all along. But he was so busy and we didn’t talk about it, so I just assumed he didn’t feel the same way, that he couldn’t feel that way about me. So I kept my feelings to myself.”
“You could’ve told me.”
She nodded. “Maybe. But I didn’t want to play games. I couldn’t tell Turner we were just sex with no strings and then go around telling his family we were intimate and I wanted more.”
“You know he always expects to know everything that’s going on in all of our lives, but he’s so private. He never tells us anything.”
“I’m sorry if we hurt you,” Poppy said. “I hated that I had to just leave you as well. Primrose showed up at our apartment the night before I left, while you were in bed. That’s why I was sleeping on the couch in the morning. You were out when the news about the bounty hit and I wanted to save you from the fallout. I thought leaving would save you… When I saw that the press were crowded outside the Venture, I asked Tiller to send security, to protect you. I was so proud when you released that statement.”
“That was all Turner, he called Preston. My head was spinning. I didn’t know what to think… That was before David told me about the two of you.”
Calmer Charley did come across as more reasonable, but there was still something suspicious in her probing stare.
“Nothing ever happened between the two of us,” Poppy said. “I promise. You have to know that’s true. I hadn’t even noticed David until that night at Naughtie’s when I found out you felt something for him. By then, I was already in deep with my feelings for Turner. I wasn’t interested in being with anyone.”
“You were sleeping with Turner then?”
Poppy shook her head. “It was that weekend, but no, not by then. But he was all I thought about. I don’t think I even admitted to myself just how much I wanted him. It was complicated and confusing, for both of us, I think. Just keeping up with what we felt for each other was exhausting enough, I wouldn’t have had time to be with another man. And do you really think that Turner would be okay with that? That he’d have come all this way and confessed his feelings if I’d been with David Leicester?”
“You always said I deserved better than David.”
“You do,” Poppy said. “Your brother has shown me what real love is and how a man is when he feels it. Once Turner knew it, that we had the potential for a future, nothing got in his way. That’s what you deserve Charley.”
“I can’t just…” She bit her lip, restraining the quiver of emotion that bled into her words. “I can’t just turn off my feelings.”
“I know that, honey,” Poppy said, sliding a little further up the bed.
“But he’s been weird with me, I don’t understand. He wanted to come here, I thought it was to be with me, but… Faye’s dead against it, she says he’s using me. Just what you said. Turner doesn’t like him either.”
Understanding, Poppy nodded. “Which is why you feel like you’re on the outside looking in.”
“All of you agree on, like, everything,” Charley said, throwing up her hands. “Everyone’s all happy about this, about Turner and Poppy like the two of you didn’t deceive us all.”
Though there was emotion in her friend’s voice, it didn’t feel like anger. “We didn’t do it out of malice. We needed to get to this place, together, both of us, before we could think about being open with the family.”
“He knew about everything and I knew nothing.”
“You know what Turner’s like. Yes, he’s your brother and he probably pisses you off all the time, but you know how safe he is. How even when everything is going wrong, you can still always rely on him to be there.” The honest vulnerability shining from Charley revealed that she understood. “He didn’t want to love me because he wanted to only belong to his family. It took him time to accept that I might be his family too… If you can’t accept that, if you really don’t want us to be together, I’ll walk away, Charley. I won’t take him from you. I promise. Hurting your family is the last thing I want.”
Charley’s attention sank to the bed. “I think I’m the one hurting them.”
“You can’t turn your feelings off,” Poppy said, reinforcing what Charley