CHAPTER 12
JULIAN
I’ve made a mistake.
Standing in the lobby, I replay my words. That’s what you’re paying me for. The way her face had shuttered. The hurt I’d put there deliberately, like pressing a thumb into a bruise.
Two hundred and fifty-seven years, and I still don’t know how to do this.
The phone in my pocket vibrates. I don’t need to check it. I know who it’s from. The same encrypted number that’s been haunting me since we landed—Damien, circling closer, tightening the noose with every message.
This is why I pushed her away. This is why I reminded her it was a transaction.
Because Damien destroys what I love. And I cannot—will not—let her become another name on that list.
Corinne. Margaret. Anya.
Not Poppy. Never Poppy.
The phone vibrates again. I pull it out, because ignoring Damien only emboldens him.
DAMIEN: She looks lovely in blue. Did you pick that dress, or did she?
My expression hardens and Poppy notices.
“Everything okay?”
“Yes. I guess everything wasn’t handled.” I try my best to project something other than what I really feel—fear of losing another person I love.
Damien’s watching. I scan the lobby, but he’s nowhere to be seen. He probably has someone on the staff, or he’s using the security cameras.
I type back: If you touch her—
His response comes before I finish:
DAMIEN: Relax, old friend. I’m just enjoying the show. Take her to dinner. Play the devoted boyfriend. I’ll be watching.
I pocket the phone. Close my eyes. Force myself to breathe—an unnecessary habit, but one that grounds me in human rhythms.
“Ready?” she asks. Her voice is flat. Professional. The warmth she’d shown earlier tonight—before Damien appeared, before I pushed her away—is gone.
I did that. I put that distance there.
“Poppy.” I take a step toward her. “I need to apologize.”
She blinks. Whatever she was expecting, it wasn’t that.
“For what?” Her tone is careful. Guarded.
“For what I said. About this being a transaction.” I search for words that are true without being complete. “That man at the cocktail party—Damien—he unsettled me. I took it out on you. That was wrong.”
“Who is he?”
“Someone from my past. Someone I’d hoped to never see again.”
“That doesn’t explain anything.”
“I know.” I take another step. We’re close now—close enough that I can see the wariness in her eyes, the hurt she’s trying to hide. “I know it doesn’t. And I know I keep saying ‘after the wedding’ like it’s a magic phrase that excuses everything.”
“It doesn’t.”
“No. It doesn’t.” I run a hand through my hair. “Poppy, I’m not good at this. At being... open. I’ve spent a very long time building walls, and you make me want to tear them down, and that terrifies me.”
Something shifts in her expression. The wariness doesn’t disappear, but it softens slightly.
“That’s the most honest thing you’ve said to me since we landed,” she says quietly.
“I know.”
“You’re really bad at this.”
“I’m aware.”
“But you’re trying.” She touches the side of my arm.
“I’m trying.” I hold her gaze. “That man—Damien—he brings out the worst in me. He reminds me of things I’ve lost, choices I’ve made, people I couldn’t protect. When he showed up tonight, I retreated into old patterns. Distance. Control. Pushing away anything that might hurt.”
“Anything that might hurt you,” she clarifies. “Not me.”
“Both.” The word comes out rough. “Both, Poppy. I pushed you away because I didn’t want you to get caught in something that has nothing to do with you. Something old and ugly and mine.”
“But it does have something to do with me now.” She takes a step closer. “Because I’m here. Because we’re—whatever we are. Partners. Performers. Something more than a transaction, even if you keep trying to pretend otherwise.”
I could deny it. Could retreat back behind the contract, the money, the careful fiction we’ve constructed.
Instead, I reach out and take her hand.
“Something more,” I agree. “Much more.”
She looks down at our joined hands. My fingers are cool against her warmth—they always are—but she doesn’t flinch anymore. Doesn’t tense.
“We’re going to be late for dinner,” she says.
“Probably.”
“My mother will be insufferable.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“And you’re going to spend the whole meal watching the exits and looking for threats you won’t tell me about.”
“Very likely.”
A small smile tugs at her lips. “You’re impossible.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“By who?”
I almost smile. “Various people. Over the years.”
“There it is. The mysterious non-answer.” But she’s laughing now—really laughing, that bright surprised sound that makes something ancient and unused flutter in my chest. “Come on, Mysterious Man. Let’s go be charming for my family.”
She doesn’t let go of my hand.
I don’t want her to.
We head to dinner, which I’m sure will be its own elegant torture.
The restaurant overlooks the ocean—floor-to-ceiling windows that offer spectacular views and terrible sightlines.
I count three entrances, two emergency exits, and seventeen places where someone could hide while observing the dining room.
The kitchen door opens every four minutes on average.
Staff circulate with drinks on predictable patterns.
I catalog all of this while smiling at Violet’s wedding planner, complimenting Catherine’s choice of wine, asking Chris about his time at Cornell.
Once the wedding planning is out of earshot, I ask Poppy something that has been nagging at me.
“Why they didn’t use Sage as their wedding planner?” I whisper into her ear.
“Sage and my sister aren’t that close, and she knows Sage doesn’t believe in true love,” she whispers back. “Besides, someone already booked Sage for this weekend.”
I arch an eyebrow. “Interesting. A wedding planner that doesn’t believe in true love?”
“I know, right?”
“Fascinating.”
“You ready for another performance?” she says under her breath. “Show them some of that charm of yours?”
I nod.
Two hundred and fifty-seven years of practice. I can perform charm in my sleep.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I extend my hand, gesturing to the table. “After you.”
We’re seated close enough that our shoulders brush when Poppy reaches for her water glass.
Close enough that I can smell her perfume—something floral and warm that shouldn’t work with the salt air, but it does.
Close enough that I notice every time her breathing changes, every time her pulse quickens, every time she glances my way.
Yet, I keep being torn away from her to search for the danger that awaits us.
“You’re doing it again,” she murmurs, leaning into me like we’re sharing a private joke.
“Doing what?”
“Watching everything like you’re expecting an attack.”
“I’m admiring the architecture.”
“You’ve been admiring that fire exit for ten minutes.”
“It’s a very well-designed fire exit.”
She laughs—soft, just for me. “You’re ridiculous.”
“I prefer ‘vigilant.’”
“You prefer being impossible.” But her hand finds mine under the tablecloth. Squeezes. “I’m glad you came back.”
“Came back?”
“From wherever you went earlier.” She traces patterns on my palm with her finger. “This version is better.”
“This version is dangerous,” I tell her quietly. “This version wants things he shouldn’t want.”
“Like what?”
Across the table, Preston is making a show of feeding Serenity a bite of his dessert. She giggles. Catherine watches with barely concealed distaste.
I lean closer to Poppy. My lips brush her ear.
“Like more time,” I murmur. “More dinners. More chances to watch you arrange fruit at precisely thirty-seven degrees. More conversations at three in the morning when neither of us can sleep.”
Her breath catches.
“That doesn’t sound very transactional.”
“No. It doesn’t.”
“Julian—”
“Poppy!” Violet’s voice cuts across the table. “Stop flirting with your boyfriend and tell everyone about the time you got lost in Barcelona for six hours because you refused to use Google Maps.”
Poppy blushes. “It was a character-building experience.”
“You ended up in a laundromat crying and eating churros.”
“?Churros excelentes!” Poppy counters. “Best I’ve ever had.”
The table laughs. Even Catherine smiles—genuinely, not that fake one she’s been using all night.
“Okay, fine.” She sets down her wine glass. “So, I was in Barcelona for a brand trip—you know, one of those ‘authentic travel experience’ campaigns where they want you to look effortlessly chic while discovering hidden gems.”
“Already sounds like a disaster,” Chris murmurs.
“The brief specifically said—and I quote—‘no tourist traps, no obvious landmarks, find the real Barcelona.’” She uses air quotes. “So I decided I was going to be a real traveler. No GPS. Just vibes and a paper map I bought from a street vendor.”
“A paper map,” Violet repeats. “In 2024.”
I think of the maps I’ve used over the centuries.
Hand-drawn charts of coastlines that no longer exist. Street plans of cities that have been razed and rebuilt three times over.
The idea of Poppy clutching a tourist map in Barcelona, determined to navigate by instinct alone, is both foolish and oddly endearing.
She continues. “It seemed romantic! Like I was Julia Roberts in a real life Eat Pray Love adventure. I was going to find this little tapas place my followers recommended. Someone said it was ‘three blocks past the cathedral, turn left at the blue door.’ Simple, right?”
“How many cathedrals are in Barcelona?” I ask.
Her eyes meet mine. “Apparently several. That was my first mistake.” She takes a sip of wine. “My second mistake was assuming ‘blue door’ meant, you know, an obviously blue door. Not a door that was painted blue in the ’80s or something, and is now more of a sad gray-green.”
Catherine snorts. The sound surprises me—genuine amusement. Poppy notices, too. I see her file it away, a small victory in the ongoing campaign for her mother’s approval.