“It’ll fade,” I told her.
“Do you have nightmares?” she asked and it was dark in the bedroom, so I didn’t think she could see me when I nodded. But she asked, “What about?”
“I don’t remember.”
“I can’t tell if you’re lying.”
“I really don’t remember. Sometimes I wake up with a taste in my mouth. Whiskey and sick. It’s how I know I’ve had a bad dream.”
“Is that why you don’t sleep?”
Of course, she’d notice. We’d spent ages together, the two of us. Just the two of us. I was aware of her down to my cells. Of course she’d be paying the same kind of attention.
“Aye.”
“You don’t have to stay,” she said.
“I know.”
And I stayed anyway.
“Poppy?”
She didn’t say anything, so I was sure she was asleep. It was the only reason I had for saying it.
“No one has ever loved me before.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ronan
She’d slept a few hours and woke up just before dawn like a fucking jackrabbit. Ready to go. Full of smiles and optimism.
We’d done an awkward dance this morning around the shower.
“You go.”
“No. You go.”
And we sat on the couch with damp hair and fresh scrubbed faces and I was tormented by a daydream of fucking her in the shower.
This is what you get spending the night holding her in your arms and listening to her breathe.
And if I’d said, lass, I want to fuck you in the shower, she’d go and turn on the water. And I didn’t know which one of us was worse: me for wanting what I had no business wanting.
Or her wanting me.
Either way, I was keeping my distance. I needed some distance.
She’d told me she loved me and I’d dried her eyes after a nightmare and I didn’t know who I was right now. I was losing my edge and my boundaries and none of it felt good.
Poppy sat on the couch next to the box and radiated hope in my direction. She thought this sad bankers box was going to have some kind of secret in it.
“You already went through it?” she asked, looking at the stacks I’d made last night.
“Hardly.”
I had strong suspicions that everything in this box was going to be bullshit. But we had to start somewhere.
She settled down on the couch, a thin wisp of a girl against a dawning day. It occurred to me she hadn’t eaten in days. Our clocks were upside down from the travel and she looked like a strong wind could blow her over.
So, I went back into the kitchen and made thick turkey sandwiches with big slices of tomatoes from Niamh’s rooftop garden, on good brown bread and brought them in to her. There were more stacks around the box and there was a smear of soot on her chin and across her bright green shirt.
“Find anything?” I asked.
“I glanced through it that night,” she said. “When Theo—”
“I remember the night,” I said, cold even when I wasn’t trying to be.
“I didn’t see anything.” She grabbed her sandwich with one hand and took a big bite, holding her hand over her mouth as she chewed. She was fucking adorable.
“But I didn’t know what I was looking for. I still don’t. Bank accounts marked ‘dirty laundry’? Maps with a big X on them?” she said, making a joke that I didn’t laugh at.
When I sat down on the couch next to her, she shifted so far away there was no way we would even accidentally touch. We were still doing an awkward dance.
I opened one of the dozens of files and found the nonprofit paperwork for the senator’s original foundation. And then deeds for homes. Contracts for landscaping companies.
She glanced up. “Thank you for the food—”
“It’s just a sandwich, Poppy.” Diminishing it despite the fact that seeing her taking such big lusty bites, having her fed by something I made, taking care of her in this small way…felt good. The same way it had felt good in the cottage. The same way it felt good last night, holding her fast against nightmares.
I grabbed another file, but it was just more paperwork for the senator’s foundation.
“What happens if we don’t find anything?” she asked.
“We go looking for Bennington.”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“Missing isn’t dead.”
“Caroline said she didn’t know anything about what happened to Bennington,” Poppy said.
“Bryant said the same.”
“One of them is lying?” She looked at me, her mind turning behind her bright eyes.
“Why would Bryant Morelli lie about the lawyer?” I asked.
“I’m not sure he would. Caroline would lie, though, if she had something to do with his death.”
“She’d lie,” I agreed. “To save face.”
“But what if that’s a dead end?”
“Poppy–” I reached for her to try and calm her, but she smacked my hands away.
“No. What happens?” she cried. “What happens if we can’t get Bryant what he wants.”
Bryant only wanted me, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. I didn’t know how to tell her that.