Promise Me This (Wilder Family, #3)

by Karla Sorensen

Ian cleared his throat pointedly. “Jax there is the one who gave me the shit advice to ignore you.” The guy in question widened his eyes. “That’s not what I said.” His gaze swung to me. “That’s not what I said.” I quirked an eyebrow. “Let me guess, you’re single.” Cameron snorted. “Terminally.” Jax sighed. “I didn’t … I didn’t tell him to ignore you.”

“No wonder you two get along,” the guy next to Cameron mumbled. “She’s the female version of you.” “I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said breezily.

“I’d panic. Can you imagine if we’re sitting at dinner and Parker asks me to pass the salt, and I blurt out that he needs to work on his rush blocking if he expects their run game to improve?” I locked eyes with her. “I would pay you cold hard cash to say something like that to him.”

There was only one reason her happiness would matter this much to me. Why I’d face down everything that came her way. Not because I was the prince or the knight in her story—but because I was the dragon wrapping itself around the thing it loved most. Breathing fire and providing armor and ripping down every stronghold with the snap of jaws and fueled by the fierce way she’d embedded herself into me.

“Loss is one of the hardest parts of life, isn’t it? No one’s immune to it. Sometimes we know when it’s coming, and sometimes we don’t,” she said quietly. While I watched, she crouched down and gently laid the roses in front of the headstone, then smoothed her hand over his name while her chin trembled. “Your father was my best friend, too, you know. We could talk about anything, and that man understood me in ways no one else ever has. Choosing to love each other after everything we’d been through was the biggest gamble of our lives.” Sheila sucked in a deep breath and stared at the lifeless rock in front of her, voice hardly above a whisper when she continued. “Some days I still wake up and think, oh God, I don’t think I can do this without him. I miss him so much that I can’t believe I’m still standing.” With tears streaming down her face, she stood and cupped my face. “Even if I had half the time with him that I did, there is not one second of this heartbreak that I wouldn’t do a million times over because of what it was like to be loved by him, to build a life and a family with him.”

“You look at me like I’m your whole world,” I admitted quietly. “Like it almost hurts to feel something this big for someone and not know if it’s just you.” I sucked in a fortifying breath, my pulse spreading in a giant throbbing beat over my skin. “It’s probably the same way I look at you.”

“You are the love of my life, Ian Wilder,” I said, tears filling my eyes. “And there is nothing to be scared of. Not when we’re together.” The first tear fell as I kissed him sweetly. He pulled back, his own eyes glossy too. With the pad of his thumb, he brushed the tear away. “My heart has been yours since we were five years old, and I don’t ever want it back.”

“You are it, Harlow, for the rest of my life. I’ll want to marry you soon. Fuck dating, we’ve known each other way too long to deal with that bullshit. I want everything. You, me, Sage, whatever little smart-ass kids come after. Everything.”