14. Dylan
fourteen
Dylan
I concentrate on the road as we drive toward the nearest town, peripherally aware of the way Poppy fights a smile as she sneaks glances at my profile, darting away again when I try to catch her eye.
Why do I feel like I’m a sixteen-year-old kid right now? Why does this feel so new and exciting?
We’re ten minutes from our destination when Poppy suddenly gasps.
“Stop!” she says.
“What’s wrong?” My stomach lurches as I swerve to the side of the road and pull to a hard stop in the dirt.
Poppy twists to look out the rear window. “Nothing. Don’t you know where we are?”
My pulse slows as I realize there’s no imminent danger. No sign of trouble. Poppy’s not hurt. “Jesus Christ.” I drop my head back with my eyes closed and wait for my heart to return to its regular rhythm. “Never do that again.”
“What?”
I open my eyes enough to pin her with an incredulous sideways look.
“Oops. Sorry.” She grins like an imp who is not sorry, and she’s so pretty my mouth twitches too. “But don’t you recognize this place?”
“Recognize what? The road?”
“Yes!” She unbuckles her seatbelt and twists in her seat, kneeling to look over the headrest. “Reverse back a little and pull onto the side street.”
I’ve got no idea what’s going on, but I’m too swept up by her sense of adventure to argue. “Sit down and put on your seatbelt, then I’ll reverse and pull onto the side street.”
Somewhat petulantly, Poppy does what I ask, and when I’m satisfied that she’s safe, I pull out onto the road, swing wide to turn around, and then take the next right onto a dirt road.
“Where are we going?” I ask, looking around and trying to put a name to a lush green landscape that keeps tugging at something in my memory.
“Just a little further,” Poppy replies, and when we reach a bend in the road with a worn dirt path peeking out through the foliage, she gasps and points. “There it is! Pull over.”
I park the car on a wide patch of dirt worn down by the tracks of a thousand tires before ours, and Poppy all but flings herself out of the car. I grab my phone and wallet and get out too, watching her move toward the hiking trail.
“Do you remember now?” she asks.
“I think so?” I frown at our surroundings, trying to recall the last time I was here. I know I was, but I can’t recall when or why or with who.
“Your mom brought us here once,” Poppy says. “I think Daisy and I were five or six at the time.”
“Really?” Guilt tugs on my heart, knowing that for whatever reason, a hike with my mom is a core memory for Poppy but not for me. “How do you remember?”
Poppy scrapes back her loose reddish-blonde waves and secures them into a high ponytail. “I remember lots of things about my Davenport days. Much more than how I spent my time with Mona.” She takes a few determined steps toward the path. “Come on.”
“You want to hike?” We’re both wearing sneakers—not the best footwear for hiking in wet January weather, even if today is mild and the sky is a clear blue. “Now? In those shoes?”
She puts her hands on her hips and cocks her head, giving me a tolerantly amused smile. “We won’t go far. If I remember right, there’s a little ridge about twenty minutes down the path with amazing views over the valley. Let’s just take a quick look, and then we’ll return to our regularly scheduled programming.”
I squint up at the sky, then down at my jeans and gray long-sleeved Henley, and shrug. “What the hell?”
“That’s the spirit.”
Against the odds, Poppy is right about there being a ridge along the path, and we reach it after less than fifteen minutes.
“Hm. Guess our legs are longer now,” she says, stopping at the edge of a rise that looks out over thick oak woodlands, rolling green hills, distant meadows, and closer glassy-topped ponds. In a few more weeks, wildflowers will carpet the ground with color, and spring will warm the air.
Poppy takes a deep breath of the fresh Sonoma air and sighs happily like this is some sort of heaven. Her eyes close, and she turns her face toward the sun.
I don’t slow down to look at the world much these days, but something about Poppy’s willingness to pause and breathe makes me want to do the same. I close my eyes and inhale. Again. Then again. Out here, in the quiet and the stillness, my thoughts mellow, and my muscles relax like they’ve been waiting for this moment forever.
I’m not sure how long we stand there, but the sun is a little higher in the sky when Poppy speaks into the silence. “Are you glad we came?”
I inhale a deep lungful of air and release it with a nod. “Yeah.”
“Ready to go?”
“Not yet.”
“Okay.”
Though it was foolish to want to be alone with Poppy today, even if only for an hour, the impulse to reach out and take her hand is too much to resist. I slip my hand into hers, entwining her fingers in mine, and the cool touch of her palm does that thing only she can do—soothe me and excite me all at once.
Maybe I’m imagining things, but I can almost feel the memory of my mother here. Kind of like those weeks and months just after she died when I’d walk into a room where her floral perfume still lingered in the air. I know it’s ridiculous, but that’s how this moment feels. Something—someone—wanted me to stop for a second. I’ve been barreling toward an unreachable horizon for years, everything in my life driving me to keep my daughter happy and healthy and safe, and there’s been no opportunity for stillness.
And now, unexpectedly, I’m not moving. I’m standing here basking in the sunshine. I brush my thumb across the back of Poppy’s hand. Basking in her sunshine.
“Thanks for dragging me out here,” I tell her. “I needed this.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Do you really remember more about your childhood with us than you do with your mom?” I wonder aloud.
“Yeah. I mean, I spent so much time with you guys, and it was always fun.” I wonder if she means to hold my hand tighter as she goes on. “Mona was always busy with one thing or another— a passion project, a business idea, a man, a spiritual awakening, an emotional crisis—that I didn’t always feel like her top priority. But your mom and dad were good to me, and you were always doing things that, in hindsight, weren’t particularly wild but felt like adventures. Camping and hiking and making pancakes at midnight.”
The sadness I feel about Poppy’s relationship with her mother and the parallels with Izzy and Annalise are temporarily nudged aside when a memory floats to the surface of my mind. My mom flipping batter in the middle of the night. My dad waking up because of the noise, and instead of getting mad, he starts slicing strawberries.
“She did make life fun,” I agree before regret passes over me. “I’ve never taken Izzy hiking or camping. I’ve never made her pancakes at midnight.”
“You haven’t done those things yet ,” Poppy corrects me. “She’s only six. There’s plenty of time to have those adventures with her.”
“You know what the hardest thing is about being a dad? The feeling that no matter what I do, it’s never enough. And never good enough. Making decisions about Izzy on my own. Knowing I’m all she has. It’s hard.”
I clench my jaw and glare out over the landscape, wondering if somewhere out there, Annalise is in my line of sight. Can she feel my frustration and disappointment and anger? I chose this. I know that. But I didn’t know what was ahead. I was a cocky kid thinking I could do it all, but the life I was about to build for Izzy didn’t include the mother she should have had.
Poppy’s fingers tighten, and she moves closer, her arm against mine. “There are a lot of people in your world who love you and Izzy. I hate that you feel alone.”
“I know. I’m so grateful for Charlie, who has been here all along, and for Finn and Daisy, who have been a huge help the last six months. But on some level, everyone expects me to have my shit together. I’m the one who takes care of people. I’m the brother who never left and will never leave the ranch. The one who gets things done and always does the right thing. I’m not the brother who falls down and gives up when things get tough. I don’t say no or neglect my responsibilities. I don’t do things just because I want to or because they feel good.”
My thumb moves across Poppy’s skin again because she feels good. Not just the steady warmth beside me and the softness of her skin, but the glow she ignites inside me too. It feels unreal to have someone to talk to. Someone in my life to lean on.
Poppy glances down at our hands twined together. “You’re an incredible father and a wonderful brother. You love too big and too hard for that to ever change, but you’ve earned the right to sometimes do things that feel good, even if they feel selfish or you wonder if they’re wrong.”
“Like running away?”
Poppy’s mouth lifts, and she shrugs. “Sure. Why not?”
“Does it work for you?”
“I don’t know. I mean, Aster Springs felt so small when we were kids. I had a lot of living to do, and I couldn’t do it here. Plus, my best friend had a big brother who was always there to keep me from getting into too much trouble.”
“You ran away from me?”
She hesitates, then squeezes my fingers and squints out to the horizon, shaking the frown from her forehead. “I was just making a joke. A bad one. You and Daisy were—are—the best things about this town. I never run from anything other than my own fears, and what I chase is the hope of my very own happily ever after.”
“But you haven’t found it.” She gives me a quizzical look, so I add, “Otherwise, you’d never have come back, and you wouldn’t be leaving again.”
“I haven’t found it.” Her smile now is wry as she glances at our hands. “I guess I’m still in the colorful, messy part of life. Older but apparently not wiser. Still reckless and still doing stupid things. Waiting for someone far more sensible to save me from myself.”
The implication that this thing between us, whatever it is, is her choice or her fault or her bad judgment annoys me, and I don’t like the suggestion that she’s the only one capable of questionable behavior. Okay, yes. One of us pays our bills on time, and the other drives with the gas light on, but Poppy reminds me of who I used to be. And I used to be free. Like her.
“I’ve done plenty of wild things, too, you know,” I tell her.
She smiles prettily and pats my shoulder with the hand that isn’t captured by mine like she doesn’t believe it but I’m cute for trying. “I’m sure you have.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“No. I believe you. I just think that your definition of wild and my definition of wild are two wildly different things.”
I drop her hand and lift the hem of my shirt, tugging it up over my shoulders and then turning my back to her so she can see the tattoo between my shoulder blades. “See? I can be stupid.”
When she doesn’t say anything, I look at her over my shoulder, and she shakes her head like she’s in a daze, then sets her hand to my bare skin and pushes me around to get a better look at the body art.
I almost groan at the feel of her hand on my waist and decide getting half-naked in front of Poppy is just more proof that I can be stupid.
It’s also a damning reminder that stupid feels so fucking good.
I inhale sharply when her fingers caress my back, tracing the lines of the tattoo. “Are these… Are they dandelions?” Her touch travels up to my right shoulder, then down over my rib cage, and a rush of blood goes straight to my dick. “And these are the little seeds floating away?”
“Yep.”
She coughs a little, and it sounds suspiciously like she’s covering up a laugh. “Is there a reason you’ve got a pretty tattoo of a weed on your back?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.” I shove my shirt back down and spin to face her. “The summer after we graduated, a group of us drove to San Francisco for a blowout weekend. We got drunk, stumbled into a studio, and agreed to randomly pick art from a catalog. We didn’t realize it was a catalog more popular with eighteen-year-old girls.”
Poppy covers her mouth to stop her laughter and nods along with wide, watering eyes.
“I was fucking lucky,” I protest. “Mikey got one of those decorative butterfly stamps on his lower back, and Cody had to tattoo a wreath of flowers around his wrist. Jose’s got a tiny fairy on his ankle, and Dustin has a song lyric across his pec.”
“Oh, yeah? Something poignant, I assume?”
“Fuck, no. It was If you wannabe my lover, you gotta get with my friends .”
Poppy’s bright, beautiful laughter explodes across the valley, and I’m drowning in it as she turns me around again, slips her fingers under the hem of my shirt, and pulls it back up to my shoulders. Her fingertips coast over my skin again, tracing the dip of my spine and then the lines of the tattoo, and when the delicately sharp tips of her nails lightly scratch my skin, I think of her raking those same nails down my back, hard enough to leave a mark. Hard enough to draw blood.
Goosebumps flare all over my body, and my jeans are way too tight across the front. Jesus fuck, I should stop this, but it feels so good to be touched by her.
“And the butterfly?” Her fingers ghost over the little insect on one of the dandelion stems, and I swallow a moan. “What’s that all about? And why is it blue when the rest has no color?”
“I added that when Isobel was born,” I tell her. “I don’t know why, it just…felt right.”
“You know what? I like it.”
“Thanks.”
Poppy gently readjusts my shirt, and I turn around again, feeling like I might have proved that part of me is as adventurous as she is.
“Top that,” I challenge.
I’m not ready when Poppy lifts the hem of her sweater, t-shirt, and tank underneath to reveal colors and shapes inked into her soft pale stomach, then higher to show off a line of script on one side of her rib cage and curving underneath the swell of her heavy breast.
And she’s not wearing a bra.
My dick wants to party, but I ignore the throbbing need in my pants as I reach out, stopping short of her skin because I’m not sure I’m supposed to touch. But when she doesn’t pull away or drop her sweater, I carefully brush my fingers over the words underneath her right breast, then lean down so I can make them out.
“ Once upon a time… ” I murmur, wondering if the goosebumps that ripple across Poppy’s stomach are from the cool air, my warm whisper, or the contact between our bodies.
I continue my exploration, following the trail of tiny bluebirds and line art that dips and swirls across her torso, leading to more words on the opposite side of her body, this time on her left hip.
Before I have a chance to read them, noise farther up the trail startles us both, ruining a moment that was quiet and almost reverent. Poppy drops her sweater, and when the voices grow louder, I grab her hand and haul her into the trees, pulling us behind a thick oak and pinning her between the trunk and my body.
Her chest rises and falls against mine as we wait for the people on the trail to pass us, their bright conversation and gritty footfalls eventually fading into silence. Even when complete quiet descends, I stay where I am, trapping Poppy between me and the tree.
“I think they’re gone,” she whispers at the same time I say, “I don’t know why I did that.”
“It’s okay,” she says. “Maybe we should—”
“I didn’t get to read the last line of your tattoo,” I say before she suggests we leave.
Poppy licks her lips, her lashes flutter with a series of uncertain blinks, and her throat works as she wordlessly gathers the bottom of her sweater and edges it up to her chest.
This time, I drop to my knees.
The fine black script across the soft, tempting curve of her left hip reads, “ …and they lived happily ever after .” It’s connected to the first line by ellipses and swirls of pretty chaos in between.
“What does it mean?” I ask, fighting the impulse to press my lips to her body but giving in to touching her again with my hands. I trace the patterns on her skin in every shade of the rainbow, so fine and delicate and beautiful.
Poppy lets out a shaky breath. “It reminds me that no matter where I started, and no matter how many times I get turned around in the middle, waiting for me somewhere is my happily ever after.”
“Someone to love?”
“That’s part of it.”
I sense there’s more to the story, but before I can push, I notice the hint of more body art higher up her torso between and underneath her breasts, and without thinking, I shift her clothes a little higher to get a better look.
It’s a large, delicate dragonfly stretching up her sternum and between the slopes of her breasts. And I lose all control.
Here on my knees, out in the woods without anyone around and Poppy pressed against an ancient tree like it’s some kind of altar, her body ripe and begging to be worshiped, I lean in so I can do just that by running the tip of my tongue over the ink.
Poppy whimpers delicately, and I taste her again, taking my time, memorizing the flavor of her skin. My dick swells, pressing against the zipper of my jeans, and I lick her again because I can.
With my tongue still on her body, I look up. Poppy has her head dropped back against the tree, her eyes closed like she can’t bear to open them, and then my prayers are answered. She lifts her sweater a little higher, revealing more of her perfect tits. They bounce in my face, the bare skin a reward for my adoration. I burn this sight into my brain, the way she looks above me, before I turn my head to kiss the underside of one breast, then the other. Poppy arches, wanting more.
I inhale deeply and open my mouth. Swirl my tongue. This is the wildest, most reckless thing I’ve ever done. I should stop. I should stand. I should walk away.
“Why can’t I stay away from you?” I mumble against her burning skin. “Why don’t I give a fuck about anything but pleasing you?”
These are questions for myself or the earth or the sky. They aren’t for Poppy because if she has the answers, I don’t want to hear them. I don’t want to know.
I run my hands up her sides, over her rib cage, and cup her breasts, squeezing to make her moan and seeking her nipples with my fingers.
When I find them, I groan with near pain.
A smile steals across Poppy’s face, and she glances down at me, her red-blonde hair mussed and glinting in the sunlight, her cheeks flushed and breath coming fast, her pillowy bottom lip caught between her teeth.
And Jesus, I could live my entire life on my knees for this woman.
“A little more proof of how wild I used to be,” she murmurs.
With fingers that fucking tremble and eyes that can’t quite believe what they see, I trace the peach-colored circle of Poppy’s nipples, each one pierced by a delicate silver bar with finely wrought flowers on each side. Then I close my eyes and rest my forehead on her stomach because it actually hurts to want her this bad.
I get to my feet and descend on her tits, pulling one nipple into my mouth and tonguing the bar to the sound of Poppy unravelling beneath me. I’m so fucking hard and so fucking desperate to show her how good I can make her feel that as I move to the other side and pluck at the tight, hard peak of her wet nipple, I moan against her skin and feel the hard, hot pull of arousal behind my navel.
Poppy’s breath comes harder and faster, her hips rock, and her quiet whimpers grow louder as I suck and squeeze and pinch her tits. I’ve never seen a woman come just playing with her nipples, but I know the sounds of an orgasm when I hear them. Poppy’s panting devolves into desperate heaves and moans as her body shudders, and as she threads her fingers into my hair, pulling hard enough to make my scalp sting, my dick swells and throbs and moisture gathers on the tip.
I’ve never come just playing with a woman’s tits before, but when Poppy’s whimpers grow louder and wilder, and I think about those hikers walking back this way close enough to hear, my balls tighten, and I prepare to blow in my pants.
“I’m—going—to—come,” Poppy gasps, a tremor rocking through her as I wedge my thigh between her legs and suck harder on her nipple, tonguing the metal bar, squeezing her other breast harder with my hand.
It’s a religious experience, Poppy grinding against me, her moans growing long and deep, every muscle in her willing body tensing before they melt again. Poppy’s orgasm pushes me over the edge, and I double over with a groan, rocking my hips and closing my eyes as my own climax releases in my jeans, leaving me shuddering and moaning and wanting more…
Until I realize I’ve come in my pants. Like a fucking teenager.
It’s uncomfortable to straighten, and I don’t really want to because then I’ll have to look at Poppy and admit my humiliation. But she’s quiet for too long so finally I raise my head.
She’s neat again, her clothes straight and her body covered, and she regards me with wide eyes that fall to my crotch before they bounce up again. “Did you…? Did I…?”
“This doesn’t usually happen to me. I swear.”
Her hand lifts slowly, and she covers her mouth. “Oh, my God.”
I tug at my pants. “I can explain.”
Poppy’s eyes grow intense above her hand, her eyebrows rise expectantly, and I don’t know what to say. What is my excuse? I’m a horny single dad who hasn’t had sex in years, and I’ve spent the last six months wishing I could kiss her.
Will her knowing that make this situation better or worse?
“You did this to me,” I say instead.
She drops her hand. “I did?”
“Yeah. With the shiny hair and the sweet lips and the pretty laugh. Those hips and the tatts and the nipple piercings.” I look up at the sky with a moan. “The fucking nipple piercings.”
“So, what you’re saying is…”
I drop my chin as Poppy pushes off the tree, her brow furrowed, and her bottom lip caught between her teeth. Her perfectly imperfect teeth.
“Yeah?” I prompt.
“You’re saying you were so turned on by me, I made you come without even touching you?”
I pull on my neck and shrug with one shoulder. “Well…yeah.”
“That’s so hot,” she says breathily.
My head jerks up, searching her expression for a sign that she’s teasing me, but the flush in her cheeks and her short shallow breaths don’t look like ridicule. They look like lust.
“Are you serious?” I ask.
“Very.” She takes a step closer and picks up my hand. “And I think,” she continues, “we’re in trouble.”