Exposed - Chapter 25
Tuesday
Matt
I had Brooklyn’s ring back. It looked even better than it originally had. That jeweler was a genius. And he’d somehow even predicted that I’d only need this ring.
I only had one more stop to make before I headed over to James’ for some prom planning. I pulled up outside the restaurant Poppy had picked out.
Mr. Pruitt had done what he’d promised. Poppy had texted me earlier today telling me she was ready to sign the papers. She’d be out of my life. For good.
I walked into the restaurant and spotted Poppy chatting to someone with a camera. When she saw me, she immediately stepped away from the guy she was talking to and ushered me over to a table.
“What is that about?”
“To capture our break up, of course.”
“We’re not breaking up. We were never together.”
“Whatever you say, sugar tits. I can’t believe you ratted me out to Uncle Richard. But I guess it all worked out because he was very impressed by my blackmailing you.”
He would be impressed by that.
“Here.” She handed me the contract. “It’s all signed. You don’t have to make a scene and check it or anything.”
The way she said it would have made me check it, if I wasn’t planning to already. I skipped to where my signature already was. Hers was scrawled beside mine. This was binding. If I knew anything about her, it was that she honored contracts.
A waiter stopped by. I was just about to tell him I wouldn’t be staying, but Poppy cut me off. “We’ll have two glasses of whatever stains the most.”
“Um…stains?” the waiter asked and looked at me.
I had no idea what she was talking about.
“Red wine will do,” Poppy said. “But make it expensive. He’s paying.”
The waiter shrugged and walked away.
“Poppy, I told you I’m not having dinner with you. I have plans.”
“It’s just drinks. Besides, we can still tear the contract up, if you want. I think we could really do great things together, Matthew. Expand the business. I’ve always wanted to do more internationally. And with our skills combined? We’d be unstoppable.”
Now she wanted to break international laws? I wasn’t interested in any of it. “I’m in love with Brooklyn.”
She sighed. “How utterly predictable. Are you at least going to thank me?”
“For what?”
“I told you, I did it for you. Partially. I rather enjoyed myself.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Poppy.”
“The car bomb.”
I lowered my eyebrows at her. “What?”
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not talking about the one that killed Brooklyn’s husband.
Although, you’d probably be thanking me for that too if I was responsible.
Since you’re in love with her and now she’s single again.
But no, that wasn’t my doing. I’m talking about the retaliation.
The Locatellis killed a member of my family.
So I blew up the Locatelli heir.” She made an exploding gesture, showing just how expendable she thought a human life was. “I thought you’d be pleased with me.”
“What about our contracts makes you think that I’d be pleased about you murdering anyone?”
She shrugged. “Murdering someone you care about is different than murdering someone who’s out of line.”
“Murdering anyone isn’t the solution. Maybe you should learn from what happened with the Locatellis. They resorted to trying to kill Mr. Pruitt’s daughter. And all it got them was losing their son.”
“Oh but Matthew, there is nothing more powerful than instilling fear in your allies. Do you think anyone is going to cross me now?” A smile spread over her face. “I own New York. And it could have been ours together. It still can be…” She reached across the table to grab my hand.
I pulled my hand onto my lap.
She pouted at me.
Really, who did that work on?
“Well, I do need to thank you. For keeping Brooklyn away from the family business. So that I could have what was rightfully mine. And for getting Mr. Pruitt to step down. I have everything I’ve ever wanted. Except someone to share all the glory with.”
Mr. Pruitt stepped down because Brooklyn had asked him to. It had nothing to do with me. But I figured talking about Brooklyn any more in front of Poppy wasn’t a good thing. I just nodded. “Best of luck to you with all that. I’m going to get going…”
“But our drinks just arrived!”
The waiter dropped off two glasses of red wine.
She lifted one up. “Cheers to our future,” Poppy said.
I didn’t lift my glass. “There is no future. It was nice knowing you, Poppy.”
“Nice knowing me? Matthew, we’re about to be family, one way or another.”
One way or another? “Poppy, you and I are done. I’m only going to say this one more time: I’m in love with Brooklyn. I’ve always been in love with her. And I always will be.”
“If you say so.” She turned to the paparazzi sitting at the table next to ours and snapped her fingers at him.
He picked up his camera and took a photo.
“What are you doing, Poppy?” I asked.
“I need to make sure everyone knows that I dumped you .”
“And how are you going to…”
She threw the contents of her wine glass right in my face.
What the fuck?!
“You slept with my cousin?!” she shouted for the whole restaurant to hear.
“Poppy, sit down,” I hissed.
“No, I won’t sit down, you slut! The two of you belong together.”
I tried to wipe the wine out of my eyes.
“Burn in hell, you cheating asshole!” She grabbed the second glass of wine and threw that in my face too.
I couldn’t see anything but the flash of a camera. I sighed.
“Of all the people in New York,” she yelled, “you had to cheat on me with my own dear cousin?!”
I was pretty sure the whole restaurant got the gist of what she was trying to accomplish here. “Would you stop yelling now?”
She leaned forward to whisper in my ear. “See you at the next family get-together, hot stuff.” She bit down on my earlobe.
I scooted my chair away from her. “Cut it out, Poppy.”
“Whore!” She slapped me hard across the face, winked at me, and then stormed out of the restaurant.
I didn’t love anything about the weird shit she was saying about family get-togethers. But she’d signed the contract. That was all that mattered. Scarlett was safe. And I was free.
***
“What happened to you?” James asked as he opened the door.
“I finally figured out how to get out of that mess with Poppy.”
“By pretending to die?”
I looked down at the red wine all over my shirt and laughed. I guess it did look a little like blood. “No, blackmail and a binding contract. This was the result of the break up scene for the tabloids. All that matters is Scarlett is safe.”
“Thanks, man,” James said. “For handling that. But are you out of your fake engagement too?”
I nodded. “It’s all in the past. And no problem, I kind of owed you.”
“Can there be balloons?” I heard Penny’s voice flitting into the foyer.
What was she doing here? I walked into their great room. Penny, Rob, and Mason were all seated around the coffee table talking.
“I hope you don’t mind, I brought in the cavalry,” James said and plopped down next to Penny.
She lifted up her notebook. “Oh, we should play music from when we were all in high school.”
“We weren’t all in high school at the same time, though,” Rob said. “Because you were like 10 when we were teenagers.”
She laughed. “From both our times in high school.” She jotted the idea down in a notebook.
“Penny,” I said.
She looked up at me. “Bad idea?”
No, it was a great idea. But that wasn’t the point. “It’s a surprise prom. Which means we’re planning it for you. You already found out too soon so that James couldn’t do a promposal for you…”
“Are you going to do a promposal for Brooklyn?”
“Yeah.” That was going to be half the fun. And I wanted to see her reaction to gauge how she was feeling about a real proposal.
“Since the prom is on my birthday, and I found out about it early…can I watch?”
“You want to watch my promposal with Brooklyn?”
“Absolutely.” She smiled.
“I mean…I was going to do it tonight.”
She looked down at my stained shirt. “You’re going to need to shower. James will let you borrow something. Right?” She looked up at James.
“I’m sure I have something that’s…stretchy,” he said.
Rob laughed. “Matt’s fat.”
I hit Rob in the back of the head.
“You wish you guys were as ripped as us,” Mason said.
“We’re not having this conversation again,” Penny said. “You all have six-packs, so calm down. Okay, here’s the plan…”
“We’re going to take turns bench pressing you?” Rob asked.
“No.” She shook her head. “I’m going to go over to Matt’s house right now to hang out with Brooklyn.
And I’ll let you guys plan the prom of Brooklyn and my dreams. This is going to be great, I really want to get to know her better.
” She stood up. “Wait, should I bring Scarlett? Oh what if I stop by Tyler’s and grab Axel too?
I bet Jacob and Axel will get along really well… ”
“Penny, are you okay?”
“What? Of course.”
“You seem…nervous,” I said.
She exhaled slowly. “I really want her to like me. We’re going to practically be sisters.”
“Brooklyn already likes you.”
“Usually girls that fall in love with the same man have a lot in common,” Rob said. “To clarify, I’m talking about James here. Not Matt.”
“Hilarious,” Penny said. “Okay, I’m going to go. But definitely note down the balloons because that would be fun. And do you need me to pick anything up for your promposal? Wait, does that need balloons too?”
“Penny, I’ve got this,” I said. “Go have fun with Brooklyn. I’ll be there in a couple hours.”
“See you guys later.” She leaned down and kissed James before heading upstairs to grab Scarlett.
There was a knock on the door.
“Who is that?” Rob asked.
“Tanner.” James stood up to answer the door.
Rob frowned. “What is Tanner doing here?”
“He’s helping plan the prom,” I said and sat down where Penny had been sitting.
“But…why? We don’t need his help. He didn’t even go to school with us.”
“Neither did Penny,” I said.
“Yeah but…she’s Penny. She gets us.”
She definitely did. I smiled. It was really fun hanging out just the four of us. Now that I wasn’t harboring any secret hatred toward them. It felt like it used to. Back in high school before everything broke.
Tanner and Nigel walked into the room. “So what are we doing tonight, lads?” Tanner asked.
I stared at him. “Planning the prom.” We’d talked about this extensively.
“Oh. That’s already done.” He leapt over the back of the couch and stole James’ seat.
“What do you mean it’s already done? I told you to confirm everything with me first.”
“I thought you were joking. We’re all set for Friday night.”
I was scared to ask, but… “Where is it going to be?”
“Club Onyx, of course.”
“What the hell? I specifically said no sex club stuff.”
“This is going to be so much better than actual prom,” Mason said.
Tanner pointed at Mason. “He gets it. Speaking of getting it…” he turned to James. “What are your thoughts on promenades versus proms?”
“Is that like a French thing?” James asked.
“What is up with you guys? It’s a good thing Nigel and I planned this or it would have been a disaster.”
“Indeed,” Nigel said. “We have saved the day. I already ordered a dozen cheese plates and lots of carriages.”
Damn it, Nigel!