Chapter Six

We laid there for a long time, tangled together while my skin cooled, and my breathing eased back to normal.

Andre rested his hand on my back, keeping me tucked in close to his body, and I snuggled against his chest, listening to the pulse of his heart.

His thumb dragged back and forth over the sweep of my spine, and I wanted nothing more than to sink into the softness of his mattress and sleep there all curled up with him, my legs tangled with his, held in his arms. I was having trouble keeping my eyes open, each blink a little longer than the one before it.

“Do you want to stay the night?” His lips were pressed to my hair, so I felt each word brushed against my skin as he spoke, and even with pleasure still thick and heavy, weighing down my body, I shivered.

“I can’t,” I finally whispered back, regret in every syllable. “I want to be home when Finn gets there. I don’t want him to come home to an empty house.”

“I understand.”

There was no reproach or resentment in his voice. He said he understood, and he really did. It sent something golden fluttering through my chest, to know that he cared about Finn, and understood why I always would put my son first.

We still stayed all tangled up with one another for a little while longer. It just felt too good to move. Lying there with Andre, I felt complete in a strange way. Like I’d regrown a limb that I hadn’t realized was missing in the first place.

Eventually though, I had to drag myself away or I really was going to pass out. Pulling away from the warmth of Andre’s chest sucked, and a little groan of regret slipped out before I could stop it. He didn’t try to tug me back down or convince me to stay. He just pressed one more kiss to my temple before I was out of range, and then sat up himself.

I started searching around in the dark for my clothes, somewhere between impressed and embarrassed at just how far flung some pieces were. “You don’t have to get up. I can see myself out.”

“Nonsense.” I couldn’t see his face in the shadows of the bedroom, but Andre sounded a little affronted. “I’ll take you home—at least see you to your door.”

I laughed, feeling replete and a bit lazy, but still giddy, with sparks of pleasure still skittering over my skin. “You don’t need to do that. I live literally up the road. It’s a forty-five second drive. Don’t be silly.”

But he didn’t lie back down, just tugged his pants on, and then fumbled with the lamp on the bedside table until it clicked on and spilled pale golden light into the room.

“If you don’t want an escort home, I suppose I’ll have to honor that request,” he said and gave me an expression that wasn’t pleased. “But I’ll at least see you to your car, if you can just give me a moment.”

“Okay.” I probably should have protested more. There was no reason for him to get up and get dressed, just to walk me down the stairs and three feet to my car outside. But his care was nice. I appreciated it. And I liked that he wanted to spend another few minutes with me. I felt the same way, wanting to stay almost more than anything. The bonds between us felt like warm toffee, sweet and golden, but I knew they could and would stretch as we moved apart.

“I can’t seem to find my shirt,” Andre mumbled, checking the floor under the bed. “Sorry, Poppy. Just a moment.” He disappeared into the closet.

I didn’t mind an excuse to linger for another moment. It gave me a chance to actually look around Andre’s bedroom, since I hadn’t paid much attention earlier.

His bedroom was sparse, bordering on spartan, really. Andre didn’t have a lot of shelves or knick knacks of anything. The curtains were heavy, draping all the way to the floor, and in the same navy blue as the duvet on his bed. The dresser was dark, heavy wood, with a mirror attached that was smaller than the one I had in my own bedroom. There was also a large trunk at the foot of his bed that I had no idea how I hadn’t noticed before.

Then I remembered exactly what we’d been doing when I came into the room, and I understood. A flush rose in my cheeks even though I was grinning. Andre could have had a live alligator in the room, and I probably wouldn’t have noticed it.

There were some papers on his dresser, and I wasn’t exactly given to snooping, but I had to admit that I was curious. And Andre was still in his closet, I could hear fabric rustling, so I knew he was going to be out any second, and so I took a step closer to the dresser and took a little peek. They were right there, out in the open. It wasn’t like they were hidden, or anything.

It took me a moment to realize what I was looking at, but one thing caught my eye right off the bat. It was emblazoned across the top of the page, a letterhead that involved a stylized lion strutting across the page. The logo for the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas.

I only caught a glimpse, the first couple lines of the letter, but it was pretty obvious what I was looking at. It was a job offer. For Andre. To do a magic show at one of the biggest and best hotels, in one of the most prestigious cities in the country when it came to acts of any sort. From what I could tell, this wasn’t an offer for a weekend gig either. This was a permanent position they were talking about, with multiple shows a week. Thousands of miles away from Haven Hollow, and thousands of miles away from me. From Finn.

My heart dropped so hard and so fast, I was surprised it didn’t bounce across the floor. I took a step back from the dresser, and then another. My thoughts were whirling so fast that I felt like I was going to be sick.

Was Andre really going to just pack up and leave? I mean, why wouldn’t he? Sure, he’d said he wanted to stay, that he would teach Finn how to be a Magician, but those were just words. They didn’t have to mean anything, really. And maybe he’d meant them, really meant them, before he’d received this offer? Maybe this offer had changed the course of his life and he just wasn’t sure how to tell me?

Had all that talk about being right where he was meant to be just talk? A kind of empty flattery? Or worse, just a line to get me into his bed, and now that the deed was done, he was ready to move on? At that thought, my stomach about dropped to the ground and my stomach instantly soured. Was Andre just like all the rest of them?

All the warmth lingering in my skin went cold, and a greasy nausea continued to build in my stomach.

Okay, no, stop it, Poppy, I told myself. Andre is different. He will never be like all the rest of them.

Andre had proved over and over that he wasn’t that type of guy, and nothing like a bunch of guys that I’d dated in the past. The bonds between us were real. Heck, I could still see the magical red threads that bound us together out of the corner of my eye. They were real. He was real. We were real. That meant something.

And, if I was being completely honest with myself, I knew I had a kind of anxious attachment style. I was always worried about being abandoned and I always needed reassurance in a relationship. To the point that when I’d realized Roy had a soulmate out there that wasn’t me, I’d broken up with him pre-emptively just so he didn’t have a chance to break up with me when he figured out that it was Fifi who was the woman for him.

I wasn’t going to jump to conclusions or make decisions based on past relationships and past trauma. Andre was different. I was going to give him the benefit of the doubt. If he wanted to leave, I had to trust that he would tell me himself.

But the MGM? That was one heck of an opportunity. What a move for his career. Andre would be using his magic to make thousands of people happy, every day. He could bring hope to so many people. Could I really ask him to pass that up just to stay with me in Haven Hollow? Would he even want to continue building our little family? Could I really be that selfish?

My thoughts were still whirling around in my skull like a flock of startled birds when Andre finally emerged from his closet, doing up the last buttons on his shirt with quick fingers.

“Sorry about that. Are you ready?”

Luckily for me, the bedside lamp didn’t cast all that much light, so the smile I managed to dredge up must have actually looked believable. “Yeah, thank you.”

Still, Andre kept shooting me little looks as we moved down the hall and towards the front door. When we reached the entryway, he stopped me with a hand on my arm and a little frown of concern between his brows.

“Are you alright?”

I swallowed hard, but I forced myself to smile and tried to remember the warm, champagne bubble feeling I’d been filled with earlier. “I’m fine, I’m just tired.”

As fibs went, it wasn’t a bad one, since I did want nothing more than to be home and able to crawl into bed again. I must have convinced Andre, because he smiled and leaned forward for another kiss. I leaned into it and ignored the burn of tears threatening. I wasn’t going to leap to conclusions. We’d had a lovely evening, and even if the fires had all burned down to cold ashes now, I was still going to remember the warmth.

He gave me one more kiss goodnight at the door of my Jeep, and that managed to get a real smile out of me. I leaned into that one, too, and drew back only reluctantly.

Andre waited on his porch until I pulled out of his driveway and got far enough down the road that we couldn’t see each other anymore.

I drove slowly, carefully. It wasn’t a long drive to my house, but we were far enough from the more populated areas and close enough to the woods that sometimes critters liked to run across the road, and that was the last thing I needed that night.

I parked in the driveway, feeling a little gray and numb, and just sat there in the Jeep for a long moment. Late season crickets picked up the chorus after a few seconds, and my engine ticked for another few as it began to cool. Still, I didn’t move. Instead, I stared into the dark for a long moment and an even longer one after that, my head feeling both too full and too empty.

Then I dragged myself out of the car and, drudging up a smile for Finn, I went inside.