs, and I smiled. As much as I was ready for the quiet, ready to lay on the couch and stare at the ceiling in complete and utter silence, I knew to cherish nights like this.

I wasn’t scared of this change. Wasn’t afraid to live on my own or worried about locking doors or anything like that. But it was a little daunting when you’ve lived your whole life with a revolving door of your loved ones constantly in and out, to be faced with nothing but silence greeting me when I came home.

With a sigh, I straightened and brought a small box of makeup into the bathroom, eyeing the bathtub with a slight whimper. Later. When everyone was gone, I was filling that bitch with epsom salts and lighting some candles and I was going to soak out all the soreness screaming in my feet and hips.

What I needed was a massage. Head to toe.

Gone were the days when I could be on my feet all the time, that was for sure. They felt puffy when I leaned over to stack clean towels in the cabinets opposite the shower. To the right of the cabinet was a small box, and I eyed the marker on the side.

Laundry room.

“Oh sure,” I muttered. “ I know how to read , he says.” I whipped out my phone and scanned the QR code on the side to make sure it was correct, rolling my eyes when a list of laundry items came up. “No one wants to listen to me. I’m just the one who came up with the system.”

The box was small enough that I didn’t think I’d get yelled at for carrying it downstairs, and thankfully, everyone was busy enough that they didn’t even notice. In fact, the main floor was empty when I got to the family room. A slight twinge in my lower back and a dull ache through my hips had me groaning a little bit.

It wasn’t until I walked through the kitchen and caught a glimpse of Cameron, Ivy, and Greer in the backyard talking to Jax that he caught my eye through the big window.

The actual time of eye contact was quick. Nothing more than a few seconds. And I felt the weightless dip in my stomach like he was doing that thing he’d done the other night—the slightest brush of his nose against my hair.

Dammit.

I steeled my mind from backsliding into sex thoughts, striding as confidently through the kitchen as I could manage, given the slight waddle to walking from my screaming hips. The laundry room was a long rectangle, with a small stretch of counter to the right of the machines. Above the counter, as well as the washer and dryer were upper cabinets, painted a creamy white color. The walls in this room were a soft pale green that reminded me of spring.

With a slight grunt, I set the boxes onto the counter and backtracked into the kitchen to find a pair of scissors to slice through the packing tape. Just as I found one, the slider opened, and Jax let himself inside the house.

My throat went dry because I’d lost all my loud, distracting family members.

What good was it having them here if they couldn’t interfere in moments like this, when my traitor brain and traitor hormones had a field day with his presence. I swear, I could smell him the moment he came inside and closed the door behind him.

“I can take care of those boxes,” he said.

“It’s fine,” I told him. “Knowing you, you’ll put the detergent too high up and my short ass won’t be able to reach it when I go to do laundry.”

I said it teasingly, but the man stopped, blocking my entry to the laundry room.

Arching my eyebrows, I ignored the way he held his hand out for the scissors. “Can you move, please?” I asked.

“No.”

I scoffed. “Jax, move. I can unpack them myself.” With the hand not holding the scissors, I tried to push him aside, but holy shit, it was like trying to uproot a very stubborn tree. “You cannot be serious.”

He crossed his arms, and the ink rippled with the sudden bulge in his biceps. My skin went hot, and there was a dangerous tremble under my skin that I wanted gone.

No man should look like him, I thought frantically. They shouldn’t look so appealing with no smile and no people skills, and the overbearing tendency to ignore me when I just wanted to unpack a fucking box.

It was the eyes. As I glared up at him, I couldn’t help but register the slightest hint of amber around the edges. And it was the jaw—covered with dark hair because he still hadn’t shaved since he got back.

“Move, please,” I tried again, voice softer this time. There was a flicker in his eyes, and I fought a triumphant smirk. Yet he still didn’t move.

“Isn’t there something else you can work on while we’re all here?”

“No,” I said in exasperation. “I’d really like to work on this, so that the kitchen and laundry room are done.”

He held his hand out again. “Great. I’ll do it. You go sit and rest.”

Under my breath, I growled.

“Cute,” he said. “You sound like an angry little kitten.”

I pointed the scissors at his stupid face. “Move.”

Jax swatted my hand away. “No. Let me take care of this for you.”

You know what was horrible? When your traitor brain and traitor hormones felt a swell of skin-tingling attraction at really inopportune times. It was like a warm, prickling wave from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. All ten toes. All the hairs on my head too.

“This kind of overbearing caveman bullshit isn’t cute,” I whispered fiercely, but there was a slightly breathless quality to my voice that gave me away.

That was a traitor too.

“It’s not meant to be cute,” he said. “You’re tired. I can see it in your face. You need to sit.”

I tossed the scissors onto the counter, where they clattered uselessly to the floor, then I wrapped both hands around the unforgiving muscle of his arm and pulled. Hard. He set his jaw, the muscle bunching at the edge, unfolding his arms to gently pluck my hands off him.

I deflated. “This is ridiculous.” I gestured to the scissors a mile away on the ground. “And now I have to bend over. You have no idea how hard that’s getting already because your giant, somersaulting baby has wrecked my center of gravity.”

Jax’s lips twitched, like he was fighting a smile, and with a slight eye roll, he stepped forward to snag the scissors off the floor.

“Ha,” I yelled, edging through the opening he left and darting into the laundry room.

He muttered a curse under his breath. I snatched the scissors from his hand before he could yank them away, sliced the box open, and pulled out the first laundry detergent container.

My hand curled around the cabinet knob of the door farthest to the right, and Jax slammed his hand on the edge. I turned, gaping up at him.

“What is the matter with you?”

His jaw was still tight, and gawd, with the way he loomed over me, I felt positively engulfed by heat and the crisp clean smell, the highest hint of fresh cut grass from whatever he was doing outside. Looking down at me, his eyes were hard, yes, but there was a slightly panicked edge that had me dropping my hand. “Just let me do it,” he said.

“No,” I said—again, with the breathy thing. I was so annoyed with myself I could scream. “This is insane.”

The only logical reaction to that kind of insanity was measured violence. It was either that or I was going to whirl in place and do something really stupid like press my nose against his chest and just … inhale him. I jammed my elbow into his stomach, and he dropped his arm with a shocked gust of air.

Wrenching open the cabinet, I felt a sick thrill of victory, but my hand froze in midair, then slowly lowered until the detergent sat on the counter.

“What…” I whispered.

The cabinet was full already—perfectly organized bins with printed labels on the front of each. Mouth hanging open, my eyes scanned over the brand new items that I recognized from the cart next to him at the hardware store. The cart he’d walked away from, so I assumed it was someone else’s.

Jax stepped back, the loss of his body heat almost immediate.

“What is all this?” I asked.

One of his hands hung off the back of his neck, and he could hardly make eye contact. “It’s just … I kept thinking about how you’d be alone. And I know everyone is close, but when the weather is bad or something happens, you can’t always wait for help, you know.”

His cheeks were slightly pink, and my heart turned over in my chest—a slow, unsteady roll.

“Why didn’t you want me to see it?” I asked.

Jax clenched his jaw again, his thumb tapping rapidly against the countertop. The thick line of his throat worked on a swallow, the light in his eyes so hot and intense that I could hardly breathe. He licked at his bottom lip, and that small, insignificant movement drew my eyes to his mouth.

This was so wrong. Knowing how wrong it was didn’t stop it from feeling so incredibly right either. Like he wrapped his hand around my spine and pulled, I felt the tug toward his body, and I swayed as my eyes fluttered shut.

A knock on the front door had me yanking back. Jax backed up a step too, but the look on his face didn’t move a single centimeter. The blazing heat, the staggering desire I saw in his face had my pulse tearing sky high.

“Poppy?”

My mom’s voice had me blinking down at the ground. “Back here,” I called.

“The kids and I decided to bring some sustenance.”

Olive and Sage ran around the corner, oohing and aahing about the house and big backyard.

“You have a meadow,” Olive gasped, pressing her little face to the slider. “Can I go look at the flowers? ”

“Of course, sweetie. Knock yourself out.”

Sage yanked the slider open for Olive, and they ran into the backyard. My mom came around the corner, carrying two bags of food in her hands. “Everything looks wonderful, Poppy.”

She wrapped me in a hug, and even though I wanted to look away from Jax, I couldn’t.

My heart galloped in my chest the longer neither one of us broke the breathless eye contact. I thought Jax would smile. Thought he’d do something to ease this discomfort pressing against the seams of my entire being. But he didn’t.

He just stared right back.

My whole body trembled, and my mom must have sensed something was off because she hummed, tightening her arms like my only tether to the ground. “You okay?” she whispered.

Instead of answering, I buried my head in her shoulder and let out a slow, deep breath.

No. I wasn’t okay.

When I opened my eyes again, Jax was gone.