by Kaylea Cross
“Sure. Bye.” He pulled into Poppy’s driveway and got out, heading up the front walkway to the door. He hit the bell and stood there, hands on hips, torn between anger and an aching need to comfort her. He’d gotten hints before that her past had been tough on her, but clearly it was worse than he’d imagined.
He waited ten seconds before ringing the bell again.
Still no answer. She was home, because her car was here.
He rapped a fist on the door. “Poppy, it’s Noah.”
“Now’s not a good time,” she said from inside.
“Open the door.”
“I’m fine,” she called back, her voice faint, as though coming from upstairs. “I just don’t want to see anyone right now.”
“Poppy,” he said with tried patience. It drove him insane to know she was hurting so badly, with no one to turn to or lean on. No one to care. He fucking cared, whether she believed him or not. “Open the door. I’m not leaving until I see for myself that you’re okay.”
Footsteps approached the door. A second later Poppy pulled it open. She had on a pair of yoga pants that hugged her hips and thighs, and a baggy tunic that still couldn’t hide the shape of her breasts.
She stood there with one hand on the knob, not looking at him, but from the blotchy state of her face, she’d been crying. “Thanks for coming by, but as you can see, I’m fine.”
Good thing she hadn’t tried to join the poker game last week. She was a piss poor liar. “Can I come in?” He wanted to push his way in and hug her, and reining in the impulse was harder than it should have been.
Finally she met his gaze, and his heart squeezed when he saw that her eyes were slightly red and swollen. “Yeah, okay.” She stepped back and crossed her arms, her posture and expression defensive.
He walked in and unlaced his boots. “You got any more pie, by chance?”
Her expression changed, turning to surprise with the change in subject. “I’ve got some little strawberry tarts from yesterday.”
“Perfect.”
She started for the kitchen. “Want some coffee with that?”
“I’d love some, thanks.” Noah glanced around, impressed with what she’d done with the place. The walls were a soft off-white, and the air smelled faintly of lemons. What furniture she had was arranged in a cozy way and everything was neat and tidy, with little punches of color in the art she’d hung on the walls.
His gaze snagged on a painting of a sunflower she’d hung on the wall by the kitchen table. On a side table next to the couch as he passed by, he noticed a framed photo of her standing in a field of them. She looked to be in her late teens, maybe, and her smile was every bit as sunny as the flowers she stood amongst.
In the kitchen Poppy busied herself putting two tarts on a plate and started the coffee maker while he took a chair at the table. “So I’m guessing you read the post,” she said, her back to him.
“Yes.”
“And all the comments.” Her back was ramrod straight.
“Yeah.”
She heaved a sigh and pulled a mug down from the cupboard. “Do you want cream and sugar?”
“Black is good.”
She drummed her fingers on the countertop. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”
“Anything except you’re fine. Because I can tell you’re not.”
At that she finally looked over at him, and the pain written in her eyes made him furious. She stared at him for a long, tense moment before speaking. “I ran into someone from back home.”
“I heard. Did she always pick on you?”
She nodded. “Not Sandra.” At least, not to her face. “Her cousin, Emma. It started back when I was in elementary school. Things got worse when I got into high school.”
“Your teachers didn’t do anything?”
“Not really. They would intervene if the bullies crossed the line and made it too obvious, but really, the teachers were just as biased against me as the others. Except for one, my high school English teacher. She’s the one who believed in me and encouraged me to go to college. I loved her.”
Wow, that kind of life was so hard on a kid. Noah had seen a lot of bullied kids turn to alcohol or drugs to cope with that sort of background.
When he remained silent she crossed her arms over her breasts. “Aren’t you going to ask me if it’s true? The things they said?”
“What she wrote and what the rest of them said? No.”
“Why not?”
“Because either way it won’t change the way I see you.”
At that, the defensive set to her posture seemed to melt away, surprise on her face. “Really?”
“Really.” He had questions, but held off because he didn’t want to make her shut down. The comments in the post were mean, and made no sense to him. If anything, Poppy was reserved.
“So it wouldn’t bother you if it was all true?” She arched a pointed brow.
POPPY”S HEART THUDDED as she awaited Noah’s answer, his blue eyes steady on hers. “No,” he said.
She watched him for several seconds, trying to decide whether or not he was being truthful. His opinion of her mattered. It mattered more than anyone else’s. Everyone in her hometown had believed what people said about her. In high school the boys had tried everything to get her into bed with them, assuming she was an easy lay because of the rumors.
The coffee maker beeped and she turned back to pour him a mug. She carried it and the tarts over to the table, set them in front of him and took the chair across from him, avoiding his gaze.
Noah dug into the first tart rather than pushing her for answers. “Mmm, this is great.” When she didn’t answer, he finally got to it. “So this person who put up the mean post, was she a friend of yours once upon a time?”
“No. More like a frenemy.” She folded her arms, hiding her breasts. She was busty and had developed early. From age ten she’d learned to conceal that part of her with baggy clothes to avoid the lascivious stares from the opposite sex. “Well, I guess I thought we started off as friends. Her, not so much.”
Noah nodded and kept eating his tart. “And the others?”
“Bunch of small-minded assholes from my hometown. Let’s just say I’m glad I was finally able to leave my entire life there behind.” Until today.
When he didn’t say anything more she pushed out a long breath and continued. “Look. A lot of my life back there wasn’t pretty. But I don’t blame my mom for it. She made so many sacrifices for me, did what she had to do to allow me to keep going to school and put food on the table and a roof over our heads. When I was younger I judged her for what she did because of what everyone in town said about us, and now I’m ashamed of that. She wasn’t perfect but I loved my mom and that’s why I stayed with her until the end.”
“I respect that a lot.”
He did? She studied his expression, searching for any hints of a lie. All she found was sincerity. Though she’d been fooled before.
“I haven’t known you long, but you’re one of the hardest working people I know.”
“I’m not afraid to work hard.” And not on her back in the “family business”, as people back home assumed.
“I know. I admire you a lot for it. And so does everyone else around here.” He set down his fork, reached across the table to stroke a lock of hair away from her cheek. “I need you to know that. You’re not alone and isolated anymore like you were back home.”
She bit the inside of her lip, his words like a balm to her inner wounds, but she was also so afraid. Afraid to trust them and get hurt all over again.
“You’ve also got a big heart. That’s my favorite thing about you.”
She looked down at the table, uncomfortable with the praise even as his words warmed her. “Thank you. Do you think many people here saw the post?”
“No.”
She uncrossed her arms and rubbed her temples with her fingertips. “I just don’t want to go through all that again. The judging. The snide
comments and cutting looks. People in town turning around and walking the other way when they saw me.”
“You won’t get that here. If anyone saw the post they might be curious, but by now everyone knows you came out to help with the search, and that outweighs anything some idiots from your hometown had to say about you. The entire town knows you were the one to find Liz. And they’ve all seen how hard you’ve worked to get Whale’s Tale up and running. You’re respected here.”
She cut him a sharp look. “Are you saying that to be nice and make me feel better?”
“No. Why, do you feel better?” he deadpanned.
The barest hint of a smile curved her lips. “A tiny bit.”
He sat back and folded his arms across his chest to give her a playful scowl, lightening the mood even more. “Wait. You don’t have a criminal record, do you? I am the sheriff, after all.”
“No. No worries there.” Then she got serious. “I do have a sealed juvie record, though.”
He raised his eyebrows, surprised. “Really? What’s in it?”
Her fingers tapped restlessly on the table for a moment. “I stole food from a grocery store a couple times one winter when I was ten.” She picked at an imaginary piece of lint on her top, the pain of the past slicing through her. “My mom wasn’t educated. She worked as a janitor for the businesses in town. On her free nights, she…did what she had to do to put food on the table.” Poppy hadn’t understood what her mom did with those men when she’d been small. All that had changed once she’d hit school. “But it wasn’t always enough.”
Noah’s expression hardened. “I can’t believe they charged you. You were young and hungry. They should have helped you, not charged you.”
“I think it was probably because I stole booze too. For my mom. She was out of money and I could see she needed some. When she couldn’t have it she went through withdrawals and it was awful to watch.”
“Didn’t the social workers get involved?”
“Yes. They sent me to live with my grandparents for a while. I went back to my mom as soon as the court allowed it though.” She’d gone back because it was the right thing to do, no matter how sick she felt inside.
“Because you wanted to look after her.”
“Right.” Poppy still couldn’t look at him.
His gaze dropped to where she was fiddling with the cuffs of her top. The material shifted, revealing marks on her skin.
Before she could cover them Noah darted a hand out to grasp hers, turning her inner wrist upward as he reached his other hand out to push the fabric upward. Poppy grabbed his hand and froze, her heart knocking against her ribs. Their eyes locked, and she knew it was already too late. She swallowed, lowered her gaze and lifted her hand, that old sense of shame blanketing her.
With gentle fingers he pushed the fabric up her forearm, exposing the long, silvery scars marring her skin. Old scars. And as a cop, there was no way he could ever mistake them.
“I was never suicidal,” she said quietly, embarrassment washing through her. “I did it for a while when I was a teen as a kind of…pressure release, I guess.” She’d hated herself and her situation so much, and nothing she said or did made anything better. So one night while her mom was with a regular client, she’d taken a razor blade from her mother’s medicine cabinet and cut herself.
A heavy silence filled the kitchen as Noah absorbed her words, his hands warm on her skin. There it was, laid out in the open. The past she’d wanted to hide so badly.
Poppy braced herself for what he would do or say next. Maybe he thought she was crazy now. Or worse, maybe he pitied her.
Noah released her arm, got up and sat in the chair next to her. Before she could figure out what he was doing, he reached for her and drew her into a tight hug. “I’m sorry you went through all that,” he murmured against the top of her head.
Taken aback, she rested her forehead against his chest, her body a tiny bit stiff as she leaned into him, and shrugged. “It wasn’t all bad. My mom and I had lots of good times, too.”
Like Christmas. Her mom had spent hours doing the most gorgeous wrapping job on her gifts, using what little money she had managed to save up throughout the year just so Poppy would have something under the tree on Christmas morning. Or her birthday, when her mom would make her a homemade cake and serve it to her in bed before she got up.
Noah stroked a big, warm hand over her back, his fingers combing through the ends of her hair. “Where did you live with your mom?”
“Whatever rental unit we could afford until I was about ten. Then in an ancient little house on the edge of my grandparents’ farm. They were big church people. Didn’t approve of their daughter’s line of work or drinking and cut her out of their life until I came along. They never supported what she did, or her addictions, but they were good to me. Well, at least in comparison.” She was quiet a moment, her muscles relaxing as she eased more into his hold. The way he held her made her whole chest ache. He wasn’t disgusted with her, he was trying to comfort her.
“Then what happened?”
The worst part. “Granddad died when I was fourteen, and Gran was put into a home. The estate sold the farm and the money was put into a trust for me that I couldn’t touch until I was twenty-five. My grandparents’ will stipulated that the money from the sale of the farm not go to my mother when they died. They were afraid she would drink it away. Guess my grandparents were worried I would follow in my mom’s shoes or something.”
She slipped her arms around his waist, cuddling into him. Absorbing the comfort and strength he offered. “The new owner wanted to kick us out of our house, but was willing to consider certain…arrangements to let us stay in the shack as tenants. Word got around pretty fast.”
“You would have been in high school then.”
“Yes.” Kids could be cruel, but teenagers could be downright vicious, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out the things they had said about her once the rumors began to fly.
“So that’s when things got bad.”
She nodded. “People in town had respected my grandparents enough to mostly keep opinions to themselves when we lived on the farm back then. Once they were out of the picture, everyone else showed their true colors.”
Noah made a low sound and gathered her closer, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. Her throat tightened. “That sucks.”
She never wanted him to let go. “Yep,” she said against the solid curve of his shoulder.
“Did you ever think about leaving?”
She snorted. “Every second of every day. But I was too young and Mama refused to go. I wasn’t going to leave her behind there.” Her fingers traced light patterns over the small of his back, wishing it was his bare skin instead. “I went to school, worked two part time jobs on the side to keep us afloat. After high school I kept working while doing online college courses.”
“In what?”
“Business, mostly. Some psych as well. I thought maybe I would go into counseling.”
He could understand why. “What happened?”
“My mom got sick. Things got too hard the year I turned twenty-two. So I quit school and kept working, made enough money to keep us fed and housed and used the rest to pay for some of her medical bills. We didn’t have insurance. There was a lot of debt.”
“And you stayed.”
“I had to—I was all she had.”
Noah nodded and stroked her hair.
“So I stayed until she passed away. The day I turned twenty-five I got what was left of the money from the sale of the farm. I paid off the debt we’d accumulated, and saved the rest for a business I could start. Then Mom passed away. The day after her funeral, I packed up and came here.”
“Then no wonder you worked so hard on your business. You sacrificed damn near everything to have the chance to open it.”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
He shook his head. “So that’s how old you are? Twenty-five?”
“Twenty-s
ix now.” She raised her head to look at him, staring up into those impossibly blue eyes. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-eight.” His eyes danced with humor. “Too old for you?”
She laughed softly. “No.”
“Good.”
She ducked her head for a moment, had to gather her courage to meet his eyes and say, “Still respect me after all that?”
His eyebrows went up. “Are you kidding? I respect you even more for it.”
She searched his eyes. “Well that’s a nice change of pace for me.” She lowered her gaze to his chest. “I guess you can tell I’ve got trust issues with people. Men especially.”
“I kind of noticed that, yeah.”
The hint of a smile tugged at her lips. “I’m gun-shy, I guess.”
“Because of what happened with your mom? Or did a guy hurt you?”
Her eyes clouded. “Both.” She’d kissed a few guys in high school, but when Trevor had asked her out, she’d felt like the luckiest girl in school. Tall, gorgeous and popular, he was everything she assumed she’d never have. And yet he’d chosen her.
Her naïveté had been short lived.
The time they spent together, and the sexual experience she’d gained with him had not been because he had feelings for her, but because he’d assumed she was a sure thing. When she’d refused to sleep with him he’d been angry, calling her a cock tease and a slut.
She’d broken up with him on Friday night. When she’d shown up to school on Monday morning, she wished she’d stayed home. He’d told everyone he’d “fucked the town slut’s daughter”, and then thrown her aside because she wasn’t as good as her mama was reported to be.
By that afternoon rumors were circulating that Poppy had screwed the entire football team. After that the damage was done and there was no way to undo it. So she’d lived with that constant stigma following her wherever she went. Her mother had been the only person who knew the truth, and believed her.
“It was…awful,” she finished in a whisper, willing the crushing memories away.