by Emma Nichole
“Sorry to disappoint you, baby, but I’m always going to be a fucking asshole. Get used to it.” He tosses back another shot of alcohol.
“Is it so wrong I want you to talk to me? Isn’t that what boyfriends—” I stop myself from finishing my sentence.
“I’m not your goddamn boyfriend, Piper. I’m not going to lay my shit at your feet. I think you have enough family drama of your own.”
The hurt in my face is clear and concise. He may as well have sliced me open and poured whiskey in the wound.
I swallow the knot in my throat and fight tears, because I refuse to shed a tear in front of him.
“Fuck you, Nathanial. Just… fuck you.”
I kill the heat on the stove and leave the kitchen as quickly as I can.
By the time I sink onto the bed and the first tear sheds, I hear him shout “God fucking damnit!” and slam the patio door, leaving me completely alone.
***
I must have fallen asleep at some point because I wake with a start and the entire room around me is pitch-black, save for the moon shining through the open window. A cool breeze swirls in and soothes my heated skin.
I push myself to sit up and snatch my cell phone from the nightstand. He hasn’t texted or called me, and it’s nearing midnight.
I leave the room long enough to check outside to see if the car is still here, and it is. He didn’t leave me. I know that much.
I do a quick search of the house, and I can’t find him anywhere. I pass through the kitchen, seeing our half-cooked dinner still sitting as we left it.
I bend over the counter with my elbows on the marble surface and hold my face in my hands.
With anyone else, this much time passing without some kind of connection or text message would infuriate me, but with him, it just makes me sad, cutting open a little piece of my heart and squeezing it just a bit. I don’t like it.
I tuck my cell phone in my back pocket, deciding to just go wait for him on the patio by the pool, when lights from the far side of the backyard catch my attention.
The air is a bit chilly when I step out into the night, but I welcome it. I love this type of weather, especially on my skin that is just reddened by my time in the sun earlier today.
When I reach the light, I see it is an illuminated path that extends through a gate and leads all the way down to the ocean. Tall grass lines each side, so tall it nearly towers over my head.
With bare feet, I step into the sand and through the gate, following the lights. The sound of the ocean starts as a distant whisper, almost so quiet one could think it didn’t even exist, but with each step, the crashing waves become louder and louder.
I reach the clearing and step onto the empty beach, staring out in the vast power that is the ocean.
Just a few feet from where the tide is kissing the shore, sits the man who—without even trying, and without me even realizing—has captured my heart.
My brazen bossman, who I want nothing more than to stomp toward and throw my arms around.
Nathanial
I’ve been sitting in this exact spot so long I swear I can even hear the ocean telling me what an asshole I am.
“Fucker,” it says with a crash of the waves.
“She’s too good for you,” it says as the tide gets sucked back out.
“You piece of shit,” I hear in the sea-foam crackling on shore.
All I can do is hang my head in complete agreement. Piper didn’t deserve an ounce of my anger. Now that I’ve made a complete ass out of myself, I’m nearly too scared to go back, out of fear she left me.
And truly, I’d deserve it.
My father strikes this nerve inside of me that is a lighter to gasoline. We aren’t good for each other, he and I.
I reach down to the sand, sliding my fingers through the cool grains until I feel the sharp edges of a seashell. I pull it free and hold it in my hand.
“I think that one would be nice to give your mom too.”
Her voice from behind me is a salve to my embarrassing wound.
“I’ll be sure to give it to her.”
I don’t look back at her, but I don’t have to. She comes to sit at my side, close enough that our shoulders are touching.
We don’t talk, not at first. She doesn’t push it, and neither do I, but as the moon rises higher, I know something needs to be said.
“Piper, I’m sorry.” I finally turn my face to look at her, and I can see the redness in her eyes. She’s been crying.
“I would say it’s okay, but it’s not. You can’t snap at me for caring,” she sniffs. “But I’m sorry too. It’s not my place to press for answers. You don’t owe me anything, because you’re right, you’re not my boyfriend. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Jesus, Piper, you have nothing to apologize for. Nothing at all.” I reach over and take her hand in mine. “I had no right to treat you the way I did.”
“No. You didn’t.”
I stare back out at the horizon. “My father has always had incredibly high expectations of me. So much so that, as a shithead teenager, there was a lot of pushback from me. I was a jerk. I rebelled in every way possible just because I resented my father so much. He was a workaholic, who only showed up when he had to. He left my mom holding a lot of bags while he stayed consumed in work.”
I pause for a moment to look her way and she is watching me intently. “You can keep going. I’m just here to listen. I won’t say a thing unless you ask me to,” she whispers, reaching out to stroke my cheek with her hand.
“We didn’t have much of a relationship. He resented me for not wanting to take over the family business one day, but why would I want to when he chose that place over my mother and me for so long? I think even part of me wanted it to fail.” I sigh heavily. “When he was first diagnosed, we weren’t very surprised. You said yourself that even you could see changes in him. What we didn’t expect, however, was the rapid decline his health would take. When it came time to talk about him stepping down from Lennox, my mother called me in tears. She didn’t know what they could do because they didn’t have a plan in place for something like this. She was overwhelmed, so… I stepped up. When I came to their house to talk to my father about it, he wasn’t hearing it. He didn’t want me to have anything to do with it because I was a fuckup, in his eyes. Words were shared between the both of us that I don’t want to repeat. As I’m sure you can tell after the scene today, when he gets riled up now, he explodes. He exploded and shoved my mother down when she tried to intervene.”
I stare down at our interlocked fingers. “I hit my father. I balled up my fist and hit my own father in his face. I screamed at him and told him if he ever laid a hand on my mother again that I’d kill him.” Tears I’m not expecting fill my eyes and my throat burns. I swallow the pain away and continue, “He started crying and apologizing. My mother made me leave. It wasn’t until a few days later that my father’s attorney delivered the contracts over to my penthouse; making it official I would be taking over. I think my mother had a lot to do with getting that pushed through.”
She leans over and rests her head on my shoulder, and I see her reach up and swipe a tear from her cheek.
“And now that his health has gotten worse, every time I hear about him or see him, my father is disappearing right before my eyes.” I choke a bit, trying to hide a sob that wants desperately to escape my throat. “He’s leaving and I never had a chance to be his son… not in any true way. We both fucked so much of our relationship up that now it’s too late… it’s beyond fixing.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, pushing the fingers of my free hand against them as tears begin to freely fall.
Piper moves so she is kneeling in the sand in front of me, and when I look at her, tears are staining her cheeks too.
“I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“Shh,” she says as I wipe her tears away, and she does the same with mine. “Nothing is beyond repairing, Nathanial. He’s still here. Your father
is in there, even if some days it seems like he isn’t. You can’t let that one mistake, or mistakes of the past, define your relationship with him forever. I don’t want you to have any regrets one day.” She leans forward, resting her forehead on mine. “Thank you for trusting me.”
I cup her face in my hands. “I trust you with everything.”
Her lips begin to tremble. “That’s why you want to sell Lennox. It’s too painful to be in your life.”
I nod. “Yes, but I have a bit of a problem with that now.”
“What?”
“I’m in love with someone who works there.”
She sits back on her heels as my admission sinks in for the both of us with her eyes wide.
“What?” she says again.
“I love you, Piper. I think I have for a while, but I didn’t know how to process it, but now I do. I’m in love with you.”
She sits quietly for so long that I think I’ve broken her, but when a small smile spreads over her lips, my heart bursts in a way I’ve never felt before.
“I love you too,” she says quietly, like it was some kind of realization she only just had.
At that, I can’t keep my hands off of her anymore.
I curl my fingers around her waist and pull her astride me, smashing my lips to hers in a kiss.
She gasps into my mouth, anchoring herself over me with her knees in the sand on either side of my hips and her arms wind tightly around my back.
I need her. I need her right now. Right here. I don’t care that anyone could see us should they decide on a midnight, ocean stroll.
It doesn’t take long for my hands to find their way underneath her top, tracing over each goosebump that erupts on the skin of her back.
I leave a trail of kisses from her lips, to her cheek, and higher.
“I need you, Piper,” I whisper against the shell of her ear. “Right here.”
“Yes,” she says softly. “Please.” She sends her fingers up the nape of my neck and into my hair, scratching my scalp with her dark red painted nails.
She makes me feel like I’m on fire, set ablaze in a way that makes me want to burn forever. I can feel her on every inch of me. She’s burrowed her way into me: mind, body, and soul.
“Arms up,” I tell her, and she obliges, raising her hands toward the sky so I’m able to lift her shirt up and over her head, tossing it to the sand beside us.
If I thought she was stunning before, nothing could have prepared me for seeing her soft, perfect skin underneath the glow of a summer moon.
“What?” she asks after catching me staring.
“You’re beautiful.” I lean forward, kissing her chest just over her heartbeat.
“You’re biased.” She reaches around her body to unhook her bra, letting it slip free from her arms, and dropping it into the pile with her top.
I take her breasts in my hands, squeezing them and pushing her nipples closer together so I can suck them both at the same time. I give them a gentle bite and she gasps sharply, followed by a slow moan.
“Anyone could be watching,” she says, but she doesn’t try to stop my assault on her chest as I leave bites and marks over her.
“It’s the middle of the night, and if they are out here, fuck them. I want you.”
“Then take me,” she teases, with a grind of her body into the cock which is taking up residence against her pussy.
A growl rumbles in my throat and I grip her waist tightly before flipping her over onto her back.
In a fury of desperate hands, kisses, tongues, bites, and scratches, her shorts and panties join the rest of her clothes beside of us.
I open my fly and lower my jeans just enough for her to reach down, pulling my cock free with a tug.
“Fuck,” I grunt.
On all fours, with my hands planted in the sand on either side of her head, and her legs wrapped around my waist with the sea breeze tickling our skin, I sink into her with ease, pumping slowly, savoring every ripple, squeeze, and pull of her body.
This feels different.
Sex with Piper has always been phenomenal, but like this, right now, with the emotions of the day pumping through our blood and our admissions hanging in the air, it feels like I’m melting into her and we are becoming one.
My forehead rests on hers. “Look at me, baby,” I tell her, and her eyes open. “Tell me again. Tell me you love me.”
“I love you, oh my God.” She arches her back off the ground so high the crown of her head is pressing into the sand, exposing the long curve of her neck, and of course, I can’t resist. I slide my tongue over her skin and pump harder into her body.
Grunting out my words between my movements, I grind us both toward the edge. “I. Love. You. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
She throws her arms around my back and pulls me down so we are chest-to-chest, and with my heart beating against hers, her inner muscles clamp down around me, contracting and releasing as she comes.
“Ohhhhh god,” she sighs beautifully.
I’m not far behind and I hold myself deep as my cock pulses in release.
“Christ.” I drop my face into the crook of her neck and laugh.
“What’s so funny?” she asks, sliding her hand up and down my back.
“Nothing, this was just unexpected, yet… so expected at the same time.” I lift my head up to look at her.
“Like we were a foregone conclusion all this time?”
“I have a feeling you are right about that.”
Chapter 23
Piper
For the first time since we began this insane journey of… whatever it is… that has happened to us, I am able to watch him sleep.
We couldn’t keep our hands off of one another last night, even after our confessions and subsequent romp on the beach in the moonlight. He was inside of me more than he wasn’t until the sun began to peek through the windows of the bedroom.
Only then did he finally pull me face-first into his chest, wrap his arms around me, and drift into a deep, easy sleep.
I am on my side with my arm tucked under my head, facing him so I don’t miss a thing. His face is much more relaxed. I’m so used to his perpetual scowl that seeing his face at ease is something I’ll want to see every single day.
He’s on his back, the sheet draped over his middle, giving me just enough of a show that makes me want to mount him like a horse and ride him again, but he’s too peaceful. He needs this, maybe more than I’ve seen anyone need sleep.
I’d love nothing more than to stay right here, curled in the warmth with him for the rest of the day, but unfortunately, my bladder has other ideas.
As carefully as I can, I slip from the bed and look around for one of his shirts to slide over my head before tiptoeing into the bathroom.
I take care of my business, wash up, then see his phone laying on the bathroom counter, plugged into a charger. He must have left it in here last night before we argued.
He’s made a few jokes about wanting me to send him nudes. May as well take a few with his phone and leave them in his camera roll as a nice surprise.
I pull his shirt back over my head and toss it to the floor, then swipe his phone from the charger. I hesitate for a moment because even though I’m not, it sort of feels like I’m snooping.
No. You’re just taking pictures for him. Relax.
I enter the passcode he gave me yesterday, fire up the camera app, and flip it to selfie mode, snapping a few pictures of myself that I have no doubt he’ll love.
I take a quick look at them, deleting one or two I don’t like, then give myself a confident, figurative pat on the back. They don’t look half bad, if I do say so myself.
I am reaching for the charger to plug it back in when the phone vibrates in my hand. Instinctively, I glance at the screen and see an email notification scroll across the top.
Gabrielle: Deal is done. Our name is embargoed indefinitely, so as far as all parties are concerned, we have gone from “Interested Buyer” to �
��Buyer”. There’s a five-day waiting period, then we can make the next move. Congrats!
In any other normal circumstance, I wouldn’t even consider clicking on the notification. It’s not my phone, it’s not my business, but there is something in my gut telling me to just do it.
My thumb hovers for a few moments before I make the decision to just click it. I’m interested in what he does, besides Lennox, anyway… right?
My conscience calls me on that bullshit quickly. Yeah right. Keep telling yourself that.
I open the most recent email and all it says is what I could see in the notification, but there is an attachment… and the name sends cold chills over my body. It’s titled Contract and Deed, and the address listed afterward is my mother’s building: Kingston’s.
He took it from us.
My hands begin to shake and white-hot tears form in my eyes. I lay down his phone and pull his shirt back over my head.
I lean against the counter, and everything inside of my stomach whirls, threatening to make itself known.
I blow out a sharp breath, splash some water on my face then stare at myself in the mirror.
I got played.
I try my best in life to not make crying over men a habit. It makes me feel weak, and that is not something I ever want to be, but the betrayal is making my heart rip in half.
I plug his phone back into the charger and take a good look at myself in the mirror.
I’m Piper fucking Kingston.
I don’t let a man walk all over me. I don’t let him betray me. I don’t let him hurt me.
With resolve I know won’t last more than a few minutes, I quietly leave the bathroom and pause at the side of the bed.
He’s still sleeping soundly, only now instead of being charmed and enthralled by his relaxed face, I want to punch it.
But if what I read is true, he doesn’t deserve my emotion. He doesn’t deserve to see me shed a tear.
