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“So I’m not the only person who felt like that?” I asked.
She laughed. “No.”
“That sounds good,” I told her, nerves cycling lightly through my stomach. It sounded intentional, something we’d never quite mastered, had we?
I held the door open for her while she settled in the driver’s seat, carefully closing the door as she adjusted her safety belt over her bump.
Stepping back, I felt Ian approach while Poppy drove away.
“What was that about?” he asked.
I held up the manila folder. “I have five years’ worth of decisions to make.”
He laughed under his breath. “Sounds about right.”
Her car disappeared, leaving with me the strangest sense that I’d be watching that happen a lot. Hadn’t I earned that, though? Poppy had years of watching me live my life, and now I was watching her live hers.
Do something.
Go. Go now.
In the wake of her departure, the energy she brought didn’t dissipate; it simply changed. The unused current was shifting into a twitchy sort of restlessness under my skin. I would’ve packed my bags in the past when I felt like this. But now, I had to plant my feet and figure out a different way to release it.
I thought about lists and pears and backflips that Icouldn’t feel. Tiny little hands and feet. Wide smiles and pretty eyes and undeserved trust and trying to be what she needed.
Not what I wanted. Something even more important than that.
“Ian, do you have a few minutes? I need your help with something.”
Chapter 22
Poppy
“If you were a murderer, do you think you’d break into a woodshop before you broke into the nearest house?”
Parker sighed so loudly, with such annoyance, that I rolled my eyes, even as I poked my head out from behind a tree to stare at the lights coming from the shop behind the house. Thesupposed to be empty and locked and darkwoodshop.
“What are you talking about?” he asked. There was loud thumping in the background like he was at a club.
“There’s someone back here in the shop,” I hissed.
“What?” he yelled. “I can’t hear you.”
Cupping my hand over my mouth, I spoke louder, eyes locked on the way the flashlight bounced around inside the window. “Someone is in the shop. I saw a light coming from the windows right before I was going to go to bed, and maybe it’s just Wade or something, but then why wouldn’t he tell me he’s stopping by? He always tells me when he’s stopping by, and no one comes out here at night.”
The noises faded in the background, and I heard the closing of a door. “Pops, if you’re worried about a break-in, call Cameron or Ian and make them come check it out.”
“Cameron and Ivy are out on a date in Redmond. Mom, Ian, and Harlow are at Sage’s flagfootball game.”
“Then call your boyfriend. Or better yet, call the cops.”
I winced. Right. Law enforcement hadn’t crossed my mind. Downfall of a big family, I guess. “Dean is … unavailable for those types of calls.”
“Why? Off delivering horse babies or something?”
“Foals,” I corrected. “They’re not called horse babies. And I have no idea if he is or isn’t.”
“Oh.” Parker cleared his throat. “And has Dr. No Sex been sidelined due to a certain someone’s reappearance?”
