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When they were inside, I let out a harsh puff of air and glanced up at the sky.
“Sometimes life gives us interesting curveballs, doesn’t it?”
The sound of Sheila’s voice had my head snapping in her direction. I thought she’d followed them in, but she was still waiting on the porch for me, a patient smile on her gently wrinkled face.
I managed a short nod.
“You still coming in?” she asked.
There was no judgment in her tone, no command.
“Not sure I should, Mrs. Wilder.”
She clucked with her tongue, then came down the steps to stand beside me. There was a book tucked underneath her arm, and she moved it into one hand as she stared up at the house, like I was.
“It’s just dinner, Jax,” she said. “You’ve been to enough of them that you know how it’s going to play out.”
“Not this one,” I answered. “Can’t tell me this one isn’t a little different.”
Sheila sighed quietly. “Maybe a little,” she conceded. “But there’s no one inside that house who doesn’t want you there.” The dry, sideways glance I gave her had her lips quirking up in a tiny smile. “All right, maybe one. But he’s just a man trying to find his footing, same as you.”
“Probably wants to put that foot up my ass.”
Her answering laugh was quiet and short, but I heard it allthe same. “Don’t go assuming the worst, Jax Cartwright. He might surprise you.” Unlikely. Really fucking unlikely. That guy shoved his tongue down Poppy’s throat simply because I was sitting there, and I couldn’t even really blame him. “And there’s no one inside that house who doesn’t want you here.”
Everything seemed so easy when she said it like that. But it wasn’t easy.
Like Poppy asking if we could be friends.
Like Margot telling me to just write down what I was feeling.
Like my idiot self thinking that I could walk away from Poppy without telling her I wanted her.
Easy was a fucking myth. Not a single part of life was easy. Even the good things. Friendship or love or family. Because those things came with people, their baggage, feelings, and their past weighing it all down.
The best thing I could do was just not make it worse.
And the fear of that had me asking something I might not have if it was anyone else standing by my side.
“Am I making it harder on her by being here?”
Sheila’s face softened in understanding. “No, Jax. You’re right where you need to be. You’re part of this family—her family—whether you’re here or not. And I believe that you’ll be a wonderful father, if you let yourself.”
I scoffed. “Like I fucking know how.”
She set a soft hand on my arm. “I remember your mom, you know.”
My head snapped in her direction. “You do?”
“Of course. She was so young when she had you, wasn’t she?”
Jaw tight, I nodded.
“Everyone does their best, even if it doesn’t always look that way, and I think your mom did the best she could considering she was just a kid, and she was alone.” Sheilapulled the book out from underneath her arm. “I brought this for you. Pulled it out of Tim’s box of books.”
Slowly, I took it from her, my fingers tracing the warped edges. “This was his?”
“Bought it when I was pregnant with Poppy because he was convinced we didn’t remember how to do it.”
