“She isnothis girl,” Poppy said.
“I’m sorry, how are you involved in all of this?” Dave asked. “I feel like I’m supposed to remember you from that pill party. Must have had too much to drink.”
“Pill party?”
“Graham and Rose’s dinner series,” Landon supplied.
She rolled her eyes. “Right. You see, Dave, I haven’t taken the pill, so I didn’t really think it was appropriate for me to be there.” She stared pointedly at Landon.
“I don’t think this is the time to relitigate that,” Landon said.
“I think it’s always time to relitigate this until you put an ocean between you and her,” Poppy countered. “You never should have gotten on that plane, Landon.”
“It’s a real shame you can’t change the past with a flick of that magic wand you seem to think is in your back pocket. I’d have a couple things on my list I’d like to have another stab at, and getting on that plane isn’t one of them.”
Poppy’s nostrils flared, eyes shining with unconcealed rage. “I told myself I wouldn’t get into it until we knew that she was safe, but I guess I have a lot less self-control than I thought.”
“Poppy—” Landon tried to interject, but she shook her head.
“No,” she said, scaring him a little. “What were you doing at her apartment at six in the morning?”
Dave let out a long, low whistle. Landon did not have the strength to lie, so instead he deflected. “That’s none of your business.”
Poppy shook her head and closed her eyes. “She was happy, Landon.”
“Landon?”a voice behind him said. It was almost certainly a voice he recognized, though in his state, he couldn’t place it until he turned to face the voice head-on. And of course, he should have known that the rich, gravelly, perfect voice belonged to Graham.
“Graham,” he said dumbly. If he’d been thinking about anything other than Rose, he might’ve seen this coming. What they’d done last night had not changed the fact that he was her boyfriend. At least not yet.
“Your name is Landon?” he asked, as though that were anywhere near the worst of Landon’s sins.
“Technically,” said Landon.
“You know Poppy?” he asked, eyes darting to where she stood, still fuming.
“Technically,” he said again.
Graham’s beautiful face tightened, his jaw clenching so hard Landon worried he might crack a molar. “Technically?” he repeated, voice deceptively calm. Or maybe he really was that calm all the time. Landon didn’t know him very well. Graham took a step closer. “I’d like you to answer Poppy’s question.” Any color left drained from Landon’s face. “Do you need me to repeat it?”
Landon shook his head. But when he went to answer, he found he could not speak. And that worked just fine for both of them. It was as much an answer as telling him every sordid detail.
“I’d like you to go,” Graham said. “Please.”
Landon had been expecting a swift punch to the face, or at least the ribs. He’d steeled his body for it. If Graham hit him, it would level the playing field a touch. The pain would be easier to deal with than the way the man was looking at him now, withthose large, kind eyes that saw him as something to be pitied. “I’m not leaving until I know she’s okay.”
Graham laughed without humor. “You think you’re the person she’s going to want to see when she wakes up?”
He had been, before. “I just want to know she’s okay.”
“Poppy will call you,” he said. “Won’t you, Poppy?”
“I’ll call you,” she agreed, the words clipped.
“And, Landon?” Graham said, hitting each syllable of his name. “I want to make something very clear: I don’t want to know you. I don’t want to hear why you’ve lied or why you’ve—” He caught himself, rage threatening his carefully maintained front. “Whatever it is you think you’re doing here? It stops now.”
Landon swallowed the lump in his throat so hard that it came back up. Graham couldn’t understand just how bound he and Rose were to each other. He had no idea the weight of the history between them, could not fathom the depth of their connection—so deep, it transcended the machinations of the cruel geniuses who’d developed a pill with the power to branch lifelines like veins on a leaf. Landon knew he should walk away before he said something he couldn’t take back, but it was one of his more than two Achilles’ heels: if something was true, he could very rarely stop himself from saying it. “It’ll stop when I’m dead.”
Recounting the moment later, Landon swore that he heard the whoosh of Graham’s arm before he saw the right hook that would take him down. As Poppy had been warning him for years, it was a long way to fall.
