Chapter 5 #2
There was the slightest movement to his head, as close to a nod as Fel would deign to make.
Thom placed his hand on Poppy’s lower back and steered her to the door.
They walked out onto the porch, down the steps, and hit the grass in front of the house.
It was instinct to walk toward the lake, to the boulders where that photo had been taken.
But before they got to the long-ago past, he wanted to know what happened in Boston.
“Why did you run from your wedding, Poppy?” he quietly asked as they approached the shore.
When they were young, a mini playground, built by Grandpa M.
, stood to their right, but all that was left was the old chain swing hanging from the branches of the live oak.
“I got scared, and I didn’t love Benji enough to push past the fear,” she said quietly. “I should never have agreed to marry him. I knew it was wrong the moment he slid that ring onto my finger.”
He supposed that was as good a reason as any. The truth, but not the whole truth. Because he couldn’t pull his eyes off her face, he smiled when she clocked the swing. As he expected, she ran up to it and sat down on the seat, her fingers curled around the chains. He knew what was coming next.
“Push me, Thom.”
Yep, there it was, the same demand, the same impatience in her now adult voice. He folded his arms and scowled at her. “You do know that you aren’t five anymore, right?”
She grinned at him. “You were the best pusher,” she told him, blatantly batting her long eyelashes.
The mix of mischief and quiet pleading in her voice hit him square in the chest, sparking a flare of attraction—and irritation—at the same time.
Attraction, because fuck, she looked effortlessly cool sitting on the swing, heels brushing the ground, nostalgia and temptation wrapped up in one infuriatingly pretty package.
And irritation, because pushing her back and forth like a well-behaved friend was the very last thing he wanted to do. For her and to her.
No. What he wanted was reckless and selfish and a fucking terrible idea.
His thoughts slid south, heat pooling low and dangerous, and he locked his jaw.
Wanting her naked and exposed—wanting to kiss away her defiance, her doubts, her hurt, and her carefully constructed bravery—only made him angrier. At her. At the situation. At himself.
And if he did that, his life would turn messy and unpredictable, two things he couldn’t abide.
Poppy climbed to her feet and stood on the wooden seat of the swing, her expression pensive. “I spent so many hours doing this, running through the park and the woods, swimming and boating, and playing. How can it seem like it was yesterday but also a hundred years ago?”
He felt the same. Some days, he could reach back and touch the past; others, he felt he needed to leapfrog a chasm.
Poppy, right now only a little taller than he was, looked at him. “I need to know what I did wrong, Thom.”
Shit. It was here, the conversation he’d been dreading. He couldn’t avoid it any longer. Poppy deserved an explanation, and his was long overdue. He pushed his hand through his hair and rubbed his jaw, trying to find the right words. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Poppy.”
“But I did do something.”
Yeah. “You grew up,” he muttered, raking a hand through his hair.
“I’m sorry?”
Apparently, he was doing this. He had to do this because he couldn’t let her, not for one more moment, think that she was to blame for their lack of contact. Because it had all been on him.
“At the time I genuinely didn’t think you’d miss me that much, or that you’d be so hurt by me dropping out of your life,” he began, his throat tight.
He wasn’t a talker, or an explainer, and every word was the tip of a fire-heated nail scorching his throat.
He shrugged. “You were so popular and had so many friends.”
“I did have a lot of friends, but I only ever confided in you and Wren.”
Those nails morphed into tiny daggers.
“Are you going to tell me why, Thom?”
Yes, if he could find the words. “That photo of us on the rocks… Do you remember how you leaned against me?” he asked.
She nodded. “Sure.”
“That was fine when you were five or ten, or even thirteen. I saw you as a kid, the same kid I watched grow up.” Poppy’s confused expression suggested she had no idea where he was going with this. “But that last summer we spent together—”
“Technically, it was only two weeks,” she interjected.
He scowled at her. “Are you going to let me explain or not?” Poppy grimaced, nodded, and gestured for him to continue. “That summer, I was twenty, you were seventeen. We were on the wooden raft that Hayes and I had built with your grandpa. I can’t remember everyone who was there.”
“Hayes, Wren, Benji, my sister Isobel, a few other kids we knew.”
“You’d been swimming, and you came up alongside the raft and demanded that I pull you out. I grabbed your hand, I remember that you wore a white and navy spotted bikini.”
Poppy released a wistful sigh. “It was my first bikini, and I loved it. Why are you glaring at me?”
Why couldn’t she see how much this was costing him? Getting it out felt brutal—like pulling teeth without anesthetic and being expected to smile through it.
“I hauled you out of the water, and I overestimated how much power I needed. You crashed into me.”
Poppy lifted her eyebrows. “So?”
So … should he draw her a picture? That would be so much easier.
“I suddenly had my arms full of a very young, suddenly curvy Poppy who wasn’t the child I remembered.
It was a shock…” In the same way that a lightning strike could be called a shock.
“I was trying to make sense of that when you sat down next to me, linked your arm through mine, and pushed your breast into my bicep.” He could still remember the droplets of water on her skin, her blindingly blonde hair raked back from her face, her laughing blue eyes.
That too-full breast and the heat shooting down to ignite a party in his pants.
“I jumped up and dived off the raft and swam back to shore.”
“And when we got back to Solstice Deep, Grandpa told us that you’d left and weren’t coming back.
” Poppy carefully shuffled her feet, her hair concealing her face.
After a few moments, she looked up. “I’m sorry, I’m trying to make sense of this.
You left because your arm inadvertently touched my boob? ”
He was going to have to draw her a picture. “I left because I realized that you’d morphed from a child into a young woman.”
“So?”
Fuck, God save him. “I was twenty, you were seventeen. It was inappropriate.”
“I’m sorry, none of this is making any sense.”
“Why the fuck do you think I dived into the lake, Poppy? You snuggled in, and I got a boner. Wildly fucking inappropriate!”
Her eyes, big and round, connected with his. “Oh.”
Oh? That was all she had to say? What the actual fuck? Not that he wanted to continue this conversation, he’d rather rip his eyeballs out with his fingertips… But oh? That was it?
Her fingers tightened on the swing’s chains. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”
Was that a serious question? Come on! “Even if I’d had the emotional depth and range required for that hellish conversation, how was I, as a twenty-year-old man, supposed to tell a seventeen-year-old girl that I found her hot? Your grandfather would’ve deballed me, and I get why!”
“Oh.” Another oh. Fan-fucking-tastic. “Okay, I see your point.” Hallelujah.
“As an almost thirty-year-old woman, I appreciate the position you were in, and I suppose I should thank you for being … honorable.” Poppy released a long sigh.
“But it still hurt so much, Thom, it felt like the floor caving in on me. I never knew how much I relied on you until you were gone. Suddenly, I had to start figuring stuff out completely on my own, and it was hard.”
Guilt, hot and sour, rushed over him. “I take it your parents never stepped up?” It was a rhetorical question—he already knew the answer—and she shook her head. “Your brothers and sisters, then?”
Poppy managed a small smile. “Have you met my siblings?” She tried to inject some humor into her question, but it fell flat. She looked away and sucked in her cheek. Thom knew she was biting the inside of it, a childhood habit she hadn’t lost.
“Well, I’m glad I know. Thanks for telling me now, it’s better late than never.”
He nodded, thinking that he would’ve preferred not to have this conversation at all.
Still standing on the swing, Poppy’s eyes were locked on his mouth, and she seemed completely fascinated.
Was she thinking about his attraction to her back then, wondering whether he was still attracted to her now?
And God, he was, dangerously so. Did she want to kiss him as much as he wanted to kiss her?
They were adults now, the small difference in their ages meant less than nothing, and they could … explore their chemistry.
Then reality strolled in and plonked its fat ass down.
She was his brother’s ex, she was coming off a long and, he presumed, complicated relationship—because how could a relationship with Benji be anything but complicated?
Having a fling with her ex’s brother was hardly the smartest way to mend her emotional scrapes and bruises.
But God, he wanted her. He’d wanted her for thirteen years.
And when she looked at him like that, her jasper-blue eyes now witchy dark, like she wanted to gobble him up in one big bite, how was he supposed to keep his hands at his sides, not curl his hand around the back of her head and lower it so he could cover her lips with his?