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She snorted, wandering through the room with a discerning eye. It was just a couch plopped into the middle of the room, facing a TV sitting on the floor. In the spacious kitchen—with creamy white cabinets and a deep farmhouse sink—I’d set a big circular table with a turned pedestal base that I’d finished just a few days earlier, and my chest swelled with pride when she stopped and studied it with wide eyes and a slightly open mouth.
Then she shuttered her expression. “Table’s fine, I guess.”
I hid my smile. That was high praise from her, so I decided not to tell her I was the one who made it.
“Imagine if you had chairs here,” she said, fingertips dancing lightly over the edge of the knotty alder edge. “People could sit down and everything.”
“Imagine.”
At my dry response, she rolled her lips together, but a dimple popped in her cheek, so I knew she was hiding a smile of her own. I stayed quiet as she took in the kitchen, then wandered down the small hallway so she could poke her head into my bedroom and bathroom. I stood in the family room, arms crossed over my chest while I waited for her to satisfy her curiosity, which ended at the staircase that led up to the other bedrooms and bathroom. There was a gleam in her eye as she looked up those stairs, but she stopped, leaning her shoulder against the wall as her gaze came to rest on mine.
Neither of us said anything, and I waffled between delirious happiness and extreme worry that I’d lost my ability to talk to her.
No. The dynamic between us always rested in our brutal honesty. It was why our friendship worked.
“You come here to stare at my house, or are we going to converse at some point?”
One dark eyebrow arched slowly. “Still the friendliest of your family, I see.”
“Undisputed king.”
“I bet you make little kids and sweet old ladies cry when you go out in public.”
I tilted my head. “Only on Sundays.”
She nodded gravely. “It’s why you’re not married, isn’t it? I always worried that you stopped developing people skills in the first grade.”
A low growling sound came from deep in my chest, and after a brief twitch of her lips, Harlow lost her battle against her laughter.
The sound of it—in my home—had my lips softening into a reluctant grin.
“I might have missed you a little bit, Keaton,” I told her.
Her laughter slowly ebbed, and at my quiet admission, her eyes went all soft and shit.
“I might have missed you a little bit too.”
I blew out a slow breath. “Dammit, this means I’ll have to forgive Poppy, doesn’t it?”
Harlow smiled. “I’m guessing the big house with a barn and a mediocre table with no chairs means you’re back for good?”
With a glance around the room, I nodded. “Looks like it.” Then I eyed her. “What about you?”
“I think so,” she said. “My digs aren’t quite this roomy, though. Just a guest room at my parents’ and no privacy to go with the daily dose of judgment about my life choices.”
“Now we get to the meat of it,” I murmured, and Harlow laughed under her breath.
She opened her mouth to say something, and her phone dinged. She pulled it out of the back pocket of her jeans and briefly closed her eyes. “Dammit.”
“Something wrong?”
When she opened her eyes again, the disappointment was stamped clear as day. “I might need to beg for a ride home. I’m being summoned,” she said lightly.
Now the disappointment was likely stamped on my face too. It wasn’t enough time. It was impossible to erase seventeen years in one visit, but hell if I didn’t want to try.
“I can take you.” Then I took a step closer. “But before we get in that car, tell me the most important thing I need to know about Harlow Keaton since we last talked.”
The change in her face, her eyes, was immediate. Then she tapped on the screen of her phone.
