Wallflowers: One Heart Remains

by CP Smith

  “You okay, Poppy?” Sienna asked.

  An overwhelming need to wash my hands caused my anxiety to spike, so I jumped from my stool. I needed space and quiet to rid the hormones pumping through my system.

  “I’m fine, Sister.” I enunciated the word to remind her we’d agreed to call each other that, and to distract her from my current state of mind. If my anxiety kicked into high gear, it would require jumping jacks or running to burn off the hormones. In a pinch, a bag of ice shoved down the front of my bra helped to short-circuit my brain, allowing it to focus on the cold rather than whatever threatened me. But in this case, I didn’t know what the threat was. I just had an unbearable need to feel clean.

  “You don’t look fine.”

  “It’s nothin’. I need to use the ladies’ room,” I explained. Sienna started to rise to go with me, but I shook my head. “I just need a minute alone. My dang hormones are actin’ up and I can’t do jumpin’ jacks in front of all these bad boy biker types.”

  Not waiting for her response, I turned and kept going until I was safely behind the closed bathroom door.

  I washed my hands twice, splashed water on my face, and did ten jumping jacks before my heart stopped pounding in my chest. I’d stalled long enough, so with a deep breath for control, I pulled open the bathroom door and began to head back to the bar. My progress was halted, right along with my heartbeat, when our bartender stepped out of the shadows.

  “Here’s your card back, Poppy Gentry.” He said my name like it held meaning, his arm extended with my debit card in his meaty hand.

  Something about the man made my skin crawl.

  I looked down at his hand, ready to take my card, and noticed a ferocious looking face inked into his forearm. It had fire shooting from its mouth, its eyes black as pitch. The word Dragon spilled silently from my mouth, followed by the memories I’d buried so deep I almost didn’t recognize them as my own, and I began to shake uncontrollably.

  “What did you call me?” Dragon growled.

  “You’re the dragon. Dracula,” I answered in shock. I finally remembered it all. “You molested me as a child, and now my boyfriend’s gonna make you pay.”

  _______________

  With each page Donavan Henry turned, Nate grew more frustrated. They’d been sequestered inside his office more than forty-five minutes while he dug through old employment records, dating back twenty years. He’d never, to his knowledge, employed a man named Dragon. Nor had he ever heard the name inside his bar. They were coming up empty again finding the bastard, with nowhere else to look.

  Nate felt impotent to help Poppy if they couldn’t find her abuser. He knew she was strong enough to move forward and put the past behind her if they didn’t, but he also knew that without closure, a tiny bit of her would live in the past. Would constantly be looking over her shoulder for the dragon who haunted her memories.

  “I’ll ask around,” Henry said. “I’ve still got two employees who were around at that time. Maybe they remember a man who went by that name.”

  Nate straightened. “Are either here now?”

  Henry thought for a moment then nodded. “Yeah, Basil Dracul is here. He’s tending bar.”

  Nate blinked. “His name is Dracul? Like Vlad Dracul?”

  Henry frowned. “You mean like Dracula. Like the vampire?”

  Nate started moving toward the door. “Dracula means son of Dracul. Dracul means dragon,” Nate bit out.

  “You’re shittin’ me,” Henry mumbled.

  “Find this man,” Bo barked.

  Nate ripped open the door, heading for the bar. He scanned the area behind it then stopped in his tracks. Calla and Sienna were sitting on stools with a beer to their lips. He skimmed over the area and didn’t see Poppy. Pushing past a biker, with Devin and Bo in his wake, he stopped in front of the Wallflowers. “Where’s Poppy?”

  “She went to the bathroom.”

  Nate was moving before she finished her answer, ordering, “Find Dracul and take him to your office.”

  Nate fought through the crowd near the hallway leading to the bathroom, angling through them. He came up short when he reached the opening, then charged like a bull. An older man had Poppy plastered against a wall. She was shaking with fear, unable to move to defend herself. And he was whispering in her ear. Nate knew, without hesitation, this was Dracul. The fucking dragon who’d hurt Poppy.

  Rage blinded Nate to his surroundings instantly. Blood rushed through his heart like a freight train, drowning out all sound except for one. Poppy. She was chanting, “You can’t hurt me anymore. You can’t hurt me anymore.”

  He barreled into Dracul with the force of a bulldozer, rage guiding his fists. He had one single focus: destroy the man who’d dared put his hands on his woman.

  Blood rushing to his head rang loudly in his ears with his fury, making it impossible to hear. He landed punch after punch for the pain he’d caused Poppy before his arms were jerked back from their purchase. He was face down on the ground an instant later with a knee in his back, and Devin rumbling in his ear to stop.

  Anger rampaged thick and consuming through his body. It felt like a living, breathing extension, and it howled in frustration that Dracul was still conscious. He was spitting up blood, groaning at the pain Nate had inflicted, but he hadn’t suffered enough. Hadn’t been brought low enough. Hadn’t paid for what he’d done to Poppy.

  “Nate!” Poppy’s tear-soaked voice finally cut through the thunder echoing in his head, cleared the incessant ringing in his ears, and allowed him to think. She did that for him. From the beginning of their acquaintance. A single touch or soft word from her and his anger would deteriorate until nothing remained but calm.

  Turning his head to check on Poppy, to make sure she was unharmed, he flinched at the sight of her fear. A lead weight formed in his gut and burned a hole. Her jade green eyes were filled with tears. With fear for what he’d done. She glanced back and forth between Nate and Dracul and her face paled, the color draining quickly until she looked as if she’d pass out. Poppy was afraid of him. The one person he never wanted to frighten finally saw the blackness in his soul, and it terrified her.

  With that crushing reality, he stopped fighting Bo as he cuffed his arms behind his back and closed his eyes.

  Nate had never believed in love at first sight. He thought it was something teenage girls dreamed about under starry skies. But seeing her jade green pools filled with fear, he knew it wasn’t just a fairy tale, because it physically hurt to see that look on her face. But he was the one who’d put it there, so he’d be the one to take it away.

  With a finality that would gut him for the rest of his life, Nate knew he had to let her go. Because just like his father, Nate had terrified the woman he loved. But unlike his father, he loved her enough to walk away so she’d feel safe.

  Fifteen

  BEGINNINGS

  I STARED AT THE GRAY INDUSTRIAL clock, mounted on the gray wall, in the gray, dismal Savannah Police Department. The second hand ticked silently, reminding me with its sharp movements how long it had been since I’d seen Nate. Three hours, twenty-seven minutes, and forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty seconds.

  I’d given my account of what happened in the bar, and sixteen years prior, twice. Once to Bo and once to a detective I’d never met. Bo said he was too personally involved to take the lead on the investigation, and he was a homicide detective, so a Detective Hilliard had been assigned. The wheels of justice turned slowly though, even in a small city like Savannah. I’d been separated from the girls. From Nate. Even Bo after he’d handed me off to Hilliard. I didn’t even know if the girls were still in the building. And Nate? He’d been hauled off by a scowling Devin after Bo had cuffed him at the Tap Room. Bo had stayed with me, then escorted me to a waiting police cruiser within minutes of Dracul being taken away by ambulance. But I never saw Nate again.

  He’d withdrawn from me when I tried to approach him after he’d been cuffed. His face had been as blank and
emotionless as I’d ever seen it, and it unnerved me. Something was wrong with him. I didn’t need a degree in psychology to understand that attacking Basil Dracul must have brought up his past. What I didn’t understand was the distance. The indifference toward me after Bo cuffed him. He’d only spoken to me once before we were separated. He’d mumbled, “Poppy, I’m so fuckin’ sorry,” before Bo walked him down the hall. But I’d been too scared of what would happen to him at the time to understand the significance. He’d beaten Dracul bloody, and I was terrified they would lock him up. Afraid he’d lose everything he worked so hard for because of me. I should have kept my mouth shut when I realized who Dracul was. But the rush of memories swept away any good sense I had. The words had just spilled out of my mouth like always—unchecked.

  Even at eight years of age, my appetite for reading was ferocious. I was an early bloomer. I began reading at five and made my way to chapter books at the age of six. So before that horrible night so long ago, I’d been obsessed with all things vampire and werewolf like most kids my age. Thanks to the internet, I knew vampires were based on Vlad the Impaler aka Vlad Dracul, Voivode of Wallachia. When I’d heard my aunt call the dragon Dracula and then laugh about his name, it had caught my attention through the thin walls of our home. The dragon had been incensed and corrected her, saying Dracul meant dragon, not vampire. When he turned his attention toward me later that night, after my aunt had passed out, I remembered biting his arm and seeing the dragon tattoo. Traumatized and scared he would kill my aunt like he threatened, I’d buried what happened behind my thick walls, and the name dragon was all that remained. Until I’d seen his tattoo sixteen years later. Then it all came rushing back like I’d been asleep and woke to the memories of a bad dream.

  Nate’s apology, for what I wasn’t sure, kept repeating in a loop in my head. He’d called me Poppy. Not Kitten. He hadn’t called me Poppy in two days, and that seemed significant. Calling me Kitten was his way of showing I was important. Kitten was intimate. Poppy was just my name. I wanted to be Nate’s Kitten. Always.

  The door finally opened, and Bo walked in. I stood, ready to leave. More than ready to find Nate. “Can I leave?”

  He nodded. “Dracul’s been released from the hospital. He’s in custody, so you’re safe.”

  “Will he stay in jail? I mean, can you prove he’s the one who abused me?”

  I was surprisingly calm, considering I’d just been in Dragon’s presence for the first time in sixteen years. But my concern for Nate overshadowed every other emotion rolling through my body.

  “If he hadn’t lost his cool when you recognized him, we would have had a hard time provin’ his guilt.”

  I closed my eyes against the memory. Dracul had lost his cool when he realized I remembered him. He’d tried to threaten me again. Said he’d go after my friends this time if I went to the cops. Then he’d reminded me, in vivid detail, what he’d done to me before and threatened to do it again. He was a disgusting piece of humanity. One who deserved to be locked up, so he couldn’t hurt anyone again.

  “Is there a chance he’ll get off?”

  Bo shook his head. “Not with Knox involved. Now that we have a name, Knox’ll use his connections to dig up all this man’s sins. He’ll plead out rather than go to trial. It’s his best option.”

  “I need to talk to my mo-I mean my aunt. She doesn’t know about any of this. I need to break it to her, so she can come in and confirm Dracul was at our house.”

  Bo’s jaw seemed to clench at my reply. “She’s been in.”

  “What?” I grabbed the back of my chair for support. “She knows?”

  “We spoke with her earlier in the evening. Before we found Dracul.” He looked at his feet for a moment, and I braced. I knew I wasn’t going to like what he had to say. “Poppy, she said you were confused or dreamed it up to punish her. We brought her in after we arrested Dracul and her tune hasn’t changed. She refused to admit it could have happened. She admitted Dracul had been in her house, but still denied he abused you.”

  I blinked. “I don’t . . . Does she understand what happened to me?”

  Bo’s face flushed with anger. “Yeah. She knows.”

  I let go of the chair and sank back into it because my knees seemed to give out. “She thinks . . .” I stopped when my stomach threatened to come up and swallowed. “She thinks I made this up?”

  He nodded.

  I asked again for clarification because I needed to understand. “You’re sayin’ that the woman who raised me, the one who rocked me to sleep when I had bad dreams, thinks I made this up to punish her?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  There were so many reactions I could have had at that moment, but instead of adrenaline pumping through my system, I felt nothing. Shirley had been my mother, but she wasn’t a good one. She’d given up her life for me, but had she really? The more I thought about it, the more I realized she’d done exactly what she’d wanted. If she’d truly wanted a family of her own, she could have found someone decent. No, she’d done exactly what she wanted. She’d gotten rip-roaring drunk when she felt like it, brought men home when it suited her, and lied to me about my father, just to hurt me for some perceived fault on his or my part. So why should I be surprised she would cover her own duplicity, now that the truth had come out. If she helped put Dracul in prison, she would be admitting her own guilt.

  “Why did she even bother to help Knox if I was such an inconvenience?” I wondered out loud, surprisingly not coming apart at the seams.

  “She admitted when we brought her in for questioning that she’d been in love with Knox,” Bo answered. “Thought once he put her father and brother away, you’d be a family. But one year turned into five and so on.”

  “I see.” I looked at Bo and saw compassion written across his face. “Why didn’t she just demand he come to get me if she was so bitter?”

  “She couldn’t. She’d chosen her side when your mother died. She had nowhere to go. If she returned to her father, she knew he’d kill her too.”

  “So she was stuck with me if she wanted money to live on,” I reasoned, and coldness set in. The love I’d had for my aunt disappeared in the blink of an eye, easily replaced with indifference. I could go the rest of my life without seeing her. Not after everything she’d done. I’d rather be alone.

  I waited for the panic to set in at the thought of being alone again, but it didn’t come because I wasn’t alone anymore. I had a new family. One with Sienna and my father. With Nate. With the Wallflowers and their men.

  “Can I leave?” I asked, rising from my seat. I was more than ready to put the past behind me and find Nate.

  “You can. Knox is waitin’ to take you home.”

  Dread slammed into my gut. I knew Nate well enough to know he’d be waiting for me if he could. “Is Nate still under arrest?”

  Bo cocked his head in confusion. “He was never under arrest. I only handcuffed him so he’d calm down.”

  That cold hand of dread turned into an iron weight, and it lodged in my chest. “Bo, where is Nate?”

  He looked over his shoulder at the door, then sighed. “He needed time.”

  I couldn’t swallow past the fear threatening to choke me. “Time?”

  He rolled his lips between his teeth then reached for the door and opened it. “I’ll get the girls.”

  That iron weight shifted in my chest, making room for anger. “I don’t need the girls, I need Nate. Tell me where he is!” I demanded as he walked out.

  I heard footsteps then rumbling whispers. I could tell they were male voices, so I rushed to the door hoping it was Nate. I found Devin and Bo huddled together like two old ladies gossiping.

  “Tell me what’s goin’ on, right now.”

  Devin raised his head. The look he gave me was nothing short of peeved, and he was directing all that energy at me.

  “I’ll handle this,” Devin said, then clapped Bo on the shoulder.

  I kept my mouth shu
t as he passed me and walked into the interrogation room. I followed him inside and shut the door. Then I crossed my arms and waited.

  “You need to give him time,” Devin began through gritted teeth. “He’s spent his whole life tryin’ to live down what his father did. To be a better man than his father was. He denied claimin’ you, at first, because he didn’t trust he could control his anger, but he couldn’t stay away from you. After what happened tonight, he needs time. Seein’ you will only drive home what he’s lost.”

  What he’s lost?

  “What has he lost?” I had a bad feeling I knew, but I wasn’t sure how anyone came to that conclusion.

  Devin looked confused by my question. “He lost you.”

  My head jerked back as if I’d been struck and that weight in my chest turned into claws, trying to shred my heart. “Devin, help me understand this. Why does he think he’s lost me?”

  Anger shrouded his face. “Because you’re afraid of him,” he answered in a biting voice. “You couldn’t have gutted a man more if you tired.”

  “I’m not afraid of Nate,” I cried out.

  “I saw it for myself, Poppy. It was written on your face. And Nate saw it as well. He can’t be with a woman who’s afraid of him, no matter how much she means to him.”

  “You saw it written on my . . . You know what? You’re the worst detective in the history of detectives. Sherlock Holmes would be ashamed, if he were real, that you thought for one second I was afraid of Nate!” I shouted, releasing all the frustration I had over my aunt, over Dracul, and this idiotic conversation. “And he can kiss my patootie if he thinks I’ll let him walk away from me. I’m insulted. Nigh”—I raised my finger and pointed toward the ceiling for effect—“outraged either of you think I’m that . . . that. WEAK!”

  The door burst open behind me, and the Wallflowers, Knox, and Bo filed into the room, looking between Devin and me.

  “What’s goin’ on?” Cali asked.

  Devin was glaring at me for the Sherlock insult, but I ignored him.

  Afraid of Nate?

  “Your boyfriend thinks I’m afraid of Nate. That him beatin’ up the dragon caused me to shudder in fear. Clearly, he doesn’t remember I have biker babe princess DNA runnin’ through my veins. Me afraid?”