Promise Me This (Wilder Family, #3)

by Karla Sorensen

I could’ve written a book about the things my friendship with Ian Wilder taught me. The very first being the real and true heartbreak you could experience from the self-sacrificing distance between two slightly codependent friends.

Watching your kid get older was the strangest double-edged sword. Feeling your heart break daily because they didn’t depend on you quite as much while wanting to cry from how fucking proud you were that they weren’t a total asshole human being.

You know who you went to for advice growing up? Her. I’m not trying to play matchmaker, Ian, but the fact that she’s here now, and it’s as easy as breathing for you to play roommate and best friend and be the protective guy with her daughter, I wouldn’t have to work very hard to build up her role in your life. She is your person, and she always has been.”

Inside my head, I tried to slam down a thick metal wall—tall and black and impenetrable—against thoughts like that. Maybe if I built up a big enough barrier, I could pretend they didn’t exist. “You looked like you needed it.” She sucked in a big breath and didn’t move. The wall in my head trembled. I didn’t want her to move, and I wanted to shove her away from me with both hands.

“We tell Olive that it’s okay to have big feelings—to be frustrated or angry or worried, whatever it might be—but we have to let those feelings out in a way where you don’t lash out at the people around you.” She batted her eyelashes. “Should I set up a feelings corner at the jobsite, Ian?” “Fuck. Off.”

Insight, more than we realized, was one of the greatest gifts in being able to let go of your past. We could study it and pick it apart, but until we got some of those missing pieces, almost an element of our own story could haunt us.

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

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.

“If I fall and break my hip to this song, I’ll never recover,” she said, grasping at my hand when I offered it to her.

He was giving me a gift, thoughtful and attentive to a degree that managed to make my heart stop. The gift was that he remembered. The gift was in feeling seen. That the things that mattered to me mattered to him.

It all felt permanent. The kind of alteration that wasn’t quickly undone. Like ink under skin or the severing of a limb. There was us before this kiss, and us after.

There were no whispers in my mind of we shouldn’t or this is a bad idea or what will happen tomorrow, because the only thing left behind was a blindingly simple truth—this is what I was yearning for.

The way someone acted, for good or for bad, usually said so much more about them and what they’d been through than it did about you.

To anyone else, it might have seemed like a weak substitute for an apology, but I was always more of a fan of changed behavior over empty words.

“I don’t need to understand it. Them loving what they do is plenty for me.” The line of my mom’s throat moved on a tight swallow. “And you don’t … you don’t worry about them failing?” Understanding filled Sheila’s face, as it often did. “No. Because even if they do, I think it’s pretty wonderful that they were willing to try, no matter the outcome.”

“I feel like there’s no way I won’t mess this up,” I admitted in a hoarse voice. I pressed the heels of my hands against my eye sockets, still crouched there in front of his grave, that dirt-filled hole that couldn’t give me advice and couldn’t make me feel better about any of this. “And I can’t mess up with her.”

“No matter how hard I tried not to, I fell in love with my best friend, and nothing has ever scared me more than this.”

I cannot fucking handle the thought that she’d be one of those things I’d lose again. Everyone thinks this should be so easy, to change something this big between us, but it’s not. There’s no going back once we try this, and it’s not just me and Harlow. I … I would never forgive myself if I hurt them, if I lost them.”

“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.”

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

“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.

“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.”

If I started counting how many hours and days I’d spent with Harlow, it would make my head spin. It didn’t matter how much our lives we’d been apart, but this woman was embedded so deep inside me. Whatever I was made of, whatever made me me, she was a part of it. The best part.

“I love you,” I told her. “And I don’t need some big fancy wedding to make this mean more. We’ve already made it pretty clear to our families that we’re never going to follow the expected path. If you want to keep it between us and we’ll have a party for everyone else later, I’ll do whatever you want. Or if it’s too fast and you want the fancy dress in a church, God, I’ll wait but I don’t want to wait long. You’re already my partner, my best friend,” I said fervently, “but I want to call you my wife.”