Chapter 35

By midmorning, it was loud in all the usual ways: cabinets closing, footsteps on tile, the distant sound of Fred outside working around the barn. Life kept moving like it hadn’t noticed anything different.

Madden and Poppi were the only ones moving like they were underwater.

They avoided each other on instinct now. Not a conscious decision anymore, just a reflex. If Poppi heard Madden in the kitchen, she turned down the hall. If Madden heard her voice in the laundry room, he stayed put until it faded.

But avoidance didn’t erase awareness.

It sharpened it.

Everywhere he went, Madden felt her presence like a second shadow, her laugh from earlier conversations replaying in fragments, the memory of her voice too close, too soft, too everything. He kept telling himself the same thing he’d been repeating since he woke up:

It was a mistake.

Except the word didn’t sit right. It scraped.

Across the house, Poppi was doing the same math in reverse. She kept busy on purpose, folding things that didn’t need folding, cleaning surfaces already clean. Anything to keep her hands occupied so her thoughts wouldn’t betray her.

But they did anyway.

Because it wasn’t just what happened.

It was how easily it happened.

That was the part neither of them knew how to carry.

Around noon, they collided in the kitchen without meaning to.

Poppi had come in for water. Madden had come in for nothing at all, just movement, just escape from his own head. They both stopped at the same time, like the room itself had tightened.

The silence stretched.

Poppi reached for a glass. “I didn’t know you were in here.”

Madden leaned against the counter, arms loosely crossed. Too casual. “Yeah. Just grabbing something.”

Neither of them was actually in there to get anything.

Avoidance. Another pause.

This one heavier.

Poppi looked at the counter instead of him. “We should probably just… not bring this up. It’s too messy.”

Madden let out a short breath that almost sounded like a laugh, except there was no humor in it. “Messy? That doesn’t even begin to cover what this is Poppi.”

The words hung there between them like this didn’t belong to either of them anymore.

Poppi finally looked up. “We can’t…” She stopped, rethinking the sentence halfway through. “We can’t make it… a thing.”

Madden’s eyes squinted. That landed harder than either of them wanted to admit.

“A thing,” he repeated quietly, like he was testing the distance of it.

Poppi tightened her grip on the glass. “You know what I mean.”

He did.

That was the problem.

Because if it was “a thing,” then it meant it existed outside of that night. Outside of impulse. Outside of shame.

Madden pushed off the counter, turning slightly away. “So what then? We just forget it happened?”

Poppi hesitated too long.

And that hesitation answered for both of them.

“No,” she said finally, softer. Honest in a way that made it worse. “We can’t forget it. I don’t want to ever forget it.”

That silence after was different. Less defensive. More exposed.

Madden ran a hand through his hair, jaw tight again. “Poppi… we live in the same house.”

“I know.”

“That doesn’t change. So how do I pretend I don’t feel this? How do I ignore what we have? How do I turn off my feelings for you?”

“I can’t answer that,” she said.

But neither of them said the next part. The part that mattered more than logistics.

It wasn’t just that they lived in the same house.

It was that something had already shifted between them long before last night, and now neither of them could pretend they hadn’t felt it.

Poppi set the glass down carefully, like sudden movement might break what was already fragile. “We just… go back. To before.”

Madden looked at her then.

Really looked.

And there was something in his expression that didn’t agree, even if his mouth didn’t say it.

“There isn’t a before. We started out attracted to one another Poppi. So what exactly are we going back to?” he asked quietly, almost not letting the words finish.

Not dramatic. Not accusing.

Just true.

Poppi swallowed, eyes dropping again. “Then what are we supposed to do?”

Madden didn’t answer right away.

Because the honest answer was the one neither of them wanted:

He didn’t know how to be near her and not feel it.

And he didn’t know how to stay away without feeling worse.

So he chose the only option that felt survivable in the moment.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “But we can’t do this back and forth thing. It’ll mess everything up.”

Poppi nodded, even though her chest tightened at the word—everything.

Madden stepped toward the door, then stopped without turning back. “Just… space. For now.”

“Yeah,” she whispered. “For now.”

But neither of them moved like it was temporary.

Because both of them understood, in a place they weren’t ready to admit out loud yet, that “for now” was just another way of saying:

We’re trying not to feel this and face our parents.