“I told you, Poppy. I’m not letting you lose the café. Whatever happens, I want to protect you and your name at all costs. People expect this kind of behaviour from me, this is who I am to the public. It might cause some backlash, and I’llget raked over the coals by the media, but the least I can do is shoulder the blame, spare you and the café.”
A burning pain radiates behind my ribs, and my eyes well with tears.
Jett could have responded to this in a thousand different ways. He could have denied responsibility, he could have played it off like he was doing me a favour,anythingto convince Nuclear that they shouldn’t tear up his contract.
I would giveanythingfor him to be able to take it back.
“Jett, this is on both of us. I don’t want you to…”
“To what? Hear all the nasty remarks people make about me on social media, hell, to my face? I’m already used to that Poppy. I’ve dealt with it for a long time, and I’m fine with that. They can villainize me all they want, but you? You’re fucking perfect in every way. You are a ray of goddamned sunshine, and I will do everything I can to make sure your light doesn’t get dimmed.”
My heart clenches, but not at the way Jett talks about me. The way he talks about himself. As if he’s lived this persona for so long it’s just who he is now. A playboy and a womanizer.
“And us?” My voice shakes, because it’s simultaneously the last thing I want to think about and the only thing I care about.
He leans in and places his lips on my forehead, his hand cupping my jaw and the side of my neck. I let my eyes flutter closed, taking in the comforting warmth of him. But when he pulls away, the expression on his face is pained.
“You need to stay far away from me.”
“Wh-what?” I stammer past the feeling of something constricting my throat.
“The ruse is over, Poppy,” Jett says. “This was going to end at some point or another. If we end it now, maybe we can minimize the damage. At least for you.”
All of the air is sucked from my lungs. But Jett continues as if he hasn’t just crushed whatever hope, however naïve of me, that our relationship could be more than a PR stunt.
”My statement will hopefully prevent any major legal fallout. I don’t know if it’ll be enough for you to keep the café, but you need to try. Let me deal with the press. Let me take the brunt of this while you work on saving the café.”
“But Jett, I lo–”
Jett cuts me off before I can speak the words that my heart has been screaming for the last few weeks.
“I know, Poppy. I know.” His voice cracks. “Please just let me do this for you.”
I blink back the tears stinging my eyes.
My rational self understands that Jett has a point. This is for the best. Ending this marriage is the right thing to do. Once you screw up this royally, the only way to come out the other side is to accept responsibility and do the next right thing.
Besides, this was always the plan, our marriage was never meant to last. It was always just a means to an end. I can tell myself all of this logically, but inside, my heart is cracking, breaking in two.
Because I never thought it would happen like this.
And recently? I didn’t want it to end at all.
CHAPTER 42
JETT
My relationshipwith Poppy has always had an expiry date.
The death of this marriage was pre-planned, and I wanted it that way. It was by design. It was supposed to keep me from having this awful, sticky, murky feeling in my chest. It’s like a storm cloud, there’s this constant dark, swirling with the occasional sharp twinge of pain.
I can’t fucking stand it.
I came home right after our conversation, by myself, leaving Poppy alone in her apartment. It took everything in me to walk away, to not turn around and take back everything I said. To tell Poppy I love her, too. I know that’s what she was going to say, but I couldn’t let her.
Speaking it out into the open would only make this harder, make this infinitely worse.
Coming back to this cavernous, empty house was depressing as hell.
