Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Thom
Everyone in H-Town knew the shortcut to Solstice Deep: cutting across Blackweather Green.
Since they were on foot—too many beers for him and glasses of wine for Poppy—they instinctively crossed Main Street to walk into the park.
He’d navigated the path through the woods hundreds of times as a kid—in sunlight, shadow, and pitch-darkness—and a few times since he returned to H-Town.
“Are you okay to walk?” he asked Poppy as they picked up the path that would take them past the bandstand, across the meadow, and into the woods.
“Very,” Poppy replied.
It was late, but even so, the woods seemed a little darker tonight, heavier, denser. Stranger.
Strange and H-Town were always best friends, but Thom had to admit that since Poppy arrived, life was weirder still. He looked down at the outline of the sticker on his shirt and scraped at a hint of glue with his short thumbnail.
When the stickers were revealed earlier, his first reaction wasn’t embarrassment, but irritation. The whole idea of a single phrase, one chosen randomly from a sheet of paper, being able to define him was stupid and very reductive.
But a small, insistent part of his brain, the part obsessed with truth, suggested that it could, maybe, be quietly accurate.
Not dramatically so. Not cruelly. Just …
precise. And underneath his annoyance, he recognized a flicker, the tiniest hint of shame.
Not because he was guarded—there was nothing wrong with keeping his thoughts and emotions buttoned down—but because someone had made him this way, because he’d cared enough, and caring had given his brother the ammunition to hurt him.
Growing up, he’d had walls, but they were lower and more easily scaled.
After Benji had screwed him over, and he’d learned how emotionally expensive trust could be, he’d rebuilt those walls and made them higher, more impenetrable, than before.
This damn sticker felt like a public reminder of a private—or at the time, a not-so-private—failure.
Still, people who kept others at a distance didn’t open themselves up to being screwed, to disappointment; they didn’t get blindsided.
Maybe, in a twisted way, the sticker could be seen as him being successful in his quest to keep himself emotionally isolated.
Why should he change? Distancing himself emotionally kept him standing when Benji crippled his career, poisoned his relationship with Ingrid, and dirtied his name. His shields and armor kept him upright when his world fell apart.
And was he thinking about the sticker because he was avoiding thinking about what had happened back there in the dark theater?
Maybe. Probably. Yes. Thom looked around, taking in the dark trees, pulling in deep breaths of cold, sobering night air.
He was acutely aware of the distance, mental and physical, between them again.
He wanted to take her hand, but he had no excuse.
Poppy knew this route as well as he did, and he didn’t need to put a hand on her back, she didn’t need to be steadied.
The silence between them wasn’t heavy, but it was there.
Loaded with a hundred things neither wanted to say.
He turned his head to look at her and immediately noticed her tense shoulders and that her steps seemed deliberately out of sync with his.
She sensed him looking at her, turned her head, tipped her chin up, but her eyes didn’t move past his chin.
He recognized her retreat—he was a master of it himself. Despite what had happened in the theater, he wasn’t getting lucky tonight.
Oh, if he were a different type of guy—a bastard dick—he could pull her into his arms, kiss her senseless, and within half a minute, maybe less, have her panting and begging him to do her. That’s how strong their chemistry was; he knew he could talk or kiss her into sleeping with him.
But he didn’t want her like that. He didn’t want her to have any regrets in the morning, to second-guess this, to have doubts.
He wasn’t a martyr or a hero, or someone who enjoyed punishing himself; he’d have her naked in two seconds flat if he was completely convinced that she wanted this as much as he did.
But he’d caught the embarrassment in Poppy’s eyes when they left the theater, the way she tucked her hands away so that she didn’t have to hold his. She’d liked what they did, of that much he was sure, but maybe she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to feel this way about him…
“You’re pretty quiet,” Poppy commented.
He looked down at her, her pretty face covered in shadows. “You, too,” he replied. He wanted to ask her about Benji, what she was thinking, feeling, and whether she was now regretting running away from her wedding. He wanted to know how she felt about her ex-fiancé and his ex-brother.
Oh, he knew she didn’t love Benji in the way a new bride should. But there were other kinds of love—and they didn’t necessarily have to be healthy. Maybe she still loved his brother because love could be stubborn and illogical. It could lodge itself under her skin and refuse to be reasoned with.
That might be why she’d avoided touching him after he’d brought her to a shuddering orgasm—suggesting that whatever was bubbling between them was nothing more than a rebound, a way to get back on her emotional and sexual feet.
Because if she still loved Benji—no matter how she loved him—then Thom wasn’t the man she was choosing. He was the man sharing her house, handy and accessible, someone she’d collided with. A diversion. A complication. A mistake.
And he refused—absolutely refused—to be anyone’s convenient distraction. Not even Poppy’s.
Poppy surprised him by pushing her hand under his arm, burrowing down so that her small hand found his. Her fingers slid between his, and she momentarily laid her head on his bicep. Thom’s heart fluttered and stuttered. Stupid thing.
“So, I’m really sorry but…” Her words trailed off, and her heavy sigh punctuated the air. He squeezed her hand and waited for her to continue. When she didn’t, he followed her gaze and saw that she’d closed her eyes, not clever when she was walking a dark path through trees in the dead of night.
He didn’t need a degree to know what was coming next. “But you’re not going to sleep with me.”
Her eyes flew open at his direct statement. She stopped, gripped the lapels of his singed coat, and banged her forehead on his sternum. “I feel like the biggest cock tease in the world. I let you do that to me and didn’t give anything back. Now I’m slamming on the brakes.”
Which she had every right to do. Slinging his arms around her, he rocked her gently. “It’s okay, Pops. No rule demands an orgasm for an orgasm.”
He wasn’t that guy—a douche who pushed his luck. Never had been. He didn’t persuade, didn’t coax, didn’t use confusion or vulnerability to get his way. It didn’t matter how much he wanted her.
Poppy was his friend—had been long before she’d become this …
complication. And she deserved respect. Hell, all women did.
And he cared about was her, about where her head was at, about the mess she’d bolted from and the feelings she was still trying to untangle.
Whatever was bubbling between them could take a back seat if it left her feeling off-balance or unsure.
Poppy’s emotional wellbeing had been, and still was, all that mattered.
“I’m sorry, it’s just that…”
“You were engaged a little while ago, about to get married. You’re back here, living in your childhood refuge, your grandparents are gone, and you are crazy attracted to your oldest friend, who happens to be your ex’s brother.”
She looked up at him and narrowed her eyes at his choice of words, just as he’d intended. “Crazy attracted might be overstating it, Sheffield.”
He kissed her nose. “Well, he’s crazy attracted to you.” He held her again, rocked her again. “My point is that you have a lot to work through, a lot to process. And that it’s okay, I get it. Take as much time as you need.”
She looked up at him, her eyes as dark as the night surrounding him. “What if I don’t get there?” she asked, her voice thin.
Then I’ll cry like a toddler with a migraine.
“Then you don’t get there, Pops.” And he had his pride; he wasn’t into pity sex. Poppy either wanted him or she didn’t. He’d enjoy her if she did, he’d survive if she didn’t.
It would be shit, but life had taught him that most things could be endured.
Ruby
Ruby knew she shouldn’t be on this path in the woods, walking parallel to Thom and Poppy, the trees an obstacle she simply passed through. Lila and Naomi would not approve.
She hadn’t followed the couple into the theater and, judging by Poppy’s flushed face and slightly unfocused eyes, she figured that something major had occurred behind those closed doors.
She suspected they were on their way back to the house to pick up where they’d left off. Which probably involved being naked.
But they weren’t acting like a couple. Firstly, there was the physical distance—enough space for another person, or a ghost, to fit—between them.
And then there was the emotional distance, with neither of them speaking.
Both surprised her: with their chemistry, she rather thought they’d be setting the forest alight.
Any other man, or any other man she knew, would be all over Poppy like a rash. With Thom, she only sensed restraint.
Ruby cocked her head. What madness was this? She was so used to men who saw hesitation as a challenge, who blew past the boundaries women tried to put in place. The men she knew took maybes for yesses and believed that desire equaled entitlement.
Thom didn’t seem to feel that way.