Page 21 of Promises & Pumpkins (Haunted in Hazy Cove #1)
Miles
“Miles? What are you doing here?” Harper looked out the front door and past me like she was checking if I was alone. I held out the mug I had in one hand and the cookies I had in the other. She looked at them, opening the door wider but not taking them from me.
“I brought you cookies,” I said, offering her the plate again. “And coffee. Maddie helped me make them. Meaning she watched and is taking more than her share of the credit.”
Harper choked back a small laugh but took the plate from me. “Thank you,” she said. There was an awkward tension between us that I couldn’t place my finger on. “You didn’t have to do that.” Then she took the mug, and I felt relieved.
“Of course I did. Maddie was so glad that you were the one to take her to the hospital the other day.” I chuckled but when I put my hand on Harper’s hip, she stiffened, and I swallowed the next laugh.
Then I leaned in, eager to feel my lips against the softness of her cheek until she turned her head away.
When she took a step back, I frowned. “What’s wrong? ”
“Nothing!” She was too quick to answer, and the way the plate rattled when she went to set it on the entry table told me it was a lot more than nothing. Harper sighed, closing her eyes to take a deep breath before opening them again. “I think maybe this is just all moving a little too fast.”
I lifted a brow. “Too fast? It’s just cookies.” I wasn’t asking her to marry me.
“It’s not just cookies.” When she looked up at me, there was no playfulness in her face. She lacked the brightness that had been in her eyes when she’d looked at me lately. “I mean us. This.” Harper waved her hand between us. “I think it’s too much.” Maybe I just like you.
What had changed? “Too much? What happened?”
“At the hospital yesterday, Maddie told the nurse she thinks I’m going to be her new mom. Miles.” She put her hand on my forearm in a way that felt like preemptive consolation. “I like you. More than I maybe realized, but I told you. I can’t be a mom. I’d be a terrible mom. I don’t want kids.”
What was she trying to say? “I’m not asking you to be her mom.” I sighed, looking back toward my house. I could see Maddie’s hair in the window and her nosey reflection trying to catch a glimpse. My stomach sank. “But Maddie is my everything. She’s my whole world. Everything I’ve got is for her.”
“I know.” She sniffled, and her eyes shined with tears that lined up along her bottom eyelid. When she looked at me and the first tear rolled down her cheek, my chest cracked. “And I don’t know that I can be that.”
My breath was pulled from me with each word that constricted my chest tighter.
“I understand.” I grabbed Harper’s hand, pulling her to me.
I tried to convince myself that it felt wrong with her body against me—that she didn’t feel like she belonged there.
Then I kissed the top of her head and let my lips linger, breathing in the scent of her shampoo.
“Unfortunately, I can’t be with anyone that doesn’t wholeheartedly want her too. ”
“I know.” Her voice cracked, and, with it, the lump in my throat became harder to swallow.
She stepped back, handing me the mug and plate of cookies from the entry table.
For a moment, both of our hands lingered on either side of the ceramic.
Then she let go, and her words felt so final. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too.” Stepping back onto the porch, I remembered the first time I was there—the way I’d helped her get back into her kitchen. There had been a mischievous playfulness to her expression and a light bounce in her step that now felt like it was gone.
When the door closed behind me, I paused.
I needed to get the disappointment off my face before I got next door.
As expected, Maddie was be waiting at the door dying to know what her favorite neighbor-and-dance-coach-turned-friend thought of the cookies she had supervised me while making.
But as soon as she saw the plate still in my hand and wrapped the same way it was a few minutes earlier when I left, her smile dropped.
“She hated them.” Her little voice was even smaller when she made the assumption. I shook my head, setting the plate and mug down before squatting to her level.
“No, sweetheart. She didn’t hate them.” I didn’t know what to tell her. I knew she had been watching, and she was smarter than she would let on.
Maddie looked up at me. “It’s my fault, huh?” She sighed, and little tears filled her eyes, threatening to make their way down her face.
“What is?” I shook my head, torn between not wanting to involve her and not wanting to keep her in the dark.
“I made Harper mad. I said the wrong thing to the doctor lady yesterday. That’s why she left.” A quiet sob shook her body. “Is that why she doesn’t want th-th-the co-co-cookies?” Every word broke around another cry.
I grabbed Maddie and pulled her into my arms, wrapping them around her body until she stopped shaking.
“You didn’t say anything wrong. Harper loves you,” I said.
I didn’t think I was wrong. I’d seen how Harper acted toward Maddie.
It made my chest tighten again. “She and Daddy are friends, and you’ll still see her all the time at dance. ”
She sniffled and looked up at me like she was trying to believe me. “Do you promise?”
I hated making promises I couldn’t keep for her. Were we friends? I didn’t know that she would get to see her all the time at dance once the recital was over. But when Maddie sniffled again, I hugged her tighter. “Yeah, sweetheart. I promise.”