Chapter 41 Poppy
POPPY
My gaze darts back and forth between Jett and Wren, all of us speechless, unable to make sense of the way everything has been upended.
A few grumbles from customers interrupt the silence hanging between us. A lineup has formed at the counter, now a few people deep.
“I…” I stutter, unable to form a complete sentence as I point toward the till and the people I have to somehow serve with a smile on my face. I’m unsure if I can even summon one right now.
Shock has frozen me in place while it hollows me out.
“Don’t worry about the café, I can handle it.” Wren holds out her hand, gesturing for me to give her my apron.
I hastily untie it and hand it to her, flashing her a thank you expression as I set down my broom and close the distance between Jett and I.
“Let’s talk about this in private,” I say, turning an equally stunned and frozen Jett around and pushing him towards the stairs.
Wren greets the first customer as we make our way up, away from the café full of people staring at us.
“Drip coffee only, people,” she barks down the line, and I internally cringe. “Take it or leave it.”
Wren has never been much of a saleswoman, but at this point I don’t have a choice but to leave her in charge.
The silence is tense as Jett and I enter my apartment, and I shut the door behind us. Neither of us have any words. Of course, we always knew this was a possibility, but I don’t think either of us fully anticipated that it could actually happen.
Not once our marriage started feeling real.
At least it did for me, and I’d be willing to bet anything that it did for Jett, too.
Jett is pacing around my living room, Cordelia following him around, waiting for him to stop in one place long enough to rub against his legs. He finally does, and bends to scoop her up into his arms.
There’s one thing Cordelia never does, and that is allow people to pick her up, not even me. But there she is, rubbing her face into his neck in the same spot I kissed earlier this morning and a pang of jealousy zips through me.
Don’t be jealous of a cat, Poppy. You have more important things to worry about.
I watch his shoulders drop to a more relaxed position as he snuggles Cordelia and then sets her down. She retreats to her scratching post, satisfied.
I heave a sigh that lands between us like something heavy, neither of us wanting to face what we came up here to talk about.
“How did this happen?” I ask, knowing that Jett probably has the same amount of information that I do.
He shakes his head, at a loss for answers.
“I haven’t heard from Brooke yet. Jason sent me the link to the article and nothing else, and I’m afraid to read it.”
I take my phone out of the back pocket of my jeans and find the article Wren had shown me, the one Jett is talking about.
Initially, in my dumbstruck state, I only read the headline.
It seemed like everything I needed to know.
Maybe I’m a masochist, torturing myself by even daring to look, but if this is going to ruin my life, I want to at least understand how and why.
I scroll down and scan the text, until I find the damning clue.
An email leak from an “inside source”.
“It was an email leak,” I say, my voice shaky. My pulse thrums in my ears, my heart rate racing. “A typo in an email that was cc’d on our wedding planning thread.”
Jett’s eyes dart around, as if he’s searching for the explanation written somewhere on my living room rug.
“Who?”
As I keep scanning the webpage, I find a screenshot of the email in question, the damning receipt. And I instantly recognize the sending address, because the email came from him.
Jett.
The ground disappears from beneath me, my knees wobbling, my stomach queasy, as I try to make sense of it.
No, no, no.
The message had been in response to Brooke. We were both cc’d, along with our wedding coordinator, asking which napkins we preferred for the reception; white with silver trim, or powder-blue trim.
I sent her back a quick answer, I thought powder blue looked the nicest. But Jett, always a shit-disturber shot back “whichever screams ‘totally a real wedding, definitely not a PR stunt.’”
As I keep reading, I realize that the email was the proof, but it was Brooke who made the error that led to the leak. She pulled the trigger on the smoking gun.
Apparently, our wedding coordinator has a very similar last name to an assistant who works at Nuclear. Brooke probably started typing the name and didn’t double check when it auto populated the wrong address. The assistant must have figured it was her way to climb the corporate ladder by outing us.
There’s already an onslaught of comments. A few are directed at Jett, the usual criticisms about his philandering, but most of them are targeted at me.
This makes waaaay more sense.
Thistle + Thorne? More like Thistle + Thot.
LOL I should have known when he married… her.
“Oh my god,” I whisper, sitting down on the couch, defeated.
I hand my phone to Jett for him to see for himself, because I can barely formulate the words. I’m still trying to make sense of this all, trying to understand, wishing that this wasn’t real.
Jett reads the article, and I’m assuming he’s made it to the comment section, because the line between his brows deepens, the muscle flicking in his jaw. He has the same expression on his face as the night of our engagement.
He looks like he wants to punch something.
“God fucking dammit,” he mutters under his breath. “I knew I should never have dragged you into this.”
“It wasn’t just your decision, Jett,” I remind him. “I have at least half ownership of it.”
“No, Poppy. You don’t get it,” Jett says, striding over to the kitchen and snatching his phone off the counter.
. “The media… the public… they’re like rabid dogs when they get a hold on something like this.
I’ve learned how to protect myself from it, I should have been protecting you, too.
Your entire livelihood depends on this. I fucked up, I stuck my foot in my mouth like I always do.
And you… you should have never gotten involved with me. ”
His words hit me somewhere deep, somewhere that was already worried this would happen too. The voice in the back of my head, and Wren’s voice, loud and clear, that told me to be careful with my heart when it came to Jett.
But somehow that doesn’t matter to me anymore. What’s done is done, and there’s no going back. And all I can think about is the fact that he’s just admitted he’s attached to me. That maybe there’s something more here after all.
Jett opens his phone screen, and his face drops when he looks at it.
“Fuck.”
I move next to him so I can see it. There’s a half a dozen missed calls from Brooke. Jett pounds the screen on her name to call her back, and I go to sit on the couch while I wait. I tuck my knees up to my chest, hugging them close to my body, and squeeze my eyes shut.
“What the fuck happened, Brooke?” Jett asks, his tone firm and measured, like he’s keeping a tight leash on his emotions.
I can’t hear what Brooke on the other end, but I only need Jett’s half of the conversation to get an idea of what she’s saying, how she feels about the error. When I look over at him, his back is turned to me, but his shoulders visibly drop.
“Brooke, it’s okay. Take a deep breath. I know you’re sorry. We can talk about that later, just focus on what we need to do.”
Jett hangs up the phone and comes over to sit next to me on the couch.
“What did she say?” I ask, although I’m already bracing myself for the answer.
Jett shrugs. “Not much. She’s in a real state.”
“So, what now?”
Jett shrugs, but when he looks up at me, there’s something resigned in his eyes.
“I’m not letting you lose the café, Poppy,” he answers.
A sinking feeling washes over me.
I don’t know what the future holds for Thistle + Thorne now, or for me. Will I be guilty of fraud? Will I lose the café, or worse? I suck in a deep inhale through my nose as I try to settle the panic rising in the back of my throat.
“I may not be going to the World Cup Final, but I’ll be damned if you lose Thistle + Thorne.”
“Wait, did you hear from Jason? Have they already decided that they’re dropping you?” I ask, knowing that there’s more to this story than Jett is letting on.
I can tell by the tight line his mouth forms, the way he’s not directly answering my questions.
“Not officially, but it won’t be long until I get the call.” His voice seems disconnected, almost numb.
“Are you going to try and fight it?” My voice is rising, the tone becoming almost desperate. It seems outlandish to me that one company, one person, can decide whether Jett gets to live out his greatest aspirations.
“It’s already a done deal,” Jett says. He checks his phone, and places it with the screen open to a social media post on the couch between us. “Nuclear won’t want to keep me on after this, I’m sure of it. And I need a sponsor to stay in the running for the World Cup. It’s done.”
I pick it up and a wave of nausea washes over me as I read the first few lines of a statement from Jett.
In which he assumes all responsibility for the marriage scheme.
It was posted thirty seconds ago, by Brooke, I’m assuming.
I skim the statement, because I don’t need to read the entire thing to know that it’s going to seal his fate with Nuclear.
I want to set the record straight… The decision to get married was mine… She acted in good faith… I take full responsibility for how the situation unfolded…
“Jett, what is this? When did you do this?” I ask, his gaze lowering to his lap to evade mine.
In my gut, I know the answer to my question by the way Jett’s face drops. It was written weeks ago, when we first came up with this scheme. The statement was ready to go out at the drop of a hat should anyone find out about this.
A fail safe.
“I told you, Poppy. I’m not letting you lose the café.
Whatever happens, I want to protect you and your name at all costs.
People expect this kind of behaviour from me, this is who I am to the public.
It might cause some backlash, and I’ll get raked over the coals by the media, but the least I can do is shoulder the blame, spare you and the café. ”
A burning pain radiates behind my ribs, and my eyes well with tears.
Jett could have responded to this in a thousand different ways. He could have denied responsibility, he could have played it off like he was doing me a favour, anything to convince Nuclear that they shouldn’t tear up his contract.
I would give anything for him to be able to take it back.
“Jett, this is on both of us. I don’t want you to…”
“To what? Hear all the nasty remarks people make about me on social media, hell, to my face? I’m already used to that Poppy.
I’ve dealt with it for a long time, and I’m fine with that.
They can villainize me all they want, but you?
You’re fucking perfect in every way. You are a ray of goddamned sunshine, and I will do everything I can to make sure your light doesn’t get dimmed. ”
My heart clenches, but not at the way Jett talks about me. The way he talks about himself. As if he’s lived this persona for so long it’s just who he is now. A playboy and a womanizer.
“And us?” My voice shakes, because it’s simultaneously the last thing I want to think about and the only thing I care about.
He leans in and places his lips on my forehead, his hand cupping my jaw and the side of my neck. I let my eyes flutter closed, taking in the comforting warmth of him. But when he pulls away, the expression on his face is pained.
“You need to stay far away from me.”
“Wh-what?” I stammer past the feeling of something constricting my throat.
“The ruse is over, Poppy,” Jett says. “This was going to end at some point or another. If we end it now, maybe we can minimize the damage. At least for you.”
All of the air is sucked from my lungs. But Jett continues as if he hasn’t just crushed whatever hope, however na?ve of me, that our relationship could be more than a PR stunt.
”My statement will hopefully prevent any major legal fallout. I don’t know if it’ll be enough for you to keep the café, but you need to try. Let me deal with the press. Let me take the brunt of this while you work on saving the café.”
“But Jett, I lo–”
Jett cuts me off before I can speak the words that my heart has been screaming for the last few weeks.
“I know, Poppy. I know.” His voice cracks. “Please just let me do this for you.”
I blink back the tears stinging my eyes.
My rational self understands that Jett has a point. This is for the best. Ending this marriage is the right thing to do. Once you screw up this royally, the only way to come out the other side is to accept responsibility and do the next right thing.
Besides, this was always the plan, our marriage was never meant to last. It was always just a means to an end. I can tell myself all of this logically, but inside, my heart is cracking, breaking in two.
Because I never thought it would happen like this.
And recently? I didn’t want it to end at all.