It’s Grammie’s house anyway, and Grammie loves me. She wants great grandchildren.”
Charley’s scoff of disgust was a prelude to her turning around.
Before she could storm out, Poppy sat up. “Charley,” she called out, stalling the woman. “I’m sorry. Really and truly I am.”
“You weren’t friends when you sent her to the Venture,” Turner said. “From the second we met, this end was inevitable.” He wrapped his fingers around hers. “Even if I tried to pretend otherwise.”
“I didn’t know we’d be this,” Poppy said, though she had suspected they could have a real future if he’d just stop fighting it. “I didn’t believe I’d ever come back to this life. I didn’t want to talk about it…” No response. “I guess I only told Turner because… I don’t know, I needed an anchor point… I needed him.”
“You used me to get close to him,” Charley muttered.
“Shrimp,” Turner declared. “Poppy lived in my building, she didn’t need to use anyone for anything. You want to point fingers? I was the one looking for any excuse to be near her. This wasn’t her. She didn’t chase me down. It was both of us. We tried to ignore it, but you can’t do that with something this real.”
As Turner sat up straight again, Poppy rose at his side. “Baby,” Poppy said, curving an arm around his shoulder, she kissed it in an attempt to calm him.
“No,” he said with a hint of anger. “She has to stop making this about her. We’re in love. We’re together. Deal with it.”
Charley whirled around fast. “And I suppose you’re so in love that you don’t care who she was screwing the whole time you were falling for her?”
His head shook a little. “This is about Leicester.” Turner coiled an arm around hers to pull her closer and kissed her knuckles. “You were right, baby.”
“Oh, so she’s already fed you a story?”
“Poppy was never with Leicester,” Turner said. “There’s no plainer way to put it. He’s full of shit.”
“Of course you wouldn’t believe him,” Charley said. “You’ve never liked him.”
“Why would you believe him?” Turner asked. “The guy’s a jerk. He’s a user, Charley. Did he tell you about being with Poppy before or after he found out her family were from money?”
“I heard the message,” Charley said, pinning Poppy under a glare. “When you told him to call you.”
Poppy was still putting the pieces together when Turner laughed. “I was standing right there when she left that message,” he said. “Mom was beside herself ‘cause you’d disappeared.”
“So it was Poppy who sent you to David’s? Were you trying to put a wedge between us?”
“No!”
“Charley,” Turner snapped. “Poppy did what she needed to for the family. She didn’t broadcast your business, she told me in private. She didn’t want to, you’re just unlucky that I can read her so well. Something that comes from reading all the damn women in my family. Poppy and Leicester were never together.”
“You don’t know,” Charley said, shaking her head. “He called her back, they got together—”
“We were sleeping together by then,” Turner said. “Poppy and me were together.”
“So she cheated on you and you were just okay with that?” Charley said. “Wow, she must be something really special.”
“You think I’d have chased after a cheater? We never said we were exclusive, but we didn’t need to. When you’re actually in love with your partner, when you respect them, you don’t risk that for a cheap thrill.”
Shifting her mouth, Poppy rested it against his shoulder. “I called from your phone.”
“That’s right,” he said, hearing her without responding. “She called the fuck from my phone, he doesn’t even have her number.”
As she lay her head against the man holding her up, Poppy saw Charley falter. “My phone is still in the Venture,” Poppy said. “You can check it for yourself, David’s number isn’t saved. It won’t be in the call log either because I have never called him.”
“Charley,” Faye said, trying to put an arm around her.
“No!” Charley said, throwing up her arms to push her sister away. “This is bullshit! It’s all bullshit.”
Storming out of the room, Charley didn’t have far to go to get to her own space.
Faye moved forward a step. “She’s really screwed up by all this.”
“Because Leicester screwed her up,” Turner said. “Poppy didn’t lie, she didn’t tell the world the truth because she wanted to avoid this. Abernathy was just lurking, waiting to make her life hell.”
“I get it,” Faye said. “If she told us or the people