He waited until she’d slammed the door, then thumbed the lock on his phone, sealing the house with a satisfyingly mechanical click. He listened to her car engine rev, then fade into the distance.
Without even thinking about it, his finger tapped over the Instagram icon and brought up Poppy’s page. In the past, when things had ended with women he’d been involved with, he’d taken a few months to himself to reset. To get back to a baseline of well-being and center himself. Typically, he was drained and exhausted from the energy it had taken from him to maintain even the baseline of what he’d had to be just to have any companionship.
But he had no desire for any self-reflection or isolation. It was the opposite. He wanted to immerse himself in Poppy. He wanted to find out everything about the woman. What she smelled like, what her mannerisms were, was she right-handed or left-handed, did she have a security blanket growing up, what was her biggest fear or insecurity, what were the gestures and idiosyncrasies that made her uniquely her. The pattern of her breathing, the gait of her walk, the cadence of her speech. When she told stories, did she talk with her hands? When she ate something that tasted bad, did she ask other people to taste it?When she watched scary movies, did she close her eyes at the scary parts? He wanted to know everything that made her who she was.
Alone time was the last thing he wanted. He wanted Poppy time, and a lot of it.
5
Poppy satbeside her brother Liam as the engine idled in the Mountain Ridge parking lot. The sun was setting below the pine ridgeline. The wedding was starting in fifteen minutes, guests were arriving and the soft sound of violin music drifted into the cab of the SUV.
She wasn’t sure what was going on with the man next to her. Liam, usually an unflappable force of steel, stared silently through the windshield at nothing. Poppy watched the muscles in his jaw clench and unclench, a metronome of tension. She couldn’t remember a time her brother had been so visibly off-kilter. The day before, he’d been practically… buoyant. It was the only word for it. He’d seemed happier, lighter, and freer than she’d ever witnessed in her life. Now, less than twenty-four hours later, he was the very definition of brooding, and the silence was beginning to hurt her ears.
Trying to lighten the mood, she asked, “Sooooo, is the plan to just sit here until the engine runs out of gas?”
Her quip landed like a lead balloon.
“Okay, I tried to be jokey, but I’m just going to ask you, what is wrong?” She took the head-on approach. No reason to beat around the bush.
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
Bullshit, he was “fine.” She lifted her arm and tapped the end of his nose with her fingertip.
He recoiled.
“Just making sure it’s not growing, Pinocchio.”
His eyes sliced to hers, and if looks could kill, she would be fatally wounded.
“Okay, it wasn’t my most clever, but I’m trying here.” Poppy lifted her arms in mock surrender. She lowered her hands back down to her lap, then tried a softer approach. “You know, you’re allowed to benot fine. And I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this, but not only can you have feelings, you can actually talk about them.”
Liam had only been in Poppy’s life for eight years, but in that time, he’d been the definition of a lone wolf. He’d been estranged from his family, who were now in town. Or at least the man he thought was his father. He hadn’t spoken to his little brother, Tristan, and if Poppy wasn’t mistaken, he was in love with Frankie, Tristan’s fiancée, so there was a lot going on that he never opened up about. They would all be in attendance at his father’s wedding, which was probably why he hadn’t gotten out of the car.
When he didn’t respond, she exhaled as her head dropped back in exasperation.
Clearly she needed to take another tactic. “Okay, can I at least know what flavor offinewe’re dealing with?” She twisted so she was facing him, tucking her knees up under her. “Is itweddingfine,familyfine, or is it—” She paused dramatically. “—Frankiefine?”
He flinched at the mention of Frankie’s name.
Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner.
“Okay, got it.” She snapped her fingers and pointed at him with finger guns.
He pretended to have no clue what she was talking about. “Got what?”
“Got thatyouare upset aboutFrankie.”
His head shook back and forth. “I’m not.”
“You do know you’re a terrible liar, right?” she asked rhetorically. “Like, epically abysmal.”
“It’s just…it’s complicated.”
“When is it not?!” Mark Zuckerberg didn’t create an entire category of relationship status under that for nothing.
“Okay, so what did you do?” she sing-songed.
“Me?” Liam shifted towards Poppy, his expression offended. “Why do you think I did something?”
