To make matters worse, Poppy’s alibi was atrocious. She had, according to her, been home alone and cooked and watched some TV. She hadn’t talked with anyone, hadn’t been out and about, and hadn’t told anyone where she was going. By the time she got home after work, apparently she’d made zero impression on anyone enough for them to confirm or deny her presence. Nobody could provide any evidence that she had actually even gone home, and though he believed her, the evidence was stacked against them.
So he worked and worked until he thought he was about to go insane trying to find that fucking unturned rock. Where was it? It was here, somewhere!
And then, he finally found it.
He found the unturned rock. It came in the form of uncorrupted security footage from Poppy’s store. The security footage from that night had been destroyed, but through tedious work scouring backups and files, he found a snippet. Not enough to get a complete idea of what had happened that night, but enough that he soared with elation the moment he clicked on it and it began to play.
He turned around to shout to Poppy that he’d found it, but his words caught in his throat. He was at her shop, and she was still under house arrest. Probably pretty curious if he’d found anything, but not here with him. It was odd, in a funny way. He’d gotten used to her being around. Grown accustomed to her being at his side and, perhaps, he’d grown to look forward to it in a new and completely unfamiliar way. Now that she wasn’t there, now that she was locked up and forbidden to leave her house while he scoured evidence for the second week in a row, a longing for her made his heart thud heavily.
His heart unshackled itself from sadness at the lack of her presence and jumped with delight the second the grainy footage fired up onscreen from the hidden security camera overlooking the apothecary. Found it! After all the work, all the effort, he’d finally found the unturned rock. Here it was, the piece of evidence to overturn the tide and prove once and for all that Poppy was innocent! She hadn’t been sleeping with Raz and she hadn’t killed him, and she’d be given her powers back and set free. It was a perfect ending. He reigned in his enthusiasm. He didn’t know what the security footage would show. It might cut off before anything even happened. It might be a dead end. He just had to watch and see if this footage would be Poppy’s saving grace.
He locked his eyes on the screen and watched. Damn, it felt good to find it. It always felt good, but today, it felt especially good. He’d be able to help someone he truly had started to care about, prove to himself that he still had it, and make another…
Wait.
His eyes narrowed and his mind halted in the train of thought. Someone was there, in the footage. The way that the camera was angled, it had a bird’s eye view of the whole store. It had been positioned behind the cash register and tucked out of the way, and abruptly, Poppy appeared in the camera’s sight. She was wearing her normal clothes, but based on the nametag, she was still working. She wandered around the shop a bit, straightening things and checking her phone. Bored, obviously.
A smirk formed on his face watching her pass the time. She rearranged the same display a couple times, then wandered around the store some more. She read the ingredients on a few things in the store, messed with a couple prepacked potions with a blank slate of an expression on her pretty face. It had been a slow night.
Poppy had already told him about all this. She said that she’d trooped around a bit, waited for some customers, and at around closing time, she’d gone into the back to prepare the brew. After she’d finished, she had left it for the delivery crew to pick up and gone home.
Just like she’d explained, the onscreen, red-haired Poppy checked the time once again, threw back her head with a groan, and puttered back offscreen towards the back. Making the product, no doubt. A few minutes went by before she departed, lazily making her way to the front door with a box in her hand. The potion.
She threw open the door, propped it open with her hip, and waddled through with the box in her arms before letting the door shut behind her. When it did, she was cut off from view. So far, so good. Everything was according to plan. So it had been proven that she had done exactly like she said. Of course, there was no way of knowing that she hadn’t poisoned the elixir there, but she had left with it and locked…
Wait.
She hadn’t locked the door.
She’d had the package in her arms and forgot to lock the door.
Oakley leaned forward in his seat, glued to the screen. She hadn’t locked it. Anyone who’d wandered in could have had access to everything in the back! He felt the thrill of adventure rushing through him, sending goosebumps across his skin. This was the thing that could prove her innocence! All his work was finally paying off. Turned out the unturned stone was just some security footage.
He kept watching.
And the more he watched, the more he wished he’d never, ever found the security footage.
7
Oakley’s fingers curled into the desk as he watched the footage.
The blood drained out of his face, but his eyes remained locked on the screen, unable to pull away. He wanted to look away, to focus on something else and forget he’d ever found the recording, but it was too late. He was forced to sit and stare, to watch.
Apparently, Poppy had come back.
And she hadn’t been alone.
On the screen, Raz came into view. Why was he naked? And then, after some time, Poppy appeared. It seemed fairly innocent at first, but then things got heated.
Watching it felt like someone had stabbed him in the back. His heart twisted up and his guts constricted and felt tight and strained, and he wanted to puke, but his tongue felt entirely too dry and it hung strangely in his mouth. His eye twitched as his body became a statue, staring, dumbfounded, at what he saw in front of him.
She’d emerged from the back about ten minutes after she’d left, from out of sight of the camera with Raz in tow. Both stood completely naked, unburdened by their clothes as she kneeled down and gave Raz a blowjob, right in view of the hidden camera. Maybe three feet from where Oakley was sitting, right by the little display of gum and candies by the cash register.
Right there. Poppy had blown Raz right fucking there, after all the fucking time that he’d spent trying to clear her name and insisting that she wasn’t that kind of girl, but with her lips wrapped around Raz’s cock on camera, it was awfully hard to come up with a good explanation.
Raz was undeniably himself, stark-ass naked, standing with his legs spread out without a care in the world, hand on Poppy’s head. Poppy, though facing away, was no less recognizable thanks to the bobbing red hair that went up and down, up and down, and up and down on Raz’s revolting erection. Pleasuring him. Blowing him. Giving him head. And then, they switched positions and Raz took Poppy from behind—sloppily pounding into her over and over. The bile rose in his throat, but he managed to hold it back. He shut off the screen. He’d had enough.
Oakley’s finger twitched and his blood began to pound around in his head. His nostrils flared watching her onscreen. She’d lied to him, and like a fucking idiot, he’d believed her! He’d actually bought her bullshit, and here, right in front of him on camera, he was seeing exactly what kind of person she was. A trickster, a liar, and a betrayer! She’d had him jumping through all these stupid-ass hoops trying to clear her name when she knew damn well that she’d done it! So his emotions had been clouding his head after all! He’d known that the passion he felt towards her was screwing with his judgment, but he’d never imagined once that it was this bad!