CHAPTER 15
JULIAN
The water is warm around us. The Bahamas sun is beating down on us. And I have just made a catastrophic mistake.
I kissed her.
Not what we practiced—the careful choreography of casual intimacy designed to convince her family. This was something else entirely. Authentic. Real. Her soft lips against mine. Her fingers digging into my shoulders as she pulled closer.
No alcohol affecting judgments. No excuses. This was decades of careful distance collapsing in the span of a single breath.
“That—that was very convincing.” Poppy whispers, her voice uncertain.
My thumb traces her lower lip. “I wasn’t acting.”
The words hang between us, dangerous and true. Her blue eyes—the same ones that have caught every slip in my carefully constructed facade—have widened. I can see her processing, filing, trying to reconcile what I’ve just admitted with the contract that defines our relationship.
Every instinct tells me to retreat. To dismiss this as method acting. To rebuild the wall I’ve been demolishing since the night she sent me that application, her face bare of makeup, her voice raw with honesty.
But I can’t seem to do it. I pull her closer. Let my forehead rest against hers. Breathe in the salt air. The sunscreen. And something beneath it that’s uniquely her.
For one perfect moment, there is no Damien. No Prague Rule. No centuries of loss teaching me that love is just another word for future grief.
There is only Poppy. Only this.
She inches forward for another kiss.
“Are you sure about this?” I want it. More than anything. But I want her to want it.
“Yes,” she says ever so gently as she seals it with a kiss.
Even more passionate than the first two kisses.
After two and a half centuries of watching lovers come and go, of feeling my own heart calcify with each passing decade, I recognize the dangers of what is happening between us. She awakens hungers I’ve spent lifetimes learning to control.
This time we both surrender completely, her pulse quickening against my slow-beating veins, her heart racing while mine keeps its ancient, unhurried rhythm, breaking down any fortress I might have built to protect her from what must inevitably follow.
After we break our embrace, our bodies are still magnetized, fingertips lingering on each other’s skin.
Her breath comes in shallow waves against my mouth.
My thumb traces the pulse at her throat, feeling it hammer beneath the delicate skin.
I can’t look away from her. I won’t look away.
It’s as if centuries of existence have merely been a prelude to this single, scorching moment.
Then Poppy’s gaze drops, severing the connection.
“We have an audience,” she whispers, nodding toward her family, who appears just as mesmerized by our kiss as we are.
Her eyes keep returning to my lips like she’s already planning our next kiss.
“That was ADORABLE!” Violet yells. “And your audience was loving every single second of it!”
“What!?! I thought you were just recording it?”
“Nope, Pops, I went live with it. Oh, I mean, we’re live with it.”
“Live? And you’re still recording?”
“Yes.”
Poppy drops her head onto my shoulder and lets out a laugh that vibrates against my collarbone. “Well, there goes the strategic part I promised you.”
I lift her chin with my fingertips, tracing the delicate line of her jaw. “Worth it,” I murmur against her lips before capturing them again. The world narrows to the soft pressure of her mouth, the gentle sigh that escapes her.
“Definitely,” she whispers as we reluctantly pull away.
“We should probably head back,” she smiles. “As much as I’m liking this, I’ve never been much into PDA.”
“PDA?”
“Public displays of affection.”
“Oh, yeah, right,” I say, covering the fact that I had no idea what it was until she told me.
I take her hand, and we begin walking toward shore, her fingers threading through mine like they belong there.
Like we’ve been doing this for years instead of days.
We wade back to shore together, and I’m hyperaware of every point of contact between us. Her shoulder brushing mine. The way she adjusts her grip on my hand. The small, private smile she’s trying to suppress.
Violet descends on us the moment our feet hit dry sand.
“Oh my gosh! That was so cute! Like, disgustingly cute.”
“High praise,” Poppy says.
Her sister hands Poppy her phone. She begins to watch the footage Violet captured.
“The angle’s good,” she murmurs, more to herself than us. “Natural. Candid.”
“Is it candid if it was planned?” I ask.
“Everything’s planned. The art is making it look like it isn’t. And besides, it wasn’t all planned, was it?”
I stand behind her, looking over her shoulder at the video. At myself, carrying her into the water. At the kiss, soft and certain, framed perfectly against the turquoise blue ocean.
We look like a couple in love.
Perhaps because we are.
“No, I guess it wasn’t all planned.”
There are so many comments.
EXCUSE ME WHO IS THIS MAN
Poppy really said glow up
The way he’s looking at her???
Preston could never
“Preston could never,” Poppy reads aloud, and there’s satisfaction in her voice. “I love my followers.”
Across the beach, I catch movement. Preston’s head turning toward us. Serenity’s hand on his arm, redirecting his attention back to whatever content they’re creating. But I saw his expression—the flash of jealousy he couldn’t quite hide.
Good.
“You’re smiling,” Poppy observes. “Actually smiling. That’s new.”
“I’m enjoying the show.”
“Which show? My viral moment or Preston’s suffering?”
“Both.”
She laughs—that bright, surprised sound that makes something ancient stir in my chest. “You’re more petty than I expected from a mysterious rich guy.”
“Everyone has depths.”
“Mysterious depths?”
“The most mysterious.”
Her phone buzzes again. The post has hit ten thousand likes. She shows me the screen, and I see the triumph in her eyes—the validation she craves, even when she pretends not to need it.
But beneath the triumph, I see something else. A flicker of doubt.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Nothing. Just...” She stares at the numbers. “Sometimes I wonder if any of it is real. The engagement. The connection. Or if they’re just watching a story I made up.”
“Does it matter?”
“Shouldn’t it?”
I think about my own performances. The centuries of pretending to be human. The masks I’ve worn so long I’ve forgotten what lies beneath them.
“People believe what they want to believe,” I say. “What they need to believe. You give them that.”
“A fantasy.”
“A comfort.” I turn her to face me. “There’s value in that, Poppy. In making people feel seen. Even if the seeing is curated.”
She’s quiet, thinking. Then: “That’s the most philosophical thing anyone’s ever said about my Glowstagram.”
Poppy is smiling. Relaxed. There is nothing I want more than for this to continue. But we’re here to perform for the wedding guests, and we do just that.
The afternoon passes in a blur.
We have lunch with Violet and Chris at the resort’s casual café—grouper sandwiches, peas ’n rice, conversation I barely hear because I’m scanning every entrance, every exit, every shadow where Damien might be lurking.
He doesn’t appear or text—which is almost worse.
Damien has always preferred the long game. The slow build of tension before the strike. He wants me afraid. Wants me paranoid. Wants me so focused on the threat that I make a mistake.
“Julian.” Poppy’s voice cuts through my surveillance. “You’re doing it again. Disappearing inside your head.”
I lace my fingers through hers. She doesn’t flinch anymore—doesn’t tense at the coolness of my skin. She’s becoming accustomed to me. To my strangeness. To all the ways I don’t quite fit.
That should frighten me. It does frighten me.
But not enough to make me let go.
“I’m here,” I tell her. “Present. With you.”
“Are you?”
“I’m trying to be.”
Something shifts in her expression.
“I guess that will work,” She squeezes my hand. “For now.”
I need to tell her about Damien and explain the danger. Give her the choice to run.
But I’m afraid of losing this. Losing her. So I ignore the warnings, and raise her hand to my lips. Kiss her knuckles, and watch the blush climb her cheeks.
“Tonight,” I say. “After the rehearsal dinner. I’ll tell you everything.”
“Everything?”
“Enough.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No. But it’s what I can offer.”
She studies me, weighing my words. I can see her cataloging my evasions, adding them to whatever file she’s been building since we met.
“Okay,” she says finally. “Tonight.”
We return to the suite in the late afternoon. The golden hour light streams through the windows, painting everything in warm amber.
Poppy disappears into her room to shower and change. I stand at the window, watching the sun descend toward the horizon.
A buzz from my phone breaks up my peace.