“New York. Bishop’s Landing, this goddamn foundation. You need to go far, far away.”
“This is my home.”
“Is it? Seems to me it’s the place you’ve been used and hurt and lied to. You’ve been tricked and—”
“Shut up!”
“You know it’s true, Poppy. You’re gullible but you aren’t stup—”
“Shut up!” I screamed. And my voice rang and echoed and pierced his expression. I was panting in his arms. Panting.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
And he kissed me. He kissed me like his world was ending. And I was so stunned and scared that I stood there and I let him. I let him kiss me. Ravage me. His hand left my face, curled up into my hair, pulling until it hurt. “I’m sorry,” he said again. Kissing and kissing and kissing me. “Poppy, don’t make the mistakes I’ve made. Don’t—”
There was a beep of the outer door opening, and Ronan left my body so fast I stumbled, catching myself against the desk.
“Poppy?” It was Theo.
This was some kind of total breach of driver etiquette. Never would he have come looking for Jim. Or me, previous to the driving lessons.
But never in my life had I been so glad to have destroyed protocols. I’d been weakening against Ronan’s mouth. The bittersweet words he’d said. What mistakes had he made? What mistakes was he talking about? Staying when he should go?
“Back here!” I said and patted down my hair. Straightened my jacket. Without looking at me, Ronan grabbed the garbage from our meal.
“I’m sorry,” Theo said as he came walking in, a big smile on his face. A smile that disappeared when he saw Ronan. And his face snapped back into that passive employee look that I’d been surrounded by during my marriage.
Ronan was doing the same.
It was like they were both in disguise.
“I got a notification from the alarm company a while ago,” Theo said. “I thought you would have gotten it too, but when you didn’t come down—”
“Alarm company?” I grabbed my phone from my purse. I’d turned it off after the fight with my sister and then forgotten to turn it back on as I worked.
There were four missed calls from the alarm company.
“What’s happened?” Ronan asked, and Theo gave him a sharp look before looking at me. There was a beat of silence before I realized Theo wasn’t going to say anything in front of Ronan unless I told him it was okay.
Ronan realized this too and stepped forward like he’d take Theo apart with one hand.
“It’s fine,” I said, holding up my hand like a traffic cop, not sure if it would stop Ronan. But it did. “You can tell me.”
“No one has gone inside,” he said. “But...” He pulled out his own phone and showed me the screen. There on my back deck was a roaring fire in the fire pit. A dark figure sitting in one of the chairs turned and faced the camera like she knew it was there. Cheekily, the figure waved.
Zilla.
“It’s my sister,” I said.
She drove to my house and sat outside by the fire because we fought.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“I’ll go back downstairs,” Theo said. “The car will be waiting.”
“Thank you.” And then proving how far I was from kind, from sweet, I turned to Ronan. “Theo, this is Ronan. He works for Caroline.”
Briefly, Ronan’s eyes met mine, and if he had a reaction to this reestablishment of power, he showed nothing. “Nice to meet you,” Ronan lied.