8. Poppy
eight
Poppy
I reach across my bed for the box of Cheerios as Daisy digs a handful of popcorn out of the bowl wedged between us. The open laptop on her knees is the only thing lighting up my darkened bedroom, and I sink back against my pillows as the closing credits of tonight’s movie run across the screen.
“I love that story,” I say with a sigh.
“I know.” Daisy skims her trackpad to close the browser and open a new one. “That’s why I chose it.”
I wriggle deeper under my winter quilt as I watch Daisy log in to her social media account. “But why do I love it? It’s about a woman who falls in love with a man who’s obviously wrong for her, and she does all the work to get him to notice her, and before they can sail off into the sunset, she has to give up her tail and her voice and her family so she can stay in his world. Like…” I screw up my nose, disappointed in myself. “Where’s the girl power in that?”
Daisy shrugs. I can tell by the way she narrows her eyes at the screen and navigates through one link after another that I’ve only got half her attention. “I think it’s the hope of living happily ever after, right? That no matter how hopeless things start out or how fucked up they get in the middle, love always wins in the end.”
I absently rub a hand across my rib cage where a line of ink reminds me of the exact same thing. “You know me too well, Daze.”
She looks at me long enough to shoot me an affectionate wink.
“Tonight was a great idea,” I tell her, watching what she’s doing on her computer without any real investment. “I didn’t realize how much I missed our in-bed movie nights. You remember how often we did this as kids?”
“Mmhm.” Daisy nods with her eyes glued to the screen. “Every other weekend from the year we turned twelve to the night before you left Aster Springs.”
“Damn. Life was simple then.” I burrow deeper into the warm blankets and stare up at the blank ceiling. “And we were so naive. Running away from here believing our prince was just out there waiting for us to find him.”
“Yeah, well. Maybe we needed to learn the hard way not to bet everything we had to give on the unlikely chance of a happily ever after here, there, or anywhere.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
Despite my best intentions, my thoughts drift toward Dylan. I’ve spent the past twenty-four hours obsessing about what happened in his kitchen last night. Reliving the feel of his confident hands and soft tongue and hot blue eyes, deconstructing every minute to find its real meaning. We haven’t crossed a line—not yet—but I promised myself that tonight, I’d give my bestie all my attention anyway. Like it’ll make up for the kind-of sort-of flirting with her brother. But now I’ve slipped, and my self-control unravels like pulled yarn.
If Dylan were a prince, which one would he be? With the dark floppy hair, the brooding brow, and the broad shoulders? There’s only one answer.
A fantasy of Dylan as Prince Eugene Fitzherbert and me as Rapunzel plays across the back of my closed eyelids. I throw my arms around him, and he pulls me in tight, tucking his face into the crook of my neck, breathing me in like he can’t believe he got the girl. Like he can’t believe he got that lucky.
Now that’s a happily ever after.
“Okay!” Daisy nudges me with her bony elbow. “Sit up. I need your help.”
I don’t want to move from the warm cocoon I’ve created for myself, but Daisy is insistent, so I begrudgingly shuffle higher up the bed and re-stack the pillows behind my head.
“What’s up?”
“I posted an anonymous dating ad for Dylan in a local community group, and I got a ton of responses.”
“You did what ?”
“Why are you surprised?” Daisy looks confused. “We spoke about this last week. I wrote a list. What did you think I was going to do with it?”
I make sure my tone isn’t so shrill when I reply. “I don’t know, but it wasn’t pimp him out to the highest Aster Springs bidder.”
Daisy snorts. “This isn’t about sex… Although my brother could stand to get laid.”
“Ew,” I reply, but her comment plays on my uncontrollable curiosity. “Do you know if…? Is he…? I mean, does he still…?”
“Does Dylan still sleep around?” Daisy finishes, referring to the fact that by the time he was nineteen, Dylan had already earned a certain reputation. It’s times like these, when I ask inappropriate questions and want to shake Daisy for the answers, that I wonder how she can have no idea I’m obsessed with her brother.
Because she trusts you , a little voice reminds me.
“I don’t know for sure,” Daisy says. “But all signs point to that boy being in a world of pain right now.”
I attempt a shrug to hide the relief that just liquefied my bones. Maybe it shouldn’t matter that Dylan’s not taking women to bed the way he used to—a fact that made him hotter when I was a doe-eyed virgin teenager and now makes me twitch with jealousy—but it does. “Oh. Okay.”
“But that’s not what this is about,” Daisy says. “Or at least, it’s not the main goal. Our first job is to remind Dylan that there’s more to life than running a business and raising a child. My brother needs to remember that he’s a person, too, and he should be having fun. Making plans. Falling in love.”
“I thought we decided that believing in happily-ever-afters is for suckers.”
Daisy clicks her tongue. “The problem with happily-ever-afters is that nine times out of ten, the guy turns out to be an asshole. That’s not the case with Dylan. Any woman would be lucky to have him.”
“Sure, but—”
“Why are you being weird about this?”
“Am I?” I swallow, then start plucking at the quilt cover. “I don’t mean to be.”
I can’t help myself. I think about last night and the sensation of Dylan’s tongue on my wrist. How I left my body when the man of my fantasies did something so unexpected and sensual. The tension in my core pulls tighter. The same lips that have been on my body a million times in my dreams finally touched me in the real world…
And I have no idea what it means.
He’s always been out of reach and now suddenly, without warning, he’s reaching for me.
“Look, I know this is kind of unusual,” Daisy says. “I don’t particularly like thinking about my brother like that , but if we don’t, who will? I don’t want him to wake up one day and regret that he spent his best years alone and know there was something I could have done to prevent it. And I don’t want Izzy to lose the chance of having a mother figure growing up. Not an aunt or a nanny or a parent she only sees twice a year. A real mother.”
“I get it,” I agree, because I do. It makes sense. I want those things for Dylan too. Didn’t I think a few days ago that what Dylan needs is a reminder of who he used to be? “So, how can I help?”
Daisy turns her screen toward me and opens her direct messages. “Eighteen women responded to my post, and I need you to help me decide which one is the best suited to Dylan.”
My brows shoot up. “ Eighteen ?”
Daisy chortles. “I know, right? Just proves my point about there not being enough good men out there.”
By the time we work through every application, Daisy has found reasons to reject sixteen of the eighteen hopefuls. It’s a process that takes way too long and leaves me nauseous from the nerves and suspense, and at the end of it, two women who meet Daisy’s standards are two too many for me.
“Let’s start with Molly,” Daisy says, opening the chat window and typing out a message to the gorgeous brunette with a profile that didn’t let her down. “What do you say to me setting something up at The Tipple on Saturday night?”
“This Saturday night?” I ask. “As in the night I’m working behind the bar?”
“Yep.”
“But what about…? What about Izzy?” I scramble for an excuse to not be a witness on what might be the night Dylan falls in love with his perfect match. “I’ll need to be home with her.”
“You need the tips,” Daisy replies, still focused on the screen. “And it’s not like I’ve got plans. I’ll stay home with Izzy.”
“What about Friday night? Or Sunday?”
“Saturday is the only night Dylan’s sous chef can fill in for him at the restaurant.”
“How do you know that?”
Daisy smirks as she hits send. “I called her. I’m covering all my bases on this one. There’s no way Dylan’s getting out of it.”
My stomach twists, and I wish I hadn’t gorged on so much junk food. “I guess you’ve got it all figured out.”
“You bet.” Daisy snaps her laptop closed and sets it on my bedside table. “So, should I just crash here tonight or—”
My phone rings loud enough to make us both jump. It’s lying there on the blankets between us, so there’s no way to hide the fact that Wade is calling me. Again.
Daisy snatches it up before I can, and then holds it aloft with horror. “Why is Wade calling you?”
I take the phone from her, silence the ringtone, and set it on my nightstand. “I don’t know. I never answer.”
“So, he does this often?”
“No,” I say, my tone defensive without meaning it to be. “Just once last week and then again last night.”
“Poppy.” Daisy drops her face into her hands and shakes her head before surfacing again. “What’s going on? Are you thinking about getting back with him? After everything he put you through?”
“No. It’s not like that.”
Daisy’s face softens and she sets her hands on my cheeks so she can stare into my eyes. “Penelope. I don’t say it enough, but I love you. And one day, the right guy will come along, and he’ll love you too—as much as I do and in the way you deserve. But please—I beg you—love yourself . Don’t believe Wade’s bullshit because it makes you feel better about not having found the right guy yet. We both know his words aren’t real and the good guy routine won’t last.”
“I know, but—”
“And don’t fuck him either.
I laugh. “I won’t.”
“Good.” Daisy drops her hands and climbs off the bed. “So, I think I might head home. I’ve got an early morning trail ride so as much as I’d love to stay and snuggle, I’ll hate myself in the morning when I need to get up half an hour earlier than I would back at the ranch.”
“Totally fine,” I say. “I’ll see you tomorrow at some point anyway.”
Daisy hugs me extra tight when she says goodbye, and I try to take strength from it. She knows without my telling her that I’ve always had a soft spot for Wade because he’s the only man in my life to come back after he leaves. It felt nice when I was younger and, even though I know it’s bullshit, in my more vulnerable moments his attention feels nice now too.
As I brush my teeth and get ready for bed, I think about Daisy’s reaction to Wade’s phone call and compare it to how Dylan reacted last night. It was so similar—maybe too similar, which blows my theory that Dylan was jealous right out of the water. Was he being protective like Daisy? Was the way he raged about Wade more of the same heroics he performed when we were kids? It’s a reasonable assumption… Until I remember the heat in his eyes.
I return my toothbrush to its holder with more force than necessary, and then smack the switch to turn off the bathroom light. I have to stop this. I have to stop thinking in circles. Reading into every look and word and touch between us for the last week. The last six months. The last twenty-eight years.
Is this my future? How many more years can I waste searching for signs that aren’t there? Wondering what I missed when I was looking the other way?
I don’t know what Dylan was doing when he licked my burn the way he did, but I can guess what he was thinking afterward. Regret. I held his gaze, wishing he’d ask me to stay not because I can do better than Wade but because I belonged there with him. In that house. With his family. And that’s not what he said. Not even close.
But is that the part I’m fixated on twenty-four hours later? Of course not. It’s the memory of his tongue on my skin. The struggle to breathe. The out-of-body whirl of desire. And the hard, heartbreaking crash of coming down after the intoxicating high.
I never thought I’d feel the warmth of Dylan’s lips. And tonight, as I curl up in bed alone, I wish I never had.
Because all I want is more.