Chapter One
Poppy
I don’t know why I did what I did.
I mean, I know why I did it—I just can’t believe I did it.
It was a knee-jerk reaction. A rash decision. An instinctive reflex, not unlike that decision you face when you’re waist-deep in the cold water of the swimming pool, and you have to tense up and plunge yourself under the water.
Or when you’re twelve and you’re in the circle and the bottle you’ve just spun lands on that boy you’ve been doodling about in your notebook for a month.
I just. . .went for it.
And now I’m arm in arm with a complete stranger.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Twelve and a Half Minutes Earlier
Some voices just have that knack of making the muscles in your neck cramp when you hear them. Like dragging a rake across a chalkboard.
I don’t have to turn around to know who’s behind me in the line at the coffee shop. What are the odds?
“Poppy Hart, is that you?”
Actually, considering how small of a town Loveland is, the odds are pretty good that if I leave the house I’m going to see someone I know.
But why does that someone have to be Margot Richards?
I do a slow turn and force myself to be nice. “Sure is, Margot.” Even her name in my mouth tastes like week-old milk.
“It sure is!” she repeats back, as if she didn’t hear me at all. “Poppy Hart. You look—” she gives me a familiar once-over, as if searching her Rudeness Rolodex for the perfect insult—“healthy.”
Margot Richards, everyone.
I shake my head slightly. “Uh. . .Thanks?”
She continues, unabashed. “Amazing your little restaurant is still running after everything that happened with that boyfriend of yours,” she says, emphasizing boyfriend as if it’s bolded in a National Enquirer headline.
“Wait. Was it. . .boyfriend? Business partner?” She waves a hand in the air.
“I never was sure of the relationship.” She smiles one of those I’m being friendly but really insulting you kind of smiles.
“But then, apparently neither was he,” adding a “right?” with a head tilt.
People don’t really speak like this in real life, do they? As if their rear ends were planted squarely at the top of their neck and talking out of the hole that’s there?
“It doesn’t really matter,” I say, desperately wanting to run down to the river and jump in, or, at the very least, push Margot in.
Her laugh is humorless. “Doesn’t it?”
“I just meant—”
“Oh, I know what you meant, Poppy.” Another dismissive wave. “I was sorry for you though. Such a pity to waste so much time on someone who turned out to be such a disappointment.”
I turn away, but then double-take. “Are you talking about him or me?”
She just smiles back.
I glance at the line. It’s moving as fast as a sloth on Benadryl.
“And The Mill,” Margot says. “Ugh. That article?” She places a hand over where a normal person’s heart would be, as if there wasn’t just a gaping black soul-sucking cavity there. “I really felt for you.”
“Yeah. That was. . .” I stiffen. “That was some post.” I shift my weight to stop from kicking her. “I doubt anyone really visits that site anyway.”
I know absolutely everyone in town visits that site anyway.
It’s the website that Loveland locals had been getting their daily dose of town chin-wagging from ever since the Gossip Girl wannabe site popped up online.
I thought someone like me was exempt from rumors. And I was, until Avi blew up my life.
“Oh, Poppy.” Margot lays it on thick with a sardonic laugh. “Everyone reads The Mill. You know that.”
I just stare at her, and she nods over my shoulder toward the line, which has moved three millimeters. I turn, take a step forward, and face the front, but Margot isn’t done humiliating me.
It’s her favorite pastime.
“It is so funny seeing you here. I haven’t seen you around town for so long.”
“I work down the block,” I say.
She ignores me. “You know, I just ran into your mom at the store the other day. She mentioned she’s worried she’s never going to have grandkids at the rate you and your sisters are going.
I guess some people bloom late.” I turn to her just in time to see another pointed look from my feet to my face. “And some people never bloom at all.”
Most people outgrow their bullying once they graduate high school, but it turns out that’s not true for boxed-wine sociopaths like Margot.
Some people are mean no matter how old they are.
Oh, look. She’s still talking.
“Though, with everything that happened. . .I can see why you’d want to avoid the male species at all costs,” Margot says. “There is absolutely nothing wrong with being single, Poppy.”
My stomach twists. I don’t know why Margot chooses to be the way she is or why she seems to focus her energy on humiliating me, but I do know that I’m tired of it. Tired of The Mill. Tired of the town looking at me with a strange mix of pity and judgment.
Still, a smart person would turn around and ignore her. A smart, mature person would let Margot be her typical unhappy self and pity her for it.
Today, I am not a smart person.
Today, I’m waist-deep in the pool, and I tense up my muscles.
Today. . .I just go for it.
I turn to let loose a barrage of pent-up vitriol, when at that precise moment, my shoulder bumps into the man in front of me. A tall, solid man.
A man who I decide in an instant would make an excellent visual aid.
I turn to face her full on. “Actually, I haven’t gotten around to telling my mom yet, but I am, uh, dating someone.”
Margot’s face looks like the eyes wide emoji, but quickly disintegrates into disbelief. “Oh, you are?”
—the water’s not THAT cold, just take a breath, plunge deep, it’ll be fine—
“Yep.”
I turn and I grab onto the arm of the man I just bumped into. “So, sorry, Sugar Bear.”
Now We’re Caught Up
He’s talking on his phone, and when he realizes I’m talking to him, he gives me a confused look.
My eyes go wide at him.
Telepathy, don’t fail me now.
I look at Margot. “So sorry, he’s on an important call.” I turn my attention back to Margot. “It’s new, so I haven’t even told my sisters yet.”
“HE is your boyfriend?”
I squeeze the man’s arm, hoping he’ll take pity on a perfect, albeit crazy, stranger. Also hoping he doesn’t look like Gomez Addams or worse, Uncle Fester. “Yep.”
I am not a smart person.
At that, the man turns around, giving me the first real look at his face. His beautiful, chiseled face. He’s got dark hair and blue eyes, a traffic-stopping combination. And while I typically don’t like facial hair, his neatly trimmed beard is working for me.
Definitely not a member of the Addams family. He’d be better suited as an honorary Hemsworth. A dark-haired Hemsworth.
Wait. . .is he a Hemsworth? There are a lot of them, you know.
Margot’s eyes widen, and I delight in her surprise, even though part of me is aware I could be heading for even worse humiliation.
“Dallas Burke.” Margot says the name on an exhale.
Dallas Burke? Why is that name familiar?
The man—Dallas Burke—straightens.
The heartless cow—Margot Richards—muses. She flicks her eyes to mine. “Dallas Burke is your boyfriend? Sure, Poppy.”
I look up at him. And I do mean up, because he’s a good foot taller than me, and I want to hide. To crawl under a rock and stay there, sealed deep in the dirt. I could live out the rest of my days in darkness, the worms and I.
“Poppy, next time you fake a boyfriend, pick someone a little more in your league.”
Margot twists a curl around her finger and eyes Dallas like he’s a giant cupcake and she hasn’t had carbs in ten years. She leans around me. “So sorry to bother you, Mr. Burke.”
I’m about to go find a building to jump off of when a thick, muscular arm lands on my shoulder, anchoring me into place. “Hey, sweetheart, did you want a scone with your coffee today, or are we just doing drinks?"
I look back at him, jaw fully slack.
Is this. . .are we doing this? Oh, my Dear Lord, we’re doing this.
He smiles at me and I feel it in my knees.
They actually go weak for a moment, and I’m thankful for that beefy arm that seems to be holding me steady.
He gives my shoulder a soft squeeze, probably meant to remind me that a question has been asked and I’m expected to answer.
For the life of me, I can’t remember what that question was.
“Pops?” Dallas says.
“Huh?”
“Are you hungry?”
“What can I get for you?” The barista behind the counter smiles at Dallas.
He smiles back. The power goes out on three city blocks. “I’m going to have three of those egg bite things, two blueberry muffins, and a black coffee, and my girlfriend will have . . . ?” He looks at me, smiling, and all I can think is, Wow, his teeth are so white.
“Poppy?”
“Right! That’s me!” I finally find my voice, slapping the counter like a sailor asking for another. I point at the barista, trying to speak, but forget how to for some reason. I glance at Margot, who stares at us both in disbelief. She’s clearly as confused as I am.
I realize I’m still pointing, so I thrust my finger again at the poor barista, a bystander to this mental breakdown, hoping the movement will dislodge the twenty-car pileup in the speech center of my brain. “I’ll have a peppermint mocha.”
“Anything to eat, babe?” Dallas asks. Then, he looks at Margot. “I’m always trying to get this one to eat. She knows I love her curves.”
I’m almost certain my eyeballs just bugged out of my head and are now rolling around on the floor. He flashes that ultra-white smile at me.
“Ha. . .ha ha. . .you know I love you. . .loving my curves. . .!”
I’m an idiot. A blathering, nonsensical idiot.
“I’ll just take the drink, uh, sweetheart.” My mouth goes dry. “Thanks.”
He takes my hand and squeezes it, sending a pulse of electricity straight to my gut. “You’re sure?”
“Yep.” The word comes out like air from a squeaky toy that’s been stepped on.
The barista gives Dallas the total and he pays, stuffing a twenty into the tip jar.
A beautiful man named Dallas Burke just bought me coffee.