Chapter 8 Poppy
POPPY
A woman screams.
Someone or something grabs her by the ankles and drags her back down the hall.
A shiver skitters down my back, and my knitting gets faster as I watch her be taken into a bedroom by some invisible force. The door slams shut and then there’s just screaming and wet, munching noises, until blood slowly oozes out from underneath it.
I love the ending of this movie. It’s so satisfying, and it makes my skin crawl in the best way.
I set down the scarf I’m knitting, a matching one for the hat I made myself last year. My hands are already stiff from holding my needles, even with the larger rubber handles I got so they’d be more comfortable to grip.
When I flick off the TV and the chilling sounds of the horror movie, there’s only the wind howling outside. Tree branches click against the panes of the big bay window in my living room. A snowstorm must be rolling in, because the skies were a beautiful clear blue all day.
Cordelia curls up next to me on the couch. I scratch her behind her black ears, and she emits a satisfied purr. If I could purr, that’s the sound I’d be making right now, too. With the storm howling outside, a horror movie on TV, and my knitting in hand, I’m content.
An introvert’s paradise. My paradise.
Standing on my feet at the skijoring competition all day yesterday did a number on my aching joints, and the time alone to recharge is welcome.
A gust of wind billows around my apartment above Thistle + Thorne, and the walls creak in response. It’s a noisy old historic building, so I almost don’t hear the soft knock on the door.
I can’t imagine who would be outside in this weather, so my pulse thrums in my ears as I rise to answer it. I open the tiny brass flap covering the peep hole, and my breathing becomes shallow.
Okay, so the movie might have left me a bit tense.
When I peer through the hole, there’s a distorted and stretched image of Jett in the hallway. My anxious nerves flutter in my gut, and I swear they feel like butterflies.
I quickly smooth my hair and look at myself in the mirror in my entryway to check for anything stuck in my teeth, or crumbs on my crewneck sweatshirt. I’m suddenly kicking myself for choosing my ‘silly goose on the loose’ sweatshirt, but here we are.
When I open the door, Jett stays where he is, leaning casually against the wall. A few snowflakes dust the tips of his chocolate brown hair. Despite the weather, all he’s wearing is a soft, black hoodie and grey sweatpants.
“Hey, Pops.”
The nickname the Landry’s gave me when I was younger has somehow stuck, and everyone else around me have picked it up, too. I’m so used to it boy now, but for some reason when Jett says it, it sends an electric zing down my spine.
“Jett,” I answer, still dumbfounded by the fact that he’s standing here, outside my apartment.
“Are you going to let me in, or..?” He asks, a soft smile tugging at his lips.
I open the door wider. “Uh, yeah. Of course, come on in.”
He’s freshly showered, and I catch a whiff of clean smelling shampoo as he skirts past me.
“Sorry to show up here unannounced, I uh…” Jett scrubs a hand in his hair and doesn’t meet my gaze. “I wanted to talk to you in person.”
“It’s no problem,” I answer, wondering what he could possibly want to talk to me about, as I hurriedly walk around my apartment and scan it for anything embarrassing I might have left out.
I never thought I’d be giving Jett Landry a peek at my personal space. Maybe it’s the fact that my apartment is only about six-hundred square feet, but he’s so… big in here. Like his presence takes up every inch of space, and he commands the attention of every atom in the room.
Even my cat is intrigued by him, as she curls around his ankles, rubbing her black and white spotted face on his leg. He moves away from Cordelia every time she comes close, but she’s nothing if not persistent.
You can basically see everything from the door, but he’s looking around at my décor, at the various skulls, and bats, and witchy things.
“I think you’ve decorated for the wrong holiday, Pops,” he points out.
I tug my sleeves down over my hands and curl my fingers around the fabric.
“I love the holidays as much as anyone, but it’s Halloween all year in here.”
If I wasn’t already awkward enough, my cheeks heat when he stops at the shelf of crystals sitting in a glass bowl shaped like a skull.
“Are you going to tell me why you’re here, or…?” I ask, light and teasing, mirroring his tone from earlier.
Jett stops perusing my apartment and abruptly turns to face me.
“I think we should get married,” he blurts, as if he’s been working up the courage to say it the whole way over here and now the words have come spilling out with no strategy or tact.
I blink at him a few times, trying to comprehend what he’s said. Jett Landry… wants to get married… to me. The world’s hottest professional skier, and the man every woman wants. The man who never even dates anyone.
“You said you need a husband, so marry me,” he says when I don’t respond.
“Jett, what are you talking about?” I ask, incredulous.
“I’m saying we fake a marriage, Pops,” Jett answers, like it’s clear as day, and he shouldn’t even have to be explaining it. “People do it all the time, right? Like for immigration and stuff.”
“I think that’s more common in the movies, or in romance novels, not real life,” I roll my eyes. “You don’t want to get married. Not even if it’s fake. You’d be tied down, and everyone knows you don’t like to get tied down.”
Even if he did, I’m not Jett’s type, and I’ll never be his type. Jett and I would be a terrible match, even in a fabricated scenario.
He’s self-assured, which is a nice way of saying he’s arrogant.
I saw him at the skijoring competition, celebrating his victory. I saw how the women fawned over him. You hear a lot from behind the counter serving coffee.
I even caught a snippet of his conversation with the man I assume to be his manager or coach. Whoever he was, he didn’t seem too impressed with Jett’s behaviour. Yet, Jett spoke and carried himself as if nothing could touch him.
Whatever soft, vulnerable side of Jett I saw at Grady’s is gone. So why he thinks I would be believable as his wife is beyond me.
Jett shrugs, and his eyes dart off to the side, like I’ve struck a sensitive spot.
“Turns out, settling down might have its perks.”
I cock my head, my eyebrows twitching together.
“Why?” I ask, my curiosity getting the better of me. I’m not going to agree to anything yet, but I’m interested in understanding his motive.
Jett shrugs and shoves his hands into the kangaroo pocket of his hoody.
“My sponsors are threatening to pull my funding for World’s because of the scandal,” he admits. “It might be a Hail Mary, and I don’t know if it would even work, but maybe if I have a stable relationship and can fix up my reputation, they might be willing to back me.”
My mouth twists to one side, considering.
“I don’t know.”
“You won’t think about it?” He asks, looking at me with a pleading expression.
Dating in general already makes my palms sweat, and the thought of marrying Jett is so far out of my comfort zone, it’s in another realm. Even faking a relationship with Jett would be trial by fire.
I was hoping that I might use this opportunity to find someone who was right for me. That I might miraculously meet someone and have the wedding I’ve always wanted. The one I thought I’d never have.
We’d have our friends and family around us at an intimate gathering. I’d walk down the aisle to Moon River, the song my aunt used to sing every morning as we opened the café together. Everyone would be crying because I’ve found someone who loves me exactly as I am.
And it would be real.
But there have been no signs of any Christmas miracles happening this year.
I decide not to mention any of that.
“No one will ever believe us as a couple,” I point out instead.
Jett’s mouth quirks up to one side, and a sparkle forms in his dark iris.
“Not with that attitude, they won’t.”
God, he’s cocky.
“If anyone found out, you could lose it all. We could both lose it all.”
A wave of nausea ripples through me at the thought. But I don’t know if I have another choice. I’m running out of time to meet someone, fall in love, and plan a wedding. And my prospects haven’t exactly filled me with hope and optimism for the future.
“It’s risky, for sure. But my PR team would be in on the whole thing, and they have ways of covering tracks,” Jett explains, as if he’s had to rely on them before. I’m sure he has.
“How would it even work?” I ask, overwhelm creeping over me. I’m not agreeing to anything, I remind myself. Just weighing all possible options.
I don’t have time to plan a wedding. I barely have the capacity to keep the café running as is. I chew my bottom lip, and Jett’s eyes flick down to my mouth.
“Don’t worry, Poppy. That’s the beauty of having a team, they’ll help us pull it off,” he says, before adding a not too convincing, “hopefully.”
“What do you mean, hopefully?”
“They might need a little convincing to go along with the plan, is all.”
There’s something about the subtle lilt in his tone that tells me whatever his team thinks about the scheme, Jett will make it happen. That is, in the event that we decide this is the right way to go. And I’m still not convinced.
“Then we should iron out some of the details first,” I suggest. “If we were to get married, what would the timeline be for the wedding?”
“I just need to show Nuclear that I’m off the market before the World Cup Final.”
That’s in two months. Less than the timeframe outlined in the deed.
I nod, wondering when we’re going to hit a hiccup, when I’ll realize that this is all too good to be true. Because so far, there aren’t a ton of reasons for me not to do this. Not if I want to save the café.
“How long do we have to stay married?” I ask.
But the question makes a pit form in my stomach. That tiny detail was never mentioned in my meeting with the lawyer. Probably because we were talking about it as if I’d be getting married for real, like it would last forever.
“I don’t know, long enough to seem convincing, I guess?” Jett offers, although based on his expression, we both know it’s not a good enough answer. We need to make sure the plan is bulletproof, or else it’ll all be for nothing.
“Six-months,” I decide. I can stay married to Jett for six months. Though by then, I’ll be nearing thirty.
It took me this entire lifetime to find a fake husband, I don’t want to wait another lifetime to find my real one. But Thistle + Thorne is all I have, besides Cordelia. And it’s not like I’ve had any luck in the dating world.
“Six months?” Shock washes over his face.
“I mean, sure, plenty of people rush into marriage and get divorced within the first year. But we need to stay married long enough that people will think we gave it our best shot. We would need to commit. I’m not signing on if you aren’t serious about this.”
He tilts his head from side to side, the muscles in his jaw flicking. “Fine.”
There’s only one wrinkle remaining.
“What about our friends? What about your brothers? They’ll see right through this, and we have to be careful about who knows.
If we get caught…” My voice trails off because I don’t want to think about what will happen if we get found out.
Jett’s career will be over, and I could be looking at straight up fraud.
“We’ll have to convince them that this is real,” Jett says, as if it’s as simple as breathing air. “That we woke up one morning and realized that this whole time, we’ve been head over heels for each other, and can’t wait another day to get married.”
My stomach churns. One, because I don’t know how to make a relationship seem convincing, and two, because lying goes against every fibre of my being.
Jett might not see a problem with lying to our closest friends, but I’ve always been honest. I’m an open book, and the thought of Wren finding out about this after the fact is enough to make me sick.
“Wren needs to know,” I argue.
I can see the cogs turning in Jett’s head.
“If Wren knows, Hudson will know, and then it’ll be a slippery slope,” he points out.
He’s not wrong, Hudson and Wren are married, they tell each other everything. Still, I can’t lie to my best friend.
“Then it’s just them. I need someone on my side in this, Jett,” I say. “You have a whole team of people behind you. I can’t do this alone.”
He thinks for a moment, scratching the short beard growing in along his chiseled jaw line. The knot in my gut tightens as I think about what else might change his mind.
But to my surprise, he answers with a simple, “you’re right. But only Wren and Hudson. No one else.”
Relief floods over me, knowing that I can lean on my best friend.
Silence stretches between us as I turn the plan over in my mind, inspecting it from all angles, looking for cracks. But I find none. Not ones that would be worth losing Thistle + Thorne over.
“Okay,” I say finally, hesitant as I’m still reserved about the whole thing.
“What was that?” He asks, a grin spreading across his face. He heard me just fine.
“Okay,” I answer, louder this time.
“I’m going to need you to ask me. Propose to me, Poppy Thorne,” Jett teases.
I quirk an eyebrow.
“Do you want to get married, Jett?”
His cheeky smirk never leaves his face, and he places a hand over his heart as if he’s touched by the question. I’m already rolling my eyes as he answers.
“I thought you’d never ask,” he says.
A mix of excitement and nerves tangle in my gut as Jett and I move to sit on the couch to discuss the new plan in more depth—where we’ll live, how we’ll balance our time between his skiing and me having to look after the café, and how we’ll get his team on board.
I sit with my legs up on the cushion, knees bent in front of me. My sock brushes against Jett’s leg, and goosebumps scatter of my leg from the point of contact.
We’re doing this. Jett Landry and I are getting married. If someone had told me a week ago that I’d be marrying Jett, I’d tell them they need to see a doctor because something is clearly very wrong.
Jett is the last person I imagined ever settling down, even if the marriage isn’t real.
I find my phone and quickly type out a message to Wren.
I think I may have found a solution to my problem.
WREN
What??!! You found THE ONE?!!
…something like that.
I’ll fill you in the next time I see you.