He was growing cold standing there, but didn’t go back to bed. He could see her shoulders over the back of the sofa. They rose slightly as she sighed deeply. Her breath caught with a jag. She sniffed.
A terrible swoop of alarm unbalanced him. The embarrassed moment of walking in on something personal struck, yet he couldn’t turn away and leave her to it.
As her shoulders began to shake and she ducked her head into her hands, beginning to weep in earnest, a rush of something indefinable came over him. A sharp, shimmering, deeply uncomfortable ache gripped him. It was so excruciating, it made him want to close himself in the guest room and wait for it to pass.
But he couldn’t turn his back on her while she was like that. A far stronger compulsion pushed him down the hall toward her.
“Poppy.” Her name scratched behind his breastbone. At some level he understood he was responsible for this misery she was exhibiting. He had some scattered thoughts of all that he was providing her, but he knew she didn’t care about those things. She was a complex, emotional creature and it struck him how completely ill-equipped he was to handle that.
She lifted a face tracked with silver and made an anguished noise, clearly mortified that he was seeing her this way. Again he thought to give her privacy, but he couldn’t let her suffer alone. This was his fault. That much he understood and it weighed very heavily on him.
“Come.” He gathered her up, the silk of her pajamas cool against his naked chest.
“I don’t want to make love, Rico. I want to go h-home.” The break in her voice rent another hole in him.
“Shh.” He carried her to the bed where he’d left her a few hours before and crawled in with her to warm both of them. He told himself that was what this was, even though the feel of her against him had the effect of pressing a cut together. It didn’t fix it, but it eased some of the pain. Slowed the bleeding and calmed the distress. “It’s okay,” he murmured.
“No, it’s not.” Her words were angry, despairing sobs. “I’m so homesick I hurt all the time. At least the last time I was stuck here, I made friends, but no one will talk to me.”
“Who’s refusing to speak to you?” he asked with sharp concern.
“Everyone. The staff. They only ask me if I want something, never joke or make me feel like they like me. They’re only being polite because you pay them to be.”
“That’s not true.” He suddenly glimpsed how isolated she must be in her new position and cursed himself for not recognizing it would be so acute.
“I have nothing in common with your friends. They talk too fast for me to even understand them. You’re Lily’s father and I want her to know you, Rico. I know I have to stay here for her sake, but why does the nanny get to take her for a walk while I have to go to stupid parties? I hate it here. I hate it so much.”
“Shh,” he soothed, closing his hand around the tight fist on his chest and kissing her hard knuckles. “This is going to be an adjustment for all of us.”
“How is this an adjustment for you? You’re completely unaffected! I can’t do this, Rico. I can’t.”
His neck was wet and her hair stuck to the tear tracks, keeping that fissure in him stinging. He rubbed her back, trying to calm her while her desolation shredde
d his ability to remain detached.
There are some realities that are not worth crying about, he had told Mateo a few weeks ago. He’d been taught to believe no one would care, but he did care. Not the generic regard of one human for another, but a deeper, more frightening feeling he didn’t know how to process.
Everything in him warned that he should distance himself, but he couldn’t ignore her pain.
He knew what he had to do. It would cost him, but he would do it. This anguish of hers was more than he could bear.
* * *
Poppy woke from the dense fog of a deep sleep to hear Rico’s morning voice rasping on the baby monitor.
“We’ll let Mama sleep this morning.”
The transmission clicked off, but as Poppy rolled onto her back and straightened her limbs, she discovered the warm patch beside her on the bed.
He had stayed the night? She was chagrined that he’d caught her in the middle of a pity party, but she hadn’t been able to hold it in any longer. She had tried, honestly tried not to care about all of those things.
She did care, though. She was lonely and out of her depth. Her only friend was the daughter she had to share with a nanny who adored her, but whom Poppy was growing to resent by the day.
She threw her arm over her eyes, trying not to spiral back into melancholy. They had appointments to view properties today, she recalled. She could hardly wait to have a bigger house to get lost in, and more staff to treat her like some kind of visiting foreign official.
A few hours later, she was beside Rico as he drove a shiny new SUV up the coast. Poppy had understood the property agent would be driving them to view potential homes, but she didn’t complain. It felt nice to be just the three of them for a change.
“You should have told me to bring my camera,” she murmured, quite sure she would have a kink in her neck from swiveling her attention between the sunny coastal beaches and the craggy hillocks interspersed with picturesque ancient villages. “I’m used to staring at wheat and sunflower fields on long drives.”