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Poppy
“This looks like a very serious endeavor.”
At the sound of my mom’s voice, I closed my eyes, clutching the notebook to my chest.
An hour of staring at it, at all the things I’d written down hadn’t given me the peace I quite needed.
Prying my fingers away from the metal spiral edge, I glanced down at the neatly written letters in silver pencil lead. It didn’t matter how decisively I’d written each one, how precise the curves and lines of each word were.
Down to my bones, it felt like I was still waiting for a piece to click into place, something just out of reach.
“You know when something feels like it should be an easy decision, but once it actually comes down to making it, it’s really freaking hard?”
With a thoughtful hum, Mom eased herself into the chair next to mine on the front porch. Instead of looking at me, she focused her attention out into the yard. “That sounds pretty familiar, kiddo. Want to talk through what you’ve got on that list there?”
Handing it over to her was harder than I thought, so for now, I kept it tight in my grip. “Jax showed me a house this morning,” I said quietly. “It’s his friend’s or something.”
“Ahh.” Her eyes tracked over my face. “Did you like it?”
My throat was thick as I nodded slowly.
“Is the rent fair?”
Again, I nodded. “Cheaper than I expected. And I have about a million questions about why he’s the one showing it and where his friend lives, and…” I blew out a slow breath. “It’s bizarre to realize that a man I’ve crushed on for half my life can be really, genuinely surprising after all this time.”
Mom laughed. “Poppy, that’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it? Everyone in our life has the capacity to surprise us. We don’t walk around with signs on our backs explaining why we are the way we are, all the details that make for a single, complicated person.”
“We should. That would be so much easier.”
“I don’t think you mean that,” she said sagely. “I think because it’s him, it’s making you feel differently.”
“I can’t figure out if his involvement makes things better or worse,” I admitted. “There’s something I can’t put my finger on.”
Mom tilted her head. “Like what?”
My fingers played with the edge of the paper. “You’ve known Jax as long as Cameron has.”
She nodded, brows slightly lowered. “Of course. I remember the first time he came to our house. Serious,” she said. “Very polite. Reserved, of course.”
“I thought about stopping by Cameron’s to ask him some questions,” I said. “But I already know he won’t tell me anything good.”
Mom laughed easily. “And you know why.”
“I do.” My lips pushed out in a slight pout. “Because I should let Jax tell me.”
“And this is information you need in order to make a decision about this house?”
This was harder to put into words, harder to put down on a concise list, but my heart screamed it all the same, jumbledthoughts and a whisper-thin kind of feeling that I couldn’t nail down.
“He’s already everywhere.” I ran my hand through my hair and sighed. Inside my belly, the little nugget rolled, and my lips ghosted up in a smile. “And I can’t figure this out, you know? Can’t figure him out. He’s got this house he takes care of for his friend? No one ever knew about it. Or at least I didn’t.”
“I didn’t either.”
“Jax is still this walking mystery that I want to solve more than anything.” God, that hurt coming out. Even after all this, after all the ways I’d worked to have a healthy, balanced relationship with him, he was this living, breathing ghost—something strong and vital and so very alive—that wouldn’t stop haunting me. “I can’t help it. The things he says and does, I know there’s so much more to him than he wants to let on. I think he’s afraid to be a dad, but he doesn’t want to say it out loud,” I told her.
“That’s a justifiable fear,” Mom said. “Being a parent is terrifying. I remember when I left the hospital with Erik. He was tiny, and they just … let me walk right out the doors, assuming I knew what the hell I was doing.”
I laughed quietly. “I think he’s afraid I’ll judge him for saying it. He seems to watch his reactions very carefully around me, especially since he proposed.”
