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“There’s a system for a reason,” I yelled back. “Measure twice, cut once, right?”
My brother muttered something, but he was too far up the stairs for me to hear it.
Ian followed him, a smug smile on his face. “There is literally nothing I love more than someone throwing Cameron’s own life advice back in his face.”
Behind him, Harlow paused, arms full of grocery totes. “Nothing you love more, huh?”
He gave her a heated look, and she ducked her face closer to his so he could sneak a sweet kiss. “Almost nothing,” he murmured against her mouth. “You’re a close second, at least.”
She gave him a mocking glare, ignoring his smirk as she brushed past him to deliver the food into the kitchen, where Greer and Adaline unloaded dishes.
I double-checked the sheet for Ian’s box and tapped the side of it. “Laundry room,” I said.
There was no need for a moving truck, but my driveway and the cul-de-sac were lined with Wilder Homes work trucks, each packed to the gills with boxes earlier that morning before we departed from my mom’s house.
After my brothers left, Greer and Adaline followed in another big vehicle. Mom and I took a moment alone in my suddenly empty room. The walls were now devoid of all the artwork I’d accumulated over the years—family photos and splashes of color in the art I favored. My closets were bare, and so were the bathroom drawers across the hall. My dresser was in the back of Ian’s truck, the mattress and bed frame in Cameron’s. They’d unload those first, then return for the boxes lining the front porch.
While I took a moment to say goodbye to the room I grew up in, in the only home I’d ever known, my phone dinged with a text.
Parker: Heard I’m missing all the fun today. Does this mean your bedroom is up for grabs? I could really use an off-site trophy room…
Me: Oh, do you have trophies to display now? I must’ve missed that.
Parker followed that up with a middle finger emoji, and I laughed under my breath, tucking my phone away and allowing that moment of levity to act as an anchor on a day when my emotions were rioting.
Over moving, over movingon, and which one was clawing to be at the forefront of my mind. Leaving something big in your past was gut-wrenching, even if good was to be gained from it.
A bedroom. A house. A person.
Packing up my entire life over the past week made me feel like someone entirely new was the one making the move across town. I could hardly recognize myself now, not just because of the physical changes, but also through the intentional setting aside of things that I knew weren’t good for me. Things that weren’t right for me.
It was that little piece of hard-to-swallow wisdom that had me viciously blocking out that moment with Jax, the tiptoeing of a necessary line.
There was no room here for big, heart-breaking errors between us, and he knew it as well as I did. When I looked down the road at all the ways we’d need to be there for each other, I couldn’t handle the thought that a brief flare of heat from some untapped chemistry would be the reason we couldn’t coexist well.
It didn’t even really make me feel any better to know that I wasn’t the only one feeling it. Somehow it only made me feel worse.
All of it heaped on an already very emotional day had me crying before a single box was unloaded into the new house.
My mom had her arm wrapped around my shoulders as I cried silent tears standing in the middle of that room. The mirror stayed mounted on the wall, and while I leaned my head against hers, I touched my finger to the chip in the bottom right corner.
“You sure you’re going to be okay?” I whispered.
“Oh honey,” Mom said, “that’s supposed to be my question to you when I leave your house later tonight, you know.”
I closed my eyes and sniffed piteously. “I know, but I’ll still worry about you.”
With firm hands, Mom turned me to face her. Then she cupped my face, drawing her thumbs along my wet cheeks. “This is what’s supposed to happen, my darling girl.” Her eyes were bright with unshed tears as she wrapped me in a tight hug. “This will always be your home, Poppy. Just like it’ll always be home to Cameron and Ian and Parker, to Erik and Greer and Adaline. Doesn’t matter how old you get, or how far away you move, or what changes in your life.” She pulled her face back and smiled through her tears. “Even better is that you’ll have more than one. You have the home you’ll create yourself, and you have the one that will welcome you back whenever you need it.”
Pregnancy hormones didn’t stand a chance against a Sheila Wilder pep talk, and I melted into her embrace again, and the two of us cried for a few minutes. Mourning the inevitable change in our lives, and just how different everything looked now than it had a year ago.
By the time I pulled up to my house, our eyes were dry, and we were ready to work. The bed got set up first, my dresser moved in next, followed by the couch and two chairs I’d found at a cute little secondhand store in Redmond.
Greer and Adaline tackled making my bed with cleansheets and a gorgeous white bedding set I’d splurged on from one of our suppliers at Wilder House, moving downstairs into the kitchen once that was done. Ivy took it upon herself to unpack my clothes in the double closets while the boys returned to Mom’s house to get the rest of the boxes.
Jax joined them on that second trip, and I only allowed myself one—just one—lingering glimpse at the pop of his arms and the hard line of his jaw when he carried a box into the kitchen. At the look in his eyes as he actively avoided glancing back in my direction. I hadn’t seen him all week, the longest stretch we’d gone since he arrived home, and all friggin day, my eyes had the horrifying tendency to seek him out when I entered one of the rooms.
We made it two hours.
