by Cassie James
Stan stops just outside the door of my check-up room. “Piper, would you step into the room so your mother and I can chat privately, please?”
What if he already knows? “Yeah, of course,” I manage to answer with false bravado. I slip through the door, shutting it firmly behind me. I try to put my ear against the door—my hearing is pretty good—but the sound is too muffled for me to make out their words. It sounds like they moved back down the hall a little, maybe.
I step away from the door reluctantly, pacing the room instead of sitting idle. It’s sterile enough in here that I’m just staring blankly at my surroundings, but then something catches my eye. A folder on the desk with my name on it.
I start to open it, curiosity getting the best of me, but I barely get a glance inside before I hear the unmistakable sound of the door starting to open. My hand jerks back, and I shuffle quickly to the window next to the desk, hoping that I’m managing to look even half as casual as I’m pretending to be so that no one is suspicious about my snooping.
Mom’s got a dark look on her face when I turn with another forced smile plastered on my face. It seems that whatever Stan had to say to her wasn’t entirely pleasant. I chew my lip, hoping like hell that doesn’t mean bad news for me. Mom crosses her arms with a quirked eyebrow in the direction of the bed, and I comply without question, even though I find that I want nothing more than to confront her. To call her out in front of Stan, let her know that I’m figuring out who I am and it’s never going to be her perfect daughter. That she could reset me one hundred times and I’ll always find a way to get out from under her and her stupid expectations.
But I don’t do that. Because that would be very, very stupid of me.
I strip out of my jacket and plop down on the bed, shifting uncomfortably as more silence descends around us. Stan rolls his laptop stand closer to the bed, his fingers fumbling with the wires he has to connect to me. He turns to block Mom’s view as he hooks me up, offering me the smallest bit of comfort possible in this moment. If he notices me shaking, he doesn’t react to it. He’s back at his laptop in no time, the keyboard clacking as he types something into the system.
I see the exact moment he catches Brennan’s flag. His eyebrows dart straight up, but quickly smooth out again, his eyes widening just slightly as he glances up at me. For the first time, I get a good look at the high-profile ex-CEO that Stan is supposed to be. His face is communicating with me, but his body doesn’t move an inch. He doesn’t want Mom to know something is up. Please let that be a sign in my favor. He looks back at the screen, reading over the entirety of Brennan’s words, I imagine, and I just try my damnedest not to fidget. This is it. Moment of truth. Do or die.
“Well, everything looks good,” Stan announces, and a whoosh of air escapes me. He says his next words to Mom, but spares a glance at me. “Keep doing whatever it is you’re doing.”
He’s not talking to her, he’s talking to me.
I barely listen the rest of the time. Barely notice when Stan refills all the things that get stored inside of me that make me… humanlike. It’s like I’m on a cloud floating high above everything that’s happening. I fucking won this round. And if I can win this round, maybe Jackie doesn’t have to have the hold on me she thinks she does. Maybe I might stand a chance of actually surviving this time around.
Something is still bothering me, though, when Stan finishes and starts to walk us out. We’re halfway to the front door when I pretend to check my pockets. “I think I might have left my phone. Can I go back and get it real quick?”
“Of course.” Stan nods, and Mom doesn’t immediately interject, so I turn on my heel and go back the way we came before she decides to.
The second I push the door open I head for the desk. The file’s still sitting there, right out in the open. My breath catches in my throat as I run my fingers over the sharp edges of the folder. I pick it up, noting how freaking heavy it is, and flip the cover open again.
I get lost in the first few pages. They’re mostly techy, science mumbo-jumbo, but they’re about me, and something in my gut tells me there’s something important I should be looking for. I’ve just made it to the first page of what looks to be a legal document when I hear the door pushing open behind me. This time, I don’t drop the folder. I jerk it closed and shove it into the side of my jacket. Luckily, the jacket itself is bulky enough to hide the new bulge on the side of my body. I keep my arm tucked tight by my side as I grab my phone out of my pocket with my opposite hand.
Mom’s standing there, eyeing me suspiciously as I turn. I hold the phone up with a sheepish smile as her eyebrow quirks. “I guess I left it by the window when I was looking out earlier.”
She nods, though suspicion still colors her expression as she stands back and waits for me to pass. The weight of the file seems to multiply as I walk past her, praying she doesn’t notice anything. We leave, climbing into the car quietly. I do my best to ignore the way the file digs into my side as I stare at the window and try to bite back a triumphant smile. Mom climbs in, and I feel her give me one last lingering look, but she doesn’t say anything. She just turns the car toward home.
19
Brennan
When Piper slams into my bedroom, she’s like a goddamn tornado. I jerk around from where I’m sitting at my desk in time to see her slamming the door closed behind her. I stare at her open-mouthed as she paces from one end of the room to the other, some sort of folder clutched tightly in her hands. She’s shaking a little, but her face is a mix of emotions, so I can’t tell if it’s from anger or excitement.
“Piper?” I jump to my feet and head toward the door. I want to hold her, to tell her everything’s going to be okay if she is upset, but first I need to make sure I’m not risking Mom’s wrath by breaking the house rule. I crack the door back open, just enough to appease Mom if she comes down the hall, but not enough that Izzy could easily spy like the little deviant she is. I turn my attention back to the buzzing girl in front of me. “Are you okay?”
Her shoulders slump as she moves toward me. “I found something.”
Well that’s not fucking cryptic at all. I only heard from her a handful of times over the break, and we still haven’t had a chance to talk about what happened the last day before break, but I guess it’s a good sign she’s showing up here now. Unannounced and in an obvious state of panic—but beggars can’t be choosers. I’ll take what I can get.
“Okay, what’d you find?” I prompt her when she doesn’t continue on her own. She thrusts her folder into my hands and turns away to take a seat on my bed. I pull my desk chair over again, just like last time. I scoot close, spreading my legs to encompass hers so that we’re touching, but not in an obscene kind of way that would get me in trouble if Mom popped in.
“I found this at Stan’s earlier. I know I shouldn’t have swiped it, but I just thought… I don’t know.” She pushes her hair out of her face, her eyes shining at me with hope in them. “I haven’t looked through it all the way yet. We just came from Stan’s. I told Mom we needed to work on our project and had her drop me off.”
My heart does something funny as I listen to her. She came straight to me. I open up the folder, trying to give it my full attention. If it’s important to Piper, it’s important to me. I flick through the pages as quickly as I can, passing her back a few pages of proprietary information about her design that I definitely should not have seen. But then there’s a thick stack of papers clipped together, and I can tell immediately it’s a contract.
“It’s a contract, right?” she asks, and I glance up to see her leaning toward me with anticipation and excitement practically seeping out of her skin. I nod and turn my attention back toward the pages. It’s a metric shit ton of legal language that I’m not super privy to, but the more I read, the more my hands shake. “Is it the contract from the Hawthornes buying me?”
“Not exactly,” I answer slowly. She huffs, and I hold a finger up, letting her know that I need just a couple
more minutes. My stomach tightens, and the same hope that was in her eyes flourishes within me. Because while I may not understand everything it says, I have a pretty good idea about the gist of it. “I think it’s more of a lease situation, Pi.”
“What?” her voice comes out in a breathless whisper as if this was far more than she dared hope for. “Is there a way to break it?”
I try to skim back through but I have to admit, “I’m not sure.” Her face falls, her entire body deflating as the spark of joy she just had is sucked right back out of her. I toss the file aside on the bed and lean forward, resting my elbows on her thighs as I put my hands on her hips and gently squeeze. Her eyes are starting to water. “Hey, no.” I swipe away the moisture with one finger. “I don’t know what the options are, but I’ll keep doing research, okay? If there’s a way to break this contract, we’ll find it. I promise.”
“Thank you, Bren.” It feels good to hear her call me that again. After the debacle with Jude on our last day, I wasn’t sure she’d ever talk to any of us again.
We sit there studying each other for I don’t even know how long. I start to run my thumb along the waistband of her pants, her shirt riding up slightly so that I get to touch bare skin. She releases a slow breath. It’s all innocent, in theory, but the tightness growing in my pants didn’t seem to get that memo. I swallow hard as she shifts, her knee grazing me right between the legs as I strain against my jeans. Her eyes widen and her lips part, and fuck maybe I should make up some excuse for us to go take a ride in my Jeep again.
“You know that I care about you, right?” I let my thumb dip a little lower, just under the waistband now.
“I care about you, too, Bren. I care about all—”
I squeeze her hip harder than I meant to, cutting her off before she can tell me again all about how she cares about me, but also Tyler and Jude. I don’t want to get lumped in with them. I don’t want to be treated like we’re all just one big friendship circle. Friends don’t do what we did in her driveway. And they sure as hell don’t obsess over wanting to do it again, the way I am.
“Piper,” I say her name softly. She leans closer as if my saying her name was the invitation she was waiting for. I shift closer, fully prepared to kiss her, but words slip out, instead. “I love you.”
For a split second, I freeze, holding my breath as I wait for a reaction. She goes from a blank stare to launching herself at me with no warning. I surge to my feet as I catch her before she sends us both careening to the floor. Our arms get tangled as our mouths meet, me kissing her hard and her kissing me back even harder. I slip one hand down the back of her pants, fingers caressing the bare skin of her ass.
She slides her hands up the back of my shirt and digs her fingernails into my skin. My mind is utterly blank of anything but her. Which is maybe why it takes two tries before my brain acknowledges the clearing throat behind me.
I jerk away from Piper as if I’ve been burned. I’m sure I’m bright fucking red as I meet my mom’s narrowed eyes. Piper scrambles away from me, her face just as red as I think mine is. She shuffles from foot to foot beside me as we both wait for Mom to say something. Mom puts her hands on her hips and purses her lips as she studies the two of us. I expected a bigger reaction, honestly, but she looks more curious than anything.
“Door stays open,” she reminds me in a soft voice. I wait for the warning to come, but all I get is a fixed stare. I know what it is, too. My mom loves this girl next to me almost as much as I do.
20
Piper
I run my hands over the front of my shimmery dress one last time, and even though I’m sure it’s probably tight enough to show a bit of panty line, I manage to make it out of the house this time without Mom stripping me of my underwear privileges. She even skipped over the usual warning about keeping my phone on at all times. She’s been strangely calm the past few days, and while I don’t really trust it, I’m not going to make something out of it.
My hands flit through my hair, and I can’t help but roll my eyes at myself. Tyler’s already told me a hundred times that I look good, and I know that I do, but I’m jittery. Nervous, maybe, to be in the same place with all of the guys all at once. This is the first time during break that we’ll all be together.
Things are just as big of a mess now as they were before the break—if not more so. I’ve started up a semi-regular thing with Tyler. Brennan told me he loved me. Jude, I haven’t exactly talked to, but he did send me the text commanding I show up early tonight.
I have to be honest; I don’t know what to do about The Thorns. I love them. I want them. But it’s all or nothing. I won’t accept one of them at the risk of losing the others.
“Pipe, come on, you look amazing.” I beam over my shoulder at Tyler, but my smile falls when I see that he’s rolled his sleeves down and has his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his pants. He looks like a fucking model, albeit a very cold one. “Stop looking at me like that. Yeah, I’m cold, anyone would be if they stood outside for ten minutes with you while you unnecessarily question how good you look. You’re fucking gorgeous, seriously. Do you know how hard it’s gonna be making sure other guys keep their eyes off of you?”
I offer him a quick smile, but turn away quickly so that I don’t have to keep up the facade. What he’s saying—that last part—it doesn’t make me feel better. Because that’s the crux of my concerns. Yeah, I’ve been having an amazing time with Tyler, but he’s not the only person I care about, and I’m not sure he’s ready to accept that. I’m not sure that any of them are ready to accept it. I give my head a quick shake before I reach for the door handle.
Jude’s waiting just on the other side, arms crossed over the expanse of his chest with a quirked eyebrow and panty-melting smirk. It’s only through some kind of miracle that I manage not to drop my jaw at the sight of him. He’s wearing all black, his clothes tailored to perfection, hugging him like a second skin.
Holy hell. “Trying to melt all the panties tonight, Jude?” I ask, and his smirk deepens.
“Starting with yours first.” The door snaps shut sharply, and Jude pulls his heated gaze away from me to consider Tyler with a shit-eating grin. “Took you long enough, Hamilton. I can’t believe you left her out in the cold that long.”
Tyler moves past me, shaking his head as he goes. “Nope, that was all her,” he says as he stops to slap hands and bro hug Jude. The whole thing is stiffer than it should be, but I guess at least it’s good they’re making some effort to maintain normalcy. “She wouldn’t take my word for it that she looks incredible.”
“Interesting,” Jude muses, and his gaze travels my body with languid strokes. I squirm on the spot, thighs clenching. Jude hasn’t even been gone that long, but apparently it was just long enough for me to forget how easily I melt for him. “Hey, Brennan!” Jude calls loudly, and the last of The Thorns appears seconds later.
He looks just as good as the other two. I briefly toy with the idea of asking them to do a quick photo shoot for me before the crowd starts showing up. Because these three, standing together with sleeves rolled and matching sets of bedroom eyes pointed in my direction, look like they belong in a high fashion magazine. Or a museum somewhere in Europe because surely an artist sculpted them from stone for my benefit. Every single one of them is a work of art.
“Piper thinks she looks bad.”
I glare at Jude, crossing my arms over my chest only to belatedly realize it has the unintended consequence of pushing my tits higher in the impossibly tight dress. His eyes glaze over, and it takes everything in me not to gloat about that.
“Whatever,” I tell them. “I look good, I get it. Feel free to keep the compliments coming though,” I joke.
“No,” Brennan says with a low whistle. “I think you’re starting to get a little too aware of how hot you are. We better not.”
I shoot a “humph” over my shoulder at them as I walk farther into the house. “And here I was thinking of telling you guys you look
delicious enough for the cover of a magazine.”
I hear them following me, the shuffle of shoes and the quiet hush of conversation trailing me through the house. I didn’t expect to fall into joking with each other so easily. I was expecting more stifled conversation and arguing—so it’s an incredibly welcome surprise. I pause when I find a door that clearly leads to a closet so that I can shove my purse inside so I’ll know where to find it later. Tyler and Brennan go ahead, but Jude manages to hang back. As I lean in to hide my purse along a back shelf, his hand ghosts over my ass, sending a shiver racing up my spine.
I turn, shooting him a dirty look that I don’t really mean, and he answers only with a smirk. “Why did you make us all come early?” A few minutes is one thing, but we’ve got probably another hour before anyone else really starts showing up.
Jude loops his arm around my waist, making me raise an eyebrow. Down the hall, I can see Tyler’s face darken as he notices, too. He turns away; I don’t look forward to dealing with that later.
“We haven’t all been together since before Christmas. It’s about damn time we spent some time together, don’t you think?” He says it like he’s talking about all of us, but something about the way his grip tightens around me makes me think he’s really just talking about the two of us.
I hum in the back of my throat. This feels like an explosion waiting to happen. Jude wants to lay claim. Tyler’s already jealous… and I can’t image Brennan will be far behind based on the way things usually go. But if the guys have a problem with each other, they never bring it up. I spend an hour nervously shifting from foot to foot, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never does.
