Page 47 of Her Age Gap Match

“I need a few days,” she said. “I’d like you to take the rest of the week off.”

“Sophie—”

“Paid,” she said. “I’m not—this isn’t a punishment. I just need to think without you here, and you probably need some space too.” She stood, then paused. “Did you really do this on your own, or did Jasper have something to do with it?”

I held her gaze…weighing my options. Lie again and keep him safe? Or share the burden?

“It was my idea,” I said. “I asked him to run it. Everything since then…it’s been me.”

Sophie looked at me a long moment.

I hated lying to her.

“He did it first,” I blurted out. “He…gave me the report. I had to act on it after that.”

Sophie closed her eyes and shook her head.

“Thank you for being honest with me,” she said. “Just one more question.”

“Okay.”

“Are you seeing him tonight?”

I nodded, rasping out a deeply shameful, “Yes.”

She nodded back, gripping the door frame as she left. “Go home, Poppy.”

I gathered my things with shaking hands, said goodnight to the office like it might be the last time, and walked out into the November dark. It felt so stupid…I hadn’t planned any of this, I was giving up everything I’d built my life on in the blink of an eye.

And on some level, maybe I knew that was a mistake. From the outside, anyone would have thought it was a mistake.

But I still pulled my phone out.

Opened my text thread with John.

POPPY

can you come get me?

Almost immediately, three little dots…a response.

JOHNNY

on my way. are you at the office?

POPPY

I’m going home and packing my things. Let’s go to Michigan. I’m ready now.

CHAPTER 14

Johnny

It had only taken me a matter of days to ruin Poppy's life.

That was all I could think about as we rode along the lake from Chicago to a little town called Fennville, about twenty minutes from my place. Poppy had that old helmet on, her arms wrapped around my waist, her head tucked into my shoulder. I'd told her we could take the car and leave the bike, but she said she wanted the thrill of it, the time to think with the wind in her hair.

I appreciated her warmth behind me, but I was worried as hell.