Chapter 64
Chapter Sixty-Four
Ivan
One month of being back in my cabin, and I was starting to feel normal again.
My hands were healed, thanks to a lot of CBD lotion and physical therapy.
They ached with the cold and hard labor, but they were finally getting back to the place they were before.
I knew I still had a long road of recovery ahead, but it gave me confidence and hope that I would be back to my old self sooner than later.
I hadn’t heard from Poppy, and I didn’t check the tabloids.
I knew there was nothing for me there. Dimitri called to check in on me, and I FaceTimed with my baby niece, but no one said a word about the woman who stole my heart.
I knew they judged me for leaving, but now that I was healing, I knew it was the best thing I could have done for myself.
But it was also a lie. Leaving New York was not the best thing I could have done for myself.
But the seclusion was. I could have done all of this, but in the city.
I told myself that this place was necessary, but I knew better. I was just in denial.
I stacked another piece of wood and reached for the next, when a sharp, unfamiliar crack sounded behind me. A twig snapping under someone’s weight.
My entire body went still. I’d been so lost in my thoughts that I hadn’t thought of anyone coming up here or sneaking up on me. I wrapped my hands around the axe I was wielding and spun around.
“Easy there, Paul Bunyan.” That voice didn’t belong on my mountain. Didn’t belong anywhere near me. It belonged back in New York City with my brother.
Carina Cristof stood at the edge of the clearing, bundled like she’d been dropped into arctic conditions instead of mild mountain cold.
She wore oversized sunglasses, a ridiculously large fur-lined coat, and a scarf that was at least twelve feet long.
All with a baby carrier strapped to her front and a smiling Gemma staring at me from the top of it.
“I swear to God," she said, "it is colder than a witch’s tit out here.”
I stared at her. “What the hell are you doing here?”
She sauntered forward, adjusting her scarf. “That’s the greeting I get after driving two hours up a mountain with a screaming infant and almost dying on a patch of black ice?”
I didn’t move. “What. Are. You. Doing. Here.”
She pinched her lips together. “Fine. Straight to it then. Something happened with Poppy.”
She didn’t get the chance to finish her sentence.
I slammed the blade of the axe into the tree stump and took off running towards my cabin.
That was all I needed to know. I would get on the next flight out of here, with Carina, of course, and I would find Poppy.
I was healed enough. I could do more. I could be more.
Behind me, Carina’s voice carried through the trees, muffled by wind and distance. “—for the love of God, Ivan, WAIT—there’s more—!”
I barely heard her over the roar in my ears.
My pulse thundered, drowning out everything except the single, brutal truth: I was going back.
I didn’t care what waited for me in New York.
I didn’t care who I had to face. I didn’t care if I wasn’t ready or healed or strong enough—none of that mattered.
Nothing mattered except maybe packing a bag and getting on the next flight out of here. I slowed a little bit so I didn’t leave Carina completely in the woods, with her baby, but also… she should have known better than to come out here.
Wait, why did Carina come all the way out here with her baby? I was answering phone calls. I’d just FaceTimed Gemma a couple of days before. All of these thoughts hit me as I neared my cabin.
I burst through the front door with snow coating my entire body and my breath coming out in large puffs, but none of that mattered because standing in the center of my living room was Poppy.
My lungs seized, and my heart stopped as I fell to my knees in the entryway. Her hair was tucked behind her ears, and she wore jeans with big snow boots. Her coat was slung over one of the chairs at the kitchen table, and everything about her was a breath of fresh air.
Her name tore out of me—not even a word, more like a prayer dragged raw from my chest.
But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Poppy Fairchild, or rather Madden now—my light, my ruin—was standing in my home like some impossible hallucination brought to life. Snow melted off me in slow rivulets. My pulse hammered so violently I thought I might pass out.
A small smile curled her lips as she watched me unravel right before her. “Hi.”
“That’s it?” I choked out.
She hummed in the back of her throat. “Where would you like me to start?”