Promise Me This (Wilder Family, #3)

by Karla Sorensen

“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 saw this story online about a romance writer who kept bringing cars into a tire shop because she was getting good words in their waiting room. Neighbors and her whole family, everyone’s cars. Maybe I should try that next.”

“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.”

I saw all that crown molding and the backlighting by the way, you trying to gain son brownie points with all that extra shit?” “Aren’t you the guy who added swings and skylights when you built her a chicken coop?”

But, to me, your one person was also the one you wanted to create a family with. The one you kissed because you couldn’t not kiss them. That you shared dark nights and dirty words with. I’d never found that either. In London, I’d only tried a couple of times, and each attempt left me feeling just a little emptier, and even more sure that I’d never marry. Had I ever imagined Harlow as that one person? As I drove away, I caught my own gaze in the rearview mirror, refusing to answer that question, even in the privacy of my own mind.

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.

“I 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.

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I didn’t practice anything. I didn’t know what to say or how to tell you that the thought of fucking this up was the scariest thing I’ve ever faced,” he said, a growling edge to his voice that had me shivering. He kissed me again, a hard, fast kiss. “But I love you. I love you. I love 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.”

“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.”