Chapter 15 - Poppy
The car moves through the dark streets, and I can't stop shaking.
I press my hands flat against my thighs, willing them to be still. My reflection stares back at me from the tinted window—pale face, wide eyes, lips still parted from words I didn't say. I look like a woman who's seen a ghost.
Maybe I have. Maybe the ghost is me—the version of myself I thought I knew, the woman who would never feel anything but revulsion for a man like Gabriel Ambrose.
I want everything.
His voice echoes in my head, low and intimate. His fingers on my jaw, tilting my face up. The heat of his body so close to mine, the way the air between us seemed to thicken and spark.
I should have pulled away. I should have slapped him, screamed at him, run from him the way any sane person would run from a predator.
Instead, I stood there. I let him touch me. And for one terrible, shameful moment, I wanted him to do more.
The driver glances at me in the rearview mirror. "Are you all right, miss?"
"Fine." The word comes out strangled. "I'm fine."
I'm not fine. I'm the opposite of fine. I'm falling apart, unraveling, losing my grip on everything I thought I understood about myself.
He's a murderer. I watched him kill a man. I stood in a doorway and saw blood on his hands and peace on his face, and I know—Iknow—what he's capable of.
So why didn't I pull away?
The car stops in front of my building. I mumble thanks to the driver and stumble out onto the sidewalk, fumbling for my keys. The familiar motions—lock, stairs, door, deadbolt—feel foreign, like I'm performing actions I learned in another life.
Inside, the apartment is dark and silent. The dahlia sits on the counter where I left it, its petals still impossibly perfect. I stare at it for a long moment, then turn away.
I can't look at it right now. I can't look at anything that reminds me of him.
The shower helps a little. I stand under water as hot as I can bear, letting it scald my skin, trying to wash away the memory of his touch. It doesn't work. I can still feel his fingers on my jaw, a phantom pressure that won't fade.
I want to take you apart piece by piece and see what's underneath.
I press my forehead against the tile and close my eyes.
What's wrong with me? What kind of person feels attraction to someone who's been systematically destroying her life? This isn't Stockholm syndrome—it's been weeks, not months or years. This is something else, something darker, something I don't have a name for.
Or maybe I do have a name for it. Maybe the name isbroken.
I get out of the shower and wrap myself in a towel, avoiding the mirror. I don't want to see my reflection right now.I don't want to see the woman who stood in that ballroom and trembled under a murderer's touch.
Sleep doesn't come.
I lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, replaying the evening in excruciating detail. The way he watched me across the room during the dinner party. The way he found excuses to stand close, to speak to me, to remind me of his presence. The way he said my name—Poppy—like it belonged to him.
And then the ballroom. The empty room, the dim light, his voice behind me. The moment when everything shifted, when the professional distance I'd been maintaining collapsed like a house of cards.
Look at me.
And I did. God help me, I did.
Around three in the morning, I give up on sleep and make tea instead. I sit at my kitchen table with my hands wrapped around the warm mug, watching the steam rise and disappear. The dahlia watches back, silent and patient.
"I hate you," I tell it.
The dahlia doesn't respond.
