Promise Me This (Wilder Family, #3)

by Karla Sorensen

her smile made me happy.

“No, she said you’re only nice to people you trust.”

“I came because you’re always the person I want to be around when life feels unsteady.”

There was no way for her to know what that did to me, or how the responsibility of that was the easiest weight I’d ever carried in my life.

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.

I sighed slowly through my nose. Her eyes gleamed, and fuck if I didn’t feel them like a slice to my skin.

My throat was bone-dry as I tried to swallow, tried to quash the quick rise of fear at how good it felt to hold her hand, at how right it was to be here with her, and how deeply fucked I would be if I lost her again.

The lights over her face made her cheekbones seem higher, her lips softer, and her eyes deeper. Fuck, if I didn’t want to fall straight into them.

“Maybe next time, young man,” he said, “if a beautiful woman is looking at you like that, don’t be the one pulling away.” I blew out a harsh breath, swiping a hand over my mouth as I left the rink.

“Mountains look good today, don’t they?” he’d say. “They’re mountains, Dad. They always look the same.” Where some parents might have rolled their eyes at the droll teenage response, my dad would simply smile. “Something beautiful about that, isn’t there? Nothing will move them. No matter what happens in our lives or how big or scary something is, they’ll always stay right there where we can see them.”

God, the way this woman looked at me. It felt like someone digging straight into my fucking soul. I wanted to know what she saw. What she’d always seen, even if I couldn’t. Or what I refused to see.

“And I can’t mess up with her.”

“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,”

“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.”

“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.”

The biggest changes in our life always come with a little fear and a lot of honesty.”

But that woman has always seen straight into your heart. So let her see all of it.”

You two. Someday you’ll realize how special it is, what you have.”