Forever Starts Tonight (Wilder Family #4)

Chapter 33

Poppy

“Wake up, angel.”

I groaned, unable to pry my heavy eyelids open. There was a weight banded around my back, something hot and heavy that prevented me from hiding fully under the blankets. Rough fingertips danced along my spine, tangling in my hair, and warm, dry lips brushed over mine, coaxing me into wakefulness.

Humming, I slid my hands up the wall of Jax’s chest, keeping my eyes closed even as I sank into the sweet morning kiss. In one night, I could safely say that I’d kissed Jax Cartwright hundreds of times and it was not even close to enough.

He kissed me like he fucked me—with a tender desperation that made me feel like the most powerful woman in the world. Like he could never, ever get enough. Like something as simple as a kiss to start the day was the most important thing in the world.

His nose dragged along the edge of mine as he gathered me closer with the strength of his arms. The light brush of his tongue against the seam of my lips was a sweet demand for more, and with a sigh, I opened my mouth and gave it to him.

My heart wanted to burst from the billowing sort of happiness that bled into every corner of the room, filling the house to the seams. Filling me to the seams along with it.

It almost felt unfair, that this was real, and after so many years of wanting more of this man, I seemed to be in possession of every single piece of him.

Jax gentled the kiss, and I followed his mouth as he pulled back, which made him laugh low in his chest.

“Time to get up,” he whispered against my lips.

“Noooo,” I groaned. “Time to stay in bed.”

To tempt him into exactly that, I slid my hand down between his legs and ran my palm against the front of his boxer briefs, where he was already hard and heavy. Even though I was sore , and my thighs wouldn’t work right for a few days, I wanted him. Again and again. Jax’s arms tightened around me, his hands immediately tilting my hips closer to him where we lay tangled up together on our sides.

“Work is overrated,” I told him, angling my chin for another deep kiss.

His tongue slid over mine, wet and hot, and the sound pulled from the back of his throat gave me goose bumps.

I wanted to kiss him forever.

Jax pulled back, resting his forehead against mine while my hand moved up and down, slow movements with a firm grip, just like he’d taught me, and his brow furrowed, his eyes pinched shut, like he couldn’t bring himself to stop me.

I didn’t want him to.

“Poppy,” he groaned, plucking my hand away from him, pressing a kiss to my palm. “Later.”

“Later is so far away,” I said with a pout.

He laughed quietly, giving me another lingering kiss that had me seeing stars.

We stayed tangled up in each other for a few more minutes, just kissing and whispering, trading easy touches and letting the embrace be the perfect start to the day .

When he pulled the sheet back and started easing his body down, I bit down on my bottom lip and wove my fingers through his hair while he dropped a kiss on each breast, then splayed his hands around each side of my belly.

“Good morning to you too,” he whispered.

My eyes pricked with helpless tears as I watched him greet the baby. There wasn’t much movement, but he pressed a kiss to the skin just above my slightly distended belly button.

“What can you feel right now?” he asked.

“Not much.” I propped my head on my hand, elbow braced on the bed as he traced over the taut skin. Faint stretch marks had already started along my lower belly, and he kissed those too. “Sometimes, the movements are little. Like a flutter. Sometimes I can feel them poke me, like an elbow or a foot. It’s the weirdest, coolest thing ever.”

His face was full of awe as he studied my stomach. “Incredible.” Jax’s eyes lifted to mine. “Can they hear me?”

“Not yet.” My fingers traced his brow, following the strong line of his nose. “I think that’s twenty-three weeks.”

“And you’re … how many?”

“Nineteen.” I smiled. “Almost halfway.”

Jax closed his eyes. “I missed so much.”

Heart aching, I tugged him back up so I could kiss him again, and when we pulled away, I made sure he was looking straight at me. “You did your best. So did I. That’s all either of us can expect from each other.”

Jax dragged his fingers along my jaw and then my bottom lip. His eyes looked troubled.

“Talk to me,” I whispered. “I see something in your face right now, and I don’t know what it is.”

Pinching his eyes briefly shut, Jax expanded his chest on a deep breath. “Doing my best doesn’t seem like enough either. It’s like I need to learn a new definition for that word.”

“What do you mean?”

The subject of work was on pause because he kept touching me, seemingly in no hurry to leave the bed. Taking his cue, I did the same, gently running my hands over his chest and shoulders, down the front of his biceps.

“My mom was young, as you know, and she was always looking for the next man to take care of us.” He paused. “Take care of her, really. When I was ten, I did chores for neighbors and earned money so I could buy her flowers for Valentine’s Day. When she saw them, she was getting ready for a date, and she told me I wasted my money. She didn’t need that from me. She just needed me to be good and stay out of her way, essentially.”

I kept my hands on him the entire time he talked, pain for a serious little boy making my ribs ache from the force of holding in my tears. “That must have hurt to hear,” I said quietly.

His brow furrowed as he gave a short nod. “That’s all she wanted from me. Be good, stay out of the way. Be…” he paused, searching for the right words.

“Smaller,” I finished.

Jax nodded. “Smaller. Take up less space in her life because if I took up more, it would distract her from what was really important. Love, or the search of it, felt like a fucking death sentence. It was the height of being selfish. Of expecting someone else to take care of your shit for you. Henry told me there was no relationship in the world that could fix my mom’s baggage. She needed to fix it herself. Which is why he never married. He kept that weight on his own shoulders.”

“And that’s what you did too,” I said quietly.

He inhaled slowly. “Yeah. And I know that sounds like horrible advice to give a hurting little kid, but he was the only reason I didn’t blame myself for how my mom acted. No one else looked me in the eye and told me that the way she acted was on her. And that I still had control in how I turned out.” Jax closed his eyes. “He never treated me like a burden, and I’m so fucking grateful for that.”

Finally, I burrowed my head against his chest, allowing the strength of his arms around my back to hold me in place there. He kissed my temple and sighed.

“Everyone protects themselves in different ways, Jax.” I kissed the notch at the base of his throat, where his pulse was steady and strong. “I think you did what you had to do. We all make choices to avoid hurt. Some people dive into it headfirst because they think embracing the pain makes them more immune to it. Some people avoid it through people pleasing or never asserting their opinion. You chose a different route. It’s what you saw him do—this important person in your life. Henry was human, he was probably doing his best too.” I pulled back slightly to meet his eyes in the dimly lit room. “Look at my family. Every single one of us reacted differently to my dad being sick, to knowing he was going to die at some point. It only becomes wrong or unhealthy when you start hurting yourself in the process. If you can’t move out of that when it counts.”

Jax tightened his arms, breathing in with his nose buried in my hair. “You’re really fucking smart, you know that? You always read people so well.”

I smiled. “Good thing you’ve got me locked down, huh?”

Jax laughed. “Yeah,” he murmured, dipping his face for another kiss, “good thing. God, I hope our kid is like you.”

“I hope they’re like both of us,” I told him, sneaking a quick kiss.

We managed to pull ourselves out of bed after a few more minutes, opting for separate showers for the sake of expediency and a complete lack of belief that we could get in there together—naked—and not get further derailed. I showered first while he brewed himself some coffee, and he hopped in while I was braiding my wet hair off my face, dressing in one of my cotton work dresses and some cute tennis shoes.

Slipping into the steamy bathroom to put on some makeup, I almost stabbed my eye out with the mascara wand when he turned around, holding my gaze through the fogged-up glass as he soaped up his magnificent body with brisk movements of his hands.

“None of that,” I said, pointing the mascara wand in his direction. “I’m already dressed.”

Jax smirked, rinsing the last of the shampoo from his hair and reaching for a fluffy white towel. With it wrapped around his waist, he exited the shower as I turned and leaned against the counter to watch him.

There was so much strength leashed in his tall, broad frame, the sheer expanse of his chest, the flat tapered waist, and the bulge of the muscles in his shoulders and arms had my stomach taking flight, a dizzying sense of rightness that he was mine.

Not because he finally caught up or because I’d waited so patiently but because we fit together. Because all the pieces of me—the good and the bad—locked tight against the pieces of him.

Any earlier in my life, and I might not have been ready for him. Any later in his, and he may not have been willing to step into this space with me. My hand curled over my stomach, and I smiled.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“If you’re thinking it, it’s not nothing,” he said, his eyes catching mine meaningfully.

I bit down on my bottom lip as I stared at his face, the line of his jaw and the dark brows and the beard that I hoped never went away. I shrugged one shoulder delicately. “I like looking at you and knowing you’re mine. That’s all. ”

Jax stilled for a beat, eyes locked on me, unrelenting and hot.

“Say it again,” he growled.

“What?”

“Say it again.”

I inhaled shakily. “I like knowing you’re mine.”

Jax strode across the bathroom, gripping the sides of my face and stealing a hot, hard kiss that yanked a whimper from my lungs.

His skin was damp and fragrant, and the slick slide of his tongue against mine made me writhe in place.

“Five minutes,” he growled. “We have five minutes.”

His hands shoved at the hem of my dress, tugging at my panties while I laughed against his mouth.

“Better get to work then,” I whispered against his mouth, then hopped up on the counter and split my thighs apart, tearing at the towel around his waist, and he swallowed the sound of my groan with his mouth as the bathroom echoed with the sound of one more time , simply because we could.

“Poppy, you have a delivery I need you to sign for, please.”

The squawking voice from the phone on my desk yanked me from the list of vendor options that had my eyes crossing, and I had to blink a few times to get my head clear. “Can you sign for it? I’m right in the middle of something.”

My day had flown in a blur of meetings and paperwork, and throughout the entire thing, I’d managed not to go into the middle of the warehouse and shout over the PA system— Jax Cartwright told me he loves me, and we had epic sex all over my house.

If adult merit badges were being handed out, I wanted one for that too.

Restraint was difficult when you finally got what you’d wanted your whole life.

“No, I think you should,” she answered.

I blew out a breath and stood from my chair with a wince. No one, and I mean no one was prepared for the quad workout of a sex-a-thon. Three times in the span of twelve hours made it feel like I’d done a thousand squats.

No Poppy on top if that man was coming over after work. My thighs simply would not hear of it.

I skipped down the steps that exited into the main lobby of the Wilder and Co. distribution center—the new name and logo on the wood slat wall that Cameron installed a couple of weeks earlier to showcase the new umbrella company over Wilder Homes and Wilder House. Knowing Ivy, she’d add a couple more companies to it by the time we hit Christmas. I wasn’t entirely sure when she slept, if I was being honest.

As I turned the corner, I stopped short.

Standing by the curved desk was Jax, his hands tucked into the pockets of his work jeans, his Wilder Homes T-shirt molded to his broad chest and a pleased, smug little grin on his face. On the desk was a huge, wildly colorful bouquet of wildflowers—the explosion of colors so bright and beautiful, and I couldn’t help but exhale a quiet laugh. They were wrapped tight with a burlap ribbon and set inside a chunky square vase.

“A delivery,” I said quietly.

His eyes never left mine. “Henry told me I should bring you flowers. The good ones. Not something perfect and curated and untouchable.” He took a step closer, and nervously, I eyed the side of the lobby, where Kate and two of the warehouse workers were watching us with wide-eyed excitement. “Something wild,” he said. “Something unpredictable. ”

My heart softened into a pile of goo. He’d told me about Henry while we talked in the middle of the night, about his visit, and knowing I might not ever meet the man who remembered Jax, I fought the urge to wrap my arms around him.

“That so?” I asked, touching my finger to a bright orange bloom right at the top of the bouquet.

He nodded.

I tilted my head toward where the women stood, watching us through the glass windows that separated the lobby from the warehouse. “They’re gonna talk, you know.”

Jax pulled in a deep breath. “That’s why I’m here. I think we should go to Cameron’s house after this. I want to tell him. Right away. No hiding it, no pretending.” Another step and the space between us all but disappeared. “I want to look your family in the eye and tell them I’m in love with you.”

My smile started somewhere in the vicinity of my throbbing heart. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He grinned, the sight so boyish and unexpected that I almost threw myself at him right then and there. “Plus, Dipshit told me my aural energy had intertwined with someone else’s, and all I could think about was whether there’s a sex color that he could see, and I don’t really want to hear him talk about it.”

Tipping my head back, I laughed loudly. Jax reached forward and tangled my fingers with his. “Will you come with me, angel?” His eye contact was piercing, the want buried in those dark depths so tangible, I felt like I’d be able to hold it in my hand. “I want them to know.”

Because I wanted to, because I could, I rolled up onto the balls of my feet, flung my arms around him and kissed him full on the mouth. The whistles and claps finally broke through the static in my ears from the kiss, and we were both smiling when we pulled back. “Give me five minutes, and I’ll be ready to go. ”

He tilted his head, regarding me with a banked heat that had my heart turning over in my chest. “Is one ever ready to tell your best friend you’re sleeping with his little sister and plan to do it for the rest of your life?”

I hummed thoughtfully. “Probably not.”

Jax sighed. “That’s kinda what I thought.”