“Like you’ve known each other forever.” He shrugs, reaching for Violet’s hand. “There’s this comfort. This shorthand. It took Vi and me months to get there. Years, maybe.”
“We’re very comfortable,” Julian agrees, gently squeezing my hand. “Poppy makes it easy.”
“Does she?” Violet’s eyes narrow—the look that means she’s about to be insufferable. “Because I remember her having a complete meltdown when Preston didn’t fold his towels correctly.”
“That was about respect, not towels.”
“It was about towels.”
“The towels were a metaphor, Vi.”
“The towels were Egyptian cotton, and you made him refold them three times while providing extensive color commentary on his technique.” She turns to Julian. “Has she done the towel thing with you yet?”
“No; however, I do fold towels correctly,” Julian says, and something about the way he said it made me feel like he has never folded a towel in his life.
I turn to him. “Do you? Really?”
“Well, I have staff who fold towels correctly.” He pauses. “It’s the same thing.”
I snort. Like a person who hasn’t spent five years curating an image of effortless grace for over 800,000 followers. “You’re impossible.”
“So I’ve been told by various people over the years.”
Over the years. I file that one away with all the other little slips. The growing collection of evidence I’m choosing not to examine too closely.
The food arrives—grilled fish, fresh vegetables, a pasta dish for Violet that she attacks with the enthusiasm of someone who spent fourteen hours in surgery yesterday and forgot to eat lunch. Julian’s sea bass is arranged on his plate, destined to be rearranged but never consumed.
I watch him navigate the conversation while not-eating. He asks Chris about his work—something with mergers and acquisitions that I’ve never fully understood—and seems interested in the answers. He laughs at Violet’s jokes. He touches my shoulder, my hand, my knee, with the casual intimacy of someone who’s been doing it for years.
What can I say? He fits.
Julian Blackthorne. The mysterious billionaire with his too-smooth manners and his suspicious lack of appetite—oh, and let’s not forget, his skin that never warms no matter how long I hold his hand. Yet, he fits in with my family. Like he belongs.
I wonder how many decades of practice that took.
Stop it, I tell myself. He’s just a guy. A normal, human guy who happens to have exceptional skincare and a complicated relationship with carbohydrates.
Except he’s not. I know he’s not.
I’ve known since—when, exactly? Our first date, when he mentionedCasablanca“when it first came out”? The morning after, when I pressed my ear to his chest and heard the strangest thing—a heartbeat, but wrong. So slow. Like one beat every few seconds. It’s creepy and weirdly intimate at the same time?
I’ve been collecting evidence like a prosecutor building a case. The problem is, I don’t want to win. I want to be wrong. I want there to be a reasonable explanation for why my fake-turned-real-boyfriend doesn’t seem to follow the basic rules of human biology.
“Poppy?” Violet’s voice cuts through my spiral. “You’re doing the thing.”
“What thing?”
“The thing where you disappear inside your head and leave your body behind to smile and nod. You’ve been doing it since we were twelve. It’s creepy.”
“I don’t do that.”
“You do. Ask Mom. She has documentation.”
I glance at Julian. He’s still engaged in conversation with Chris, but I catch the slight angle of his head that tells me he’s listening to us, too. Of course he is. He’s probably listening to every conversation in the restaurant. He probably knows what the couple by the window is arguing about and what the server is planning to order for her own dinner.
“Everything’s fine,” I tell Violet. “Better than fine.”
She scrutinizes me, her surgeon’s gaze dissecting my expression the way she would an heart. Then her face softens.
