She tugged off my shorts so that I was naked and then she reached past me to turn on the shower. “In.”

I made to protest until I saw that she was unbuttoning her blouse and slipping out of her heels. She was going to join me.

The warm spray felt like heaven on my sore muscles, and then Poppy was there, and there was something clean-smelling and a washcloth, and for a while it was just the fresh smell of soap and the massage of the washcloth and the soft rain of the water, warm and comforting. When she had me kneel so she could knead shampoo into my hair, I dropped to my knees without question, pressing my face against her stomach, wondering if there was a word for the skin there that meant more than supple, meant more than soft and sexy, that meant all of those things combined.

I closed my eyes and groaned as she massaged my scalp, her fingers applying the kind of pressure that relaxed and stimulated at the same time. I turned my face and kissed her navel, a supplicating kiss. Supplicating for what, though, I didn’t know.

What I did know was that for the first time in twenty-four hours, I was not roiling with hot-tempered emotions, I was not brooding with guilt, I was not punishing myself. I was with Poppy and her pussy was so close to my mouth, and I bent down and kissed the top of her clit, feeling her quiver.

But then she put her hands on my shoulders, pushing me away from her. “Not until I finish taking care of you,” she said firmly and rinsed the shampoo out of my hair. Then she had me stay there while she quickly washed her own body and shampooed her own hair. She wasn’t putting on a show, she wasn’t trying to be sexy, but it was still one of the sexiest things I had ever seen, the way her nipples slipped between her fingers as she soaped up her breasts, the way the suds funneled down her stomach to stream over her cunt and thighs, the way water poured over the smooth globes of her ass as she held her head back and stood under the spray.

By the time she shut off the water, I was as hard as a fucking rock, and I caught her staring at my erection out of the corner of my eye, staring in a hungry way that made me want to tackle her right there on the bathroom floor.

But I was also sobering up (not very much) and coming to terms with what a jerk I’d been to her down in the basement and also realizing how much I didn’t deserve this sweet treatment she was giving me now. So I didn’t tackle, I merely toweled off and let myself be meekly towed to the bed.

“Lay down,” she said. “And go to sleep.”

She wasn’t staying with me? Fuck. “Poppy, I’m so sorry. I don’t know—”

“What came over you?” she finished for me. “By the looks of it, half a bottle of Scotch. But,” and here she lowered her eyes, “I guess I deserved that.”

“No,” I said firmly, but not very firmly because now that I’d settled into the pillow, I’d realized the room was spinning around me. “You didn’t deserve anything of the sort. I feel so ashamed of myself right now, and I don’t deserve you even being here. You should go.”

“I’m not going,” she said with the same firmness I hadn’t been able to muster. “You are going to take a nap and I’m going to read a book, and when you wake up, I have a way for you to make it up to me. Okay?”

“Okay,” I whispered, not sure if I deserved a chance to make it up to her or not. But also I wanted her to know why I’d been such an ass, why I’d acted like such a phenomenal bastard. It was that stupid human desire to justify one’s actions, as if I could erase the wrong of it all if only she saw my reasons.

As someone who heard people’s wrongdoings and the reasons for said wrongdoings on a professional basis, I should’ve known better. But I was desperate for her not to hate my guts, and yes, maybe there was a tiny part of me that also wanted to shift the blame, because let’s face it, she’d spent the night with Sterling and then showed up in her day-after state, and how the fuck was I supposed to react?

“I know that you were with him last night,” I blurted and then held my breath, terrified that she’d confirm it and even more terrified that she’d try to deny it.

But she didn’t really do either. Instead, she sighed and drew the blanket up to my chest. “I know you know,” she said. “Sterling told me that he sent that picture.”

And then she looked away. “I fucking hate him so much.”

That heartened me a bit. Maybe last night had been sex-free after all. Maybe this wasn’t all an elaborate prelude to her telling me that she was leaving for Sterling.

“I didn’t screw him, Tyler,” she said, noticing my look.

And I believed her. Maybe it was the clear, open way she said it. Maybe it was her eyes, wide and innocent. Or maybe it was something more ephemeral than that, some spiritual connection that knew her words to be true.

Either way, I chose to believe that she was telling me the truth.

She took a deep breath. “We’ll talk more when you wake up. But I didn’t—nothing happened. I didn’t touch him…he didn’t touch me.” She found my hand and squeezed it, and that squeeze was the axis on which the room drunkenly tilted. “I only want you, Father Bell.”

“Wake up, sleepyhead.”

The voice pierced through the smoky, smudgy veil of heavy sleep, sound waves and nerve receptors working together to rouse my brain, to coax me awake and back into the world of the sober living.

My brain wasn’t having it. I rolled over, but rather than finding one of my ancient, flattened pillows, my face found bare flesh. Bare thighs. I wrapped an arm around them in an automatic gesture, burying my face in the smooth, sweet-smelling skin.

Fingers twined through my hair. “It’s time to wake up.”

It was the thighs more than the request, but I finally managed to force my eyes open, and once I did, I regretted it.

“Ugh,” I groaned. “I feel like shit.”

“Because of the booze or because of the way you acted?”

I kept my face against Poppy’s thigh. “Both,” I mumbled.

“That’s what I thought. Well, time to feel better. I’ve laid out some clothes for you on the bed.”

The thighs moved away, which made me sad. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood up, stretching her arms as if she’d been in the same position for a long time, but she wasn’t naked any longer, she was wearing a short tunic belted at the waist and gladiator sandals.

“You left,” I accused.

She nodded. “I couldn’t go where we’re going in one of your undershirts and I certainly wasn’t going to go in my dirty clothes. I was only gone for a few minutes, I promise.”

I sat up slowly and took the water and Advil she offered. “Now get dressed,” she said. “We have a date.”

Thirty minutes later and we were pulling on the interstate in the Fiat. I was wearing dark jeans and a soft pullover sweater Sean had given me last Christmas in his continuing quest to improve my closet. It was a casual outfit—despite the sweater’s ridiculous price tag—and I wondered why we were driving down to the city if not to go to someplace dressy and expensive.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

Poppy didn’t answer at first, checking her mirrors and craning her neck as she water-bugged through the dense Saturday night traffic. I decided not to push her, even though the curiosity was killing me, as well as the faint, nervous worry that someone would see us out together.

Finally she said, “Someplace I’ve wanted to take you for a while. But first: yesterday. We need to talk about yesterday.”

Yes, we did, but now that I knew she hadn’t slept with Sterling, I half wanted to avoid the painful dialogue altogether. This last day and a half had shoved us roughly past the pretending phase, past the place where we could just imagine the world outside as an irrelevant storm beating ineffectively at our window, and I hated it. Because beyond that place were all the decisions and discussions that would slowly break my life apart, one piece at a time.