Chapter 32
Tears stung Tiana’s eyes, but she refused to let them fall as she stood in the living room and heard Jessie speaking to Niko in the sunroom.
They hadn’t heard her come in, and she’d nearly announced her arrival, but now she was glad she hadn’t.
As quietly as she possibly could, she turned on her heels and walked out the front door.
Each step she took down the driveway felt definitive, final.
She couldn’t quite put her finger on why it felt so wrong to her that Niko hadn’t disclosed to her that their fake relationship had been a PR stunt to improve his reputation, considering it was fake after all, but it bothered her. It bothered her…a lot.
And the paparazzi. He’d hired the paparazzi. Why? Why hadn’t he just told her that?
There was no reason to hide that piece of the puzzle, so why? Why had he?
Jessie’s words kept playing on repeat over and over as she walked down the street in the snow.
“The general public’s insatiable thirst for a redemption arc.”
“The bad boy meeting the one woman who changes his ways.”
“They love that you have given up your womanizing.”
“Ate up that it’s Tiana, your enemy’s ex.”
“They really believe you are a couple.”
A car pulled up beside her, but she didn’t pay it any attention. The last thing she wanted was to face anyone in her state.
“Hey, should you be out walking? You just got over being sick?”
She turned and saw it was Poppy and Tabitha, whom she nannied for.
“I’m fine,” she assured her.
Poppy tilted her head to the side. “I might not know Niko that well, but he shares near-identical DNA with my baby daddy and, oh, I guess, hubby—that’s weird to say…
anyway, I know for a fact Niko would not want you walking out in this cold, just let us give you a ride.
It’s not like it would be out of our way, nothing in Hope Falls is out of the way. ”
Poppy had a point, and, if she were being honest, sledging through the cold didn’t exactly sound like fun.
She climbed in the front seat, since, due to child safety laws, Tabitha rode in the back in her safety seat.
“Where to?” Poppy asked cheerily.
“Golden Years.”
“Oh, um, congratulations!” Tiana had seen Poppy across the room at the fundraiser the night before but hadn’t gotten a chance to speak to her since she tied the knot.
“Thanks. I still can’t quite believe it.” Poppy smiled as she looked down at her ring, then her belly.
“How are you feeling?”
“Good, most days.” Poppy glanced over at Tiana, then back at the road, then back at Tiana. “Do you want to talk about it or not?”
“Or not.” Tiana didn’t even know what to say.
“Got it.” Poppy turned up the music, and she, Tiana, and Tabitha sang along to “Bed Chem” by Sabrina Carpenter at the top of their lungs, which Tiana really needed but wasn’t sure was appropriate for Tabby. She gave Poppy a look, and she said, “Fun aunt.”
Tiana forgot that Deacon was half siblings to Poppy and Liam.
When they arrived at Golden Years, Tiana hugged Poppy. “Thank you.”
Before she got out, Poppy put her hand on her arm and turned back to Tabitha. “Tabby, do you want to watch Encanto on my phone?”
Tabitha enthusiastically agreed. Poppy handed Tabitha her AirPods and her phone playing the movie Encanto.
Poppy shifted toward Tiana. “Whatever’s going on, I know Niko loves you, and it’s worth it to figure it out because he is one of the good ones.”
“I thought you said you didn’t know him that well.”
“No, but AJ knows him better than anyone, and last night at the gala I mentioned something about you two not being a real couple, and he said that it’s real to Niko and if it’s not real for you, it’s going to destroy him.”
“Destroy him?” Tiana repeated.
“Destroy him. And AJ isn’t prone to exaggeration.
I know that things might have moved fast for you.
Or that buying a building might have freaked you out, but he was trying to protect you.
If you would have seen him the day he was getting the property records, how mad he was that Brock had put in an offer. ”
Tiana bit the inside of her lip, trying not to feel overwhelmed.
“Anyway, it’s not any of my business. Other than I, selfishly, would love to have you as my sister-in-law, and I think you are amazing and deserve to have a man who buys a building because your ex is trying to use it as a way to fuck with you.”
“Well, when you put it like that,” she joked, but still felt a pit in her stomach. She leaned over and gave her one more hug before hopping out. “Thanks for everything.”
Today, Cindy wasn’t at the front desk, it was one of the nurses, Gina. She was on the phone and buzzed her back after Tiana signed in.
The walk down the hall seemed longer than normal, she didn’t know why. She felt like she was moving in slow motion. Part of her was hoping Pops was asleep so she could just sit with her thoughts, another part of her thought that would be torture.
When she rounded the corner and saw him sitting up in his chair by the window, alert, his color looking better than it had in…
she couldn’t remember. Despite her stomach being in more knots than her iPhone earphones, she couldn’t be happier to see Pops looking so good, especially after him going to the fundraiser the night before.
“Hey, Pops.” She smiled as she leaned down and kissed his cheek, then lowered down into the chair across from him.
He looked up from the TV with a smile, and when he saw her face, it dropped. He picked up the remote and turned the TV down with a sigh. “Tiny, Tiny, Tiny, what am I gonna do with you, girl?”
“What?” she asked. “What do you mean?”
“What happened?”
“What do you mean—what happened?”
He sighed.
“It’s nothing,” she assured him.
“Tell your face that.”
Did she actually look that bad? She leaned over and checked her reflection in the small mirrored surface above Pops’ dresser. Shit. She did.
“It’s just…a lot.”
“Yeah, welcome to life. No one said it was gonna be easy, kid. You’ve had it a lot worse, so what’s the problem?”
“This isn’t the same.”
“I know it’s not. This is real.”
“Is it?” she snapped. She didn’t mean to, it was just after hearing Poppy in the car she’d wanted to tell her what she’d heard Jessie and Niko say, but she couldn’t because Poppy was AJ’s wife.
“What does that mean?”
“I heard Niko and his publicist talking about how basically the plan worked perfectly: bad boy meets one woman who transforms his behavior, he gives up womanizing and the fact that it’s his enemy’s ex is even better.
I heard them say that he hired the paparazzi to follow us around, and now his reputation is good, so he has offers for correspondent and anchor jobs, which is good because he’s not going back to the Waves.
It’s not public yet, but he’s not. So is it real? ”
Pops’ eyes narrowed. “You heard Niko say those things?”
“No, I heard Jessie say them to Niko, but he didn’t deny them.”
“Did you ask Niko about them?”
“What’s there to ask? That’s pretty self-explanatory.”
“Maybe.” Pops shrugged.
“Maybe?!”
“Maybe,” Pops stated firmly. “When you’ve taken as many trips around the sun as I have, you learn to always check cause salt and sugar look exactly the same.”
Tiana knew what he was getting at, but what other explanation could there be? “What else could she have meant?”
“Beats me? Which is why you need to ask Niko.”
“Hello, Mr. Matthews! Good to see you up and in your chair.” Sally, a nurse who liked to sing show tunes and was very impressed with her own voice, came in with a sweeping motion. “What do you have to say for yourself today, good sir?”
“Your attempt at social interaction is hereby acknowledged and recorded,” Pops, who was not a fan of show tunes, stated formally.
Sally’s head fell back, and she cracked up.
Tiana looked out the window at the primroses in the garden and zoned out while Sally took Pops’ vitals.
She knew Pops was right, she needed to speak to Niko, she was just scared.
She wasn’t sure what scared her more, if there was a simple explanation, or if there wasn’t.
Did she want things to be okay with Niko?
Or was there a part of her that was looking for a reason to cut her losses and bail?
That sounded insane, but she was scared it was the truth.
“Are you plotting your escape?” Pops asked.
She laughed. “I don’t think this window opens like that.”
“I wasn’t talking about the window, I was talking about you being the Houdini of emotional attachment.”
“What?”
He stared straight into her eyes. “Who is your best friend?”
“I don’t know, right now… it’s probably Jenna.”
“Have you told her about your childhood? Does she know your greatest fear? Does she know your biggest regrets in life? Does she—?”
“I don’t know her that well because I had to leave all my friends when I left Brock.”
“Those weren’t your friends. If they were, they would still be in your life.”
“Well, then you. You’re my best friend.”
He tilted his head to the side. “I can’t be.”
“Too bad. You are,” she snapped at him.
He leaned forward. “Tiny, you can’t use me as an emotional crutch and shield to keep other people from getting close to you.”
“I don’t do that,” Tiana’s voice raised.
She’d never raised her voice at Pops, but he was wrong.
“Yes. You do,” he said calmly. “And it makes sense. I’m the only constant in your life, the only safe person, and the only person who has loved you unconditionally. But I’m not gonna be around foreve—”
“Don’t say that!” Tears immediately formed in her eyes. She couldn’t even think of a world without Pops in it.
“Why? It’s the truth. Did Niko tell you about our talk?”
She wiped away a stray tear that fell down her cheek. “He said you showed him the pages I colored.”
“He didn’t tell you what I said about me praying that God would take me and me not wanting to do the surgery?”
“What? Now! Why would you do that? Why?!” So many emotions came crashing down on her. Fear. Anger. Betrayal. Why would Pops say that?
“Because, Tiny, I’m a burden to you.”
“No, you’re not! You can’t say—"
“Hush, I’m talking.” His tone was serious, and she shut her mouth.
He’d only ever taken that tone with her once before in her life.
It was when she got caught smoking weed and ditching school in seventh grade, he told her if she wanted to throw her life away, that was her decision, but he didn’t want to have a front-row seat, so she could hang out somewhere else after school.
She never smoked or ditched school again.
“I know you sold your Range Rover so that I could be in this place. I know that you can barely afford the monthly payments, and when they change my medication, I can see you doing the mental math trying to figure out how to make it work. I never wanted to be a burden on anyone. I didn’t expect to get sick and blow through my retirement.
It kills me seeing you sacrifice your life when you should be out having fun with friends, and dating, and you’re coming here to visit me, trying to figure out how to pay for new treatments—”
“I don’t care about friends and dating, you’re my…life…my family…you’re all I have.”
Tiana could see the pain in his eyes, she could see how much it tormented him that she had done the things she had for him.
“I was, I was all you have. But now there’s a man that, in the short time you’ve known him, took care of you when you got sick and took care of your business.
He took care of me and my surgery. He bought a building so your ex wouldn’t be able to have that as leverage over you.
I don’t know about you kids and your situationships—”
“Situationships?” she repeated. Where had that come from?
“—or whether what you were doing started out as fake or to make his reputation better, or anything about paparazzi, but I do know what a man looks like when he loves a woman and would do anything for her, like pay two point five million dollars for a building.”
“Two point five million dollars?!” Tiana gasped.
Pops nodded. “How much did you think a building cost?”
Tiana felt like she was going to throw up. “I don’t know.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what I know: I know that man loves you and you love him. And getting close to people scares you, but if he’s not worth it, then Tiny, who is?”
“Okay, Mr. Matthews, your chariot awaits!” Curtis, who ran the physical therapy department, came into the room with a wheelchair.
Pops ignored him and took Tiana’s hands in his. “Are you okay, Tiny? I can skip PT today.”
“No!” Tiana stood. “Go, do your PT. I’ll come see you tomorrow. I love you.” She bent down and hugged, really hugged him. She leaned back and looked in his eyes. “Promise me you’re not going anywhere.”
“Can’t do that, gotta go to PT.”
She sighed.
“Ah, you’re stuck with me, kid.”
“Good.” She nodded her head. Good.