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It was the only game Henry liked to play, and the hours we spent staring at each other over that checkers board were some of my best memories. Sharing that, anything, with her was firmly on the list ofLines Not To Be Crossed with Poppy.
Instead of answering, I merely held her gaze. “You wanna play or not?”
She let out a dramatic sigh that had my lips fighting the urge to smile. “Fine.”
With her chin resting in her hand, Poppy tucked one leg up against her chest and studied the board with slightly unfocused brown eyes. Her hair dried slightly curly after getting wet in the rain, and she had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
The rain pelted the windows outside, and her attention kept bouncing between the board and the storm.
“What is it?” I asked begrudgingly.
The line of Poppy’s throat moved on a visible swallow. “You won’t, like, lose power or anything, will you?”
“I have a generator if that happens.” I moved one of the black pieces, waiting for Poppy to take her turn, but she was still staring at the front of the house. Inexplicably, she smiled. “What’s that look for?”
She shook her head, snapping herself out of whatever memory she’d been wading through. “I hate storms,” she murmured. “Always have. When I was little, I used to be afraid of the trees all around our house. That they’d fall and crush my bedroom ceiling while I was sleeping.” Gingerly, she moved her red piece, sitting back in her chair when she finished. “I woke up one night, terrified to stay in my room, and my dad heard me crying. He was still up watching TV. Came into my room and when he saw how upset I was, he let me get out of bed and come downstairs for some ice cream. As I got older, we just kept doing it. Every time it stormed, I’d stay up late with him. He’d put on a movie and we’d eat ice cream straight from the carton.”
Throat tight, I tapped my thumb along the edge of the board. “You still scared of storms?”
Her eyes locked on mine. “Not when I’m not alone, no. But if you had ice cream, I wouldn’t turn it down,” she said wryly.
“You’d have to call your Uber back if you want to get some of that,” I told her.
Poppy didn’t answer, content to watch my next move carefully.
We played silently for a few minutes, moving our pieces around the board. It wasn’t uncomfortable silence either, much to my surprise.
In all the years I’d known her, since she was a fifth-gradetoothpick with braces, this was the most time I’d ever spent alone with her. The conversation over reheated pizza was easier than I thought it would be. We talked about work—the place we crossed paths the most. Her brother was also my boss, even though I had more freedom than most of the people who worked for Wilder Homes. If she questioned that, I’d never heard about it.
Poppy managed the office, and as the family construction business was on the cusp of expanding into a physical store, that would be her domain as well. We talked about her brothers—or she did most of the talking, I did most of the listening—and more than once, just like now as she moved one of her pieces, I caught myself staring.
“What?” she asked. Her eyes flicked up to mine. “Something on my face?”
How honest did I want to be? The whiskey loosened my tongue, that was for sure, and I chose my words carefully.
“I’ve avoided being alone with you for years,” I said gruffly. “Everyone in your family is so damn stubborn, I shouldn’t be surprised you pulled this off.”
She smirked. “I noticed. Did you think I’d tie you up on the bed and never let you leave?”
I gave her a long look.No onewould ever be tying me up anywhere, no matter what their smile did to my insides. That would also go unsaid, locked up in a dark, dark place never to see the light of day.
A slight eye roll was all I allowed in reaction, but she grinned all the same. “No,” I responded patiently. “It just didn’t seem … prudent.”
Everyone in Poppy’s family knew about her crush on me. And there was a strange sort of relief when she decided she was going to start dating. It lessened a pressure banded around my chest that I’d never wanted to dig into. It was also, not so coincidentally, the longest stretch I’d gone without any last-minute trips in the past five years.
If she’d ever put that one together, I’d give her a fucking medal.
“Tell me about the worst date you’ve ever been on.”
I took a slow, slow sip of my drink because the addition of alcohol to this evening was … unwise. If it took me an hour to drink this one, all the better. The truth was, it didn’t really matter how slow I drank, because already, the pressure of having her there morphed fromsomething that might get me murderedtomaybe this wasn’t so bad.
That’s how I knew I was fucking buzzed.
Poppy had laughed, more than once, at something I said. I wasn’t funny, had never been funny. And maybe it was a testament to her blood alcohol level that she found me as amusing as she did, but no matter where it came from, it was … pleasant. Enjoyable.
Inside, at least.
Outside though, the storm raged, ice coated the windows and the howling gusts of wind elicited creaks and groans from the house. It was a ruthless type of storm, the mere sound of it had me feeling cold, so I’d lit a fire while Poppy toed off her shoes and tugged a blanket off the couch.
