Page 15 of Halloween Town

What was wrong with these people?

Then Thom bent down, picked up the pearl, and handed it to Poppy. Good job, handsome. After putting it in the jar, Poppy went back down on her hands and knees to look for the other one. Ruby floated off the table, and when Naomi cleared her throat, she looked to where she was pointing and saw the second pearl lying against the skirting board. Right, Poppy was heading in the right direction; there was no way she wouldn’t see it.

Ruby frowned when Poppy’s hand darted out and scooped up the pearl, then slipped it into the pocket of her shorts. Ruby and Naomi exchanged puzzled looks as Poppy continued to pretend to look for the missing pearl.

But she had the pearl…

In her pocket.

What was this girl up to?

Poppy

Poppy looked Thom in the eye and lied directly to his face.

She had the pearl. There was no way he’d be able to see it under the baggy clothing. She hoped.

Poppy ignored the hand he held out to help her up and climbed to her feet. Her shorts were in dire danger of falling, so she hoisted them up. “Do you want a cup of coffee?” Thom asked, and she heard the reluctance in his voice.

Honestly? More than she wanted to keep breathing. Meeting Thom’s eyes, a smoky, sexy gray with a black ring encircling all that smoke, she nodded, not able to thank him. In fact, talking was currently beyond her. Her legs shaky, she sat down in the closest chair and crossed one leg over the other, trying to keep her expression calm and controlled.

Her situation hadn’t improved much with the dawning of a new day. She had no doubt that her mother—maybe Benji, if he could rouse enough energy—was currently cursing her to the moon and back.

She was wearing too-big clothes, had a pounding headache, and her childhood idol was, inconveniently, a sexy, hot, ripped, sullen man. His pewter eyes and rich, auburn hair were the same, but everything else about him had changed.

He’d grown taller and wider. Packed on muscle and attitude; and while he’d never been the life and soul of the party, he’d been chattier as a young man, far more gregarious. Poppy took in the small details, the nicks on his broad, masculine hands, his granite-hard expression, the wariness and cynicism in his amazing eyes.

When she was a kid, Thom had been her safe place. A little older, steady and solid, he was where she ran when her siblings were cruel, or the world seemed too loud or spun too fast. He’d protected her. And he’d listened. He’d dealt with her frequently dramatic feelings with a calm, anchored patience that made everything feel survivable. Poppy had instinctively trusted him, without thinking deeply.

And then it all changed. One minute he was there, the next he pulled away. Hard. He stopped being that solid presence. Stopped hanging out with her. Stopped joking, stopped communicating. Stopped letting her orbit his world. Stopped being part of her world.

To Poppy, it felt like abandonment—deliberate, specific, personal. He went from being the one person who got her to the guy who wouldn’t even talk to her.

It had hurt. God, it had hurt. He’d treated her heart as casually as someone tearing bread from a loaf.

Poppy bit the inside of her cheek, desperately wanting to ask why he’d ghosted her, but so much time had passed, and she felt stupid for still letting the death of a childhood friendship bug her. He’d moved on … his loss.

But it still felt like her loss, too.

Now she and Thom had collided again because Thom was living in her childhood home. Look, she wasn’t an idiot; she knew Thom would never waste his time and money on a cash-draining asset like the inn if he didn’t own it lock, stock, and every inch of gingerbread trim.

He’d somehow managed to buy it, from either her grandfather or from the estate, and someone in her family (probably everyone) had been aware of that. That they could, so easily and without telling her, let go of the house she adored, a house that, as the song went, built her, was going to take some time to work through. Another hurt she’d have to process.

When it came to the McMaster family, there was always crap to deal with. Not, admittedly, so much for her siblings, but for her. That’s what happened when one family produced four exquisite examples, and then the last sample broke the mold. And not, in their eyes, in a good way.

Poppy pushed those negative thoughts away; they’d come back to haunt her later—they always did—and kept her eyes fixed on Thom’s broad back. Today he wore another plain T-shirt—this one was white and loose-fitting—and straight-legged and easy to wear cotton trousers, perfect for lounging around the house. It still felt like her house, where she needed to be.

She was caught between a rock and a hard place. She couldn’t admit that she accepted Thom’s purchase of the inn, because that left her without a leg to stand on. Or more accurately, without an excuse to stay at Solstice Deep. And she needed to, more than she needed her lungs to keep functioning.

Maybe it was because she’d never stayed anywhere else in H-Town—sleepovers with Wren had always happened here, not at Luna’s. Maybe because the Inn was where she instinctively ran whenever her life felt like it was falling apart.

As a kid, she’d endured time away from H-Town by shrinking at home—never offering her opinion, hiding from her older siblings, dodging her mother’s attention, all while her father was too busy being important to notice her. If she’d had a choice, she would have stayed away from home, too.

But holidays were different. She’d be packed and ready two days early, desperate to be with her grandparents, craving the freedom H-Town offered. And once Thom had appointed himself her protector, her summers in H-Town had become synonymous with joy.

To her, then and now, H-Town was freedom. Creativity. Spontaneity. Everything she’d hadn’t experienced for the longest time.

Now, free of Benji, probably disinherited by her family and disowned by her siblings (which didn’t bother her much), she could try to reconnect with what mattered; to rest, to just … be. To find herself again.