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Sheila Wilder covered her mouth with a visibly shaking hand, and Poppy gave her sister a frantic look. “Greer, wait?—”
And then, with every man in the room watching with a slightly terrified widening of their eyes, Greer brushed past Poppy with a ferocious look on her face, hammer gripped tight in her fist, and she strode toward me in a way that had me backing up with my hands raised.
“Greer, hold on,” I shouted.
She did not hold on.
People behind her were shouting—Poppy yelling at Cameron, and Cameron was yelling at Ian, but no one was overly concerned with the angry, armed woman bearing down on me.
“Can’t someone grab her?” I asked frantically.
“You asshole,” Greer hissed.
I tried to back up again but bumped into Wade, who did me no favors by blocking my exit back up the stairs.
God, Greer probably would’ve swung that hammer straight up at my balls too, but Ian Wilder took pity on me, darting forward to snatch his sister around the waist, yanking her back just before she could do any permanent damage.
She kicked her legs out. “Put medown, Ian.”
“Everyone, outside.Now,” Ian bellowed. Any yelling stopped immediately. With Greer struggling against his grip, Ian gave Cameron a quick, hard look. “You too, Cameron.”
As the crew shuffled out, curiosity clear in the way they glanced between Poppy and me and Cameron. I tried to reconcile the way my entire life had flipped on its axis in the span of about three minutes.
I couldn’t, though. There was no reconciling this. Not yet.
Greer finally finagled out of Ian’s hold, but instead of trying to murder me with a hammer, she dropped it on the ground, immediately wrapping her little sister up in a tight embrace and whispering something to Poppy that I couldn’t hear.
But Poppy nodded, and I heard a pitiful sniffle that had my gut churning.
Alone. She’d been alone for months while I was off hiking fucking Europe and watching sunsets and completely disconnecting from the world. It hadn’t been a self-centered trip, but the timing of it now held an oil-slick feeling of exactly that. Selfishness.
What if something had happened? What if she’d lost the baby, and I wasn’t here?
A baby.
A fucking baby.
My hands started shaking, and I crossed my arms, tryingto stem the beginnings of a panic attack as it crawled over my skin.
What do I do?
What do Ido?I thought frantically.
My eyes locked on Poppy, taking in the pale color of her face because I wasn’t the only one stunned right now. God, she had no idea I was back, and judging by the complete explosion of her siblings, I wasn’t the only one getting their world rocked.
She clearly hadn’t told anyone it was me, and the two unread texts that popped up on my phone when I turned it on last night suddenly felt like a lead weight hooked into my stomach. Shetried.
When you spend a life crafted around emotionally safe decisions, moments like this felt like walking across a canyon on nothing but a flimsy thread for support. Nothing on either side of me but air. My pulse skipped dangerously, and I pulled in a slow breath through my nose.
What do I do?
Self-loathing was a foreign feeling, and I hated the way it climbed around my ribs and took root in my stomach. It was dark and bitter, something you couldn’t erase quickly or easily. That was the thing about any feeling born in shame. Those roots went deep, and pulling them out alone was almost impossible.
Eventually, Greer pulled away from Poppy, and she cupped her sister’s cheek, then said something else. Poppy gave her big sister a tiny smile, then nodded again. The color was coming back into her face.
Cameron, however, still hadn’t budged. His eyes seared into my skin, and when I finally tore my gaze from Poppy to his, that self-loathing grew into something else.
His disappointment left me feeling so ice cold, I could practically feel the frost climbing through my veins. Hadn’t I promised him that I’d never? Could never.Wouldnever.
