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I sucked in a slow breath, the edge of my finger brushing over the impossibly soft curve of her chin. Her chest rose and fell on a choppy breath, but she didn’t pull away.
“Yeah it is,” I whispered. “You learned different lessons growing up than I did, angel. Yours were the good kind.”
I learned how to be alone. How to be self-sufficient. How to take up less space in whatever my relationships were because I was less likely to hurt someone. Learned what I didn’t want—that reckless chase for someone to fix everything that was wrong in my life.
But no matter how hard I pretended otherwise, no matter how much I didn’t want it to be true, she’d shown me that I wanted someone in my life to be mine. That I wanted someone to love and take care of.
Wanted someone sweet and warm and thoughtful and kind to fill up all those empty spaces in my life that I’d guarded with clenched fists and a closed-off heart.
And it wasn’t just someone. It wasn’t just want. I neededher.
We were so close. Poppy swayed toward me, and her fingers brushed along my side when she tried to brace herself.
The space between us was practically nothing, and when I dipped my head, I could drag the tip of my nose along the top of her hair. That sweet, intoxicating scent filled my lungs, and God, did I breathe it in.
Why was it that every time I got within arms reach of this girl, the air went thick with tension? Maybe that had been the key for years of safe interactions with Poppy Wilder—I never got close enough to know. Never got close enough to feel what it was like.
I wasn’t even sure how this happened, how that innocent conversation led us to this place. The only thing I knew for sure was that Poppy and I proved over and over that we didn’t know how to undo what we’d done. We didn’t know how to be in the same space without feeling this electric connection, this invisible, iron-clad link that neither of us could shake.
The only things that held us back were a rapidly fraying sense of honor because she’d never forgive herself if she crossed that line when she wasn’t ready to. And I’d never forgive myself if I was the reason she did.
I swallowed hard, lifting my head away from Poppy.
Poppy let out a shaky exhale, her hand dropping from my side. “I … I need to go,” she said, eyes on the floor as she backed away. “Can you, umm, finish painting while I run a couple of errands?”
My heart thundered erratically, but I nodded.
Before she left the room, she paused and finally dragged her eyes up to mine, and I wanted to scream at what I saw there.
Worry. And the slightest hint of regret.
“Poppy,” I started in a low, urgent voice. “Wait.”
She held up a hand, shaking her head almost immediately. “It was nothing. It was just?—”
“It’s not nothing,” I interrupted hotly. “Don’t say it’s nothing.”
Her eyes were huge in her face, the color draining from her cheeks. The pink was gone in a heartbeat, and that pale version of her face hurt.
But instead of nodding, instead of conceding to this beingsomething, she held my gaze. “Ithasto be.”
Chapter 28
Poppy
The very best thing about a house full of Wilders was that there was no shortage of distractions.
My house—I’d finally started calling it such a couple of days before I moved in—was a few trains shy of Grand Central Station for all the noise, chaos, and people filing in and out. Because I was pregnant and thereby viewed as useless for heavy lifting by everyone in my family, I stood at the front door, directing the traffic with my notebook in hand and my phone ready for scanning.
“Stop,” I yelled at Cameron as he tried to go past with a big box.
“I can read, Poppy,” he said. “It saysMain bedroomright on the top.”
Ignoring his complaints, I ran my finger along my master spreadsheet and double-checked the number on the box with the number on the sheet. “Main bedroom,” I said sweetly.
He rolled his eyes as he walked past me through the door, his big boots pounding on the stairs as he delivered it to the correct place.
“Told you,” he yelled over his shoulder.
