Chapter 34

Morning light didn’t soften anything.

It only made it worse; clearer, sharper, impossible to pretend the night had been anything other than real.

Poppi woke first, staring at the ceiling like it might offer an explanation if she looked long enough. The silence in the room wasn’t peaceful. It was heavy. Claimed space. Claimed memory. Every second that passed seemed to confirm the same thing she didn’t want to name out loud: they had crossed a line that didn’t shift back just because the sun came up.

Down the hall, Madden stood in front of his mirror with his hands braced on the sink. He hadn’t slept. That was obvious in the set of his shoulders alone. His reflection didn’t look like someone who had made a choice last night. It looked like someone who had lost control of one.

He ran water over his hands longer than necessary, like the repetition could rinse something off.

But it didn’t.

Every time he closed his eyes, it wasn’t just what happened that came back. It was the way it felt before it happened. The moment where stopping would’ve required more strength than continuing. That was the part that stayed lodged in his chest. He was reckless and now…

And now there was no undoing it.

Poppi finally got up, moving through her room on autopilot. She changed clothes without thinking, avoided the mirror, avoided everything that required acknowledgment. The house felt too quiet, like it was holding its breath with her.

When she opened her door, she froze.

Madden was at the end of the hallway.

He was already looking at her.

Neither of them moved.

It wasn’t dramatic. No running toward each other. No words. Just two people locked in the kind of stillness that happens when both of you know exactly what the other is thinking and neither one wants to be the first to say it.

His jaw tightened slightly. A sign he was trying to build distance where none existed anymore.

Poppi’s fingers curled into her palm.

They both started at the same time, too quickly, too deliberately, like strangers again.

Madden turned his shoulder first. “Morning,” he said, flat. Controlled. Almost careless if you didn’t know him.

Poppi nodded once. “Morning.”

That was it. That was the exchange.

Except it wasn’t.

Because neither of them kept walking right away.

There was a pause; small, but loaded. The kind of pause that held everything they weren’t saying: the regret, the confusion, the disbelief that they could be standing here acting normal after last night.

Madden broke it first, stepping past her without looking again. Not because he didn’t want to. Because he did.

And that was the problem.

Poppi waited until she heard his door close before she exhaled like she’d been holding her breath since midnight.

In his room, Madden leaned back against the door, eyes shut, forehead pressing into the wood for a second longer than he meant it to. His phone sat on the dresser, untouched. He didn’t reach for it. Didn’t text anyone. Didn’t fix anything.

Because there was nothing to fix that didn’t also require admitting what they’d done meant something.

And he wasn’t ready to give it a name.

Not yet.

Outside his door, Poppi stood still in the hallway, staring at nothing, already making the decision without saying it:

Avoidance was safer.

If they could just keep avoiding each other…

Maybe it would stop feeling real.

The house didn’t change, but everything inside it did.