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The turn in the topic was doing weird things to my insides. It wasn’t jealousy because hello, what a hypocrite I would be. But this blaring curiosity was so loud, it had my ears ringing.
“And then there was Esme,” Poppy continued. “That’s the one Mom and Dad met when they visited over Christmas because she lived with him.” She wrinkled her nose. “Dad said she was perfectly lovely but not even close to the right one for Ian.”
Ian’s brow furrowed. “I didn’t know that.”
Poppy set her chin in her hand and pinned him with an innocent look. “Did you ask Dad what he thought of her?”
“We all know the answer to that,” Cameron said.
The annoyance stamped on Ian’s face was such a mighty, terrifying thing, I struggled not to laugh. He cut me a look. “You think this is funny?”
I leaned closer, settling my elbow on the table. “I think it’s funny that you are completely unaware of how you act in relationships. You’ve always been like this.”
“Like what?”
“You don’t ask anyone’s opinion when you’re even a little bit afraid to hear the answer.”
For just a moment, I worried I said too much. That I cut too close to a truth about Ian that he may not want brought up on a night like this.
And even if I was right, because Ian was like that, there was something wonderful about the fact that he simply was who he was. That he didn’t put on a mask or try to be what everyone else wanted from him. For good or for bad, the way Ian interacted with the people in his life was completely genuine, even if he didn’t spend much time thinking about why he was that way. There was no artifice to this man. Not a fake bone in his body.
And I loved that about him.
Not loved loved. But friend-loved. God, my face was probably melting off.
The way he looked at me after I said it had me holding my breath for a moment.
Not the time to push, Harlow. Not tonight.
His thumb tapped on the side of his empty beer bottle, his eyes tracing my face before he said, “Whatever you say, sparky.”
I bit down on my bottom lip, but there was no stopping my smile. After a beat, his gaze moved back to the table, his frame rising and falling on a deep breath.
“Sparky?” Poppy asked. “How’d you get that nickname?”
I tore my attention away from Ian and smiled at his sister. “I think he started calling me that in fourth or fifth grade? I’m not even sure why.”
Ian made a small grunting noise. “Fifth, I think. She was always piping up in class, arguing with teachers?—”
“Only when they were wrong,” I interrupted. “And that was only a couple of times.”
With a slight raise of his eyebrow like I’d just proven his point, Ian shook his head and took a drink of water. Cameron leaned in to whisper something in Ivy’s ears, and she nodded, ducking in to kiss him softly on the lips.
Ian’s brother stood from his chair and offered his hand to Ivy. “I think it’s time to dance, duchess.”
She hopped gracefully out of her seat, and he led her to the makeshift dance floor, where a few couples swayed to the gentle twang of a slow country song. As Cameron wrapped his big arms around Ivy, he smiled down at her in a way that had my heart aching. How long had it been since I’d been able to just watch a couple so completely in love?
The writer-wheels turned in my head while I clocked all the ways they were different, how, if I’d met them separately, I never would have put them together in my head. The big, tough Cameron and the fierce, polished Ivy. But something was incredibly poignant about the softness they brought out in each other, the way they moved and talked and laughed with complete ease.
What made a couple work? I wondered. What about the quirks and flaws and their combined pasts made them perfectly fit together like that. I thought about the couple in my book, the cagey way they danced around each other, chalking their attraction up to their situation. And maybe the stage for their story was the impetus of that tension, but it didn’t create it out of thin air. It was built into them, their differences and similarities started the fire, even if something else lit the match.
My fingers drummed along the edge of my arm, and I swear, if my computer was in front of me, I’d have started working immediately.
“You’ve got that look on your face,” Ian said. He’d leaned closer, his mouth brushing my hair as he whispered. “What are you thinking about?”
“Romantic compatibility.” I ducked my chin and gave him a look from the corner of my eye. “Normally, I watch people and think about murder, so you should be very grateful right now.”
He laughed, a hearty, rich sound that had my heart aching for a different reason. “I am. Especially now that I know you have hidden weapons everywhere.”
