by AS Teague
It was a lie. My classic Mustang was currently housed under a cover in my garage. But a little white lie wasn’t so bad when it helped someone feel better, right? “Yeah, man. Wrapped it around a tree going too fast in the rain one day. My old man had given it to me when I graduated.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed before he asked, “Your dad kill you?”
I held my arms out. “I’m standin here, right?”
He grinned, his face slowly getting some color back, and nodded. “Right. Yeah, okay. Dad won’t be too mad.”
He was talking to himself, so I turned back to where Pieters was standing, phone to his ear.
“Hey, man. You on the phone with the office?”
His nod coincided with the police arriving and for the next twenty minutes, I was wrapped up talking to the officers and the driver of the car in front of mine that I’d rolled into.
We were wrapping up paperwork when a familiar car came sailing in, the driver barely tapping the brakes before coming to a stop behind the officers’ cruiser. The door flew open and a blonde leaped out.
“Lawson?” Piper shouted, her face wild as her eyes scanned the faces of everyone around me. When her gaze finally met mine, she let out a yelp and then barreled across the road and straight into my chest. “Oh, thank God,” she breathed, her face buried in my chest. Her arms squeezed my waist almost painfully tight and then she pulled away and began to search my face for any signs of injury.
“What’s going on?”
Her voice was shaky as she looked me over one last time, seemingly satisfied that I was in fact okay. “Your friend texted that you were in an accident.”
I turned to Pieters and glowered at him. In response the corner of his mouth tipped up and he winked.
Asshole.
“I’m fine. It was just a fender bender.”
She shook her head. “His text was vague and he didn’t answer any of my questions. The whole way here I just kept imagining that you were dead.” A fat teardrop rolled down her cheek, but she wiped it away.
Thoughts of all the ways I could kill Pieters ran through my head as I told her, “I barely even felt it.”
Piper untangled herself from my arms and glanced at the kid’s car that was being loaded onto the tow truck. She looked back at me skeptically. “That car’s toast and you didn’t really feel anything?”
“It wasn’t anything more than a quick game of bumper cars.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t argue. A moment later, Pieters sauntered over. “My ride’s here. I’ll see ya tomorrow, Reed.”
I pulled away from Piper, but made sure not to let her get more than an arm’s length away. “What kind of shit are you pulling?” I hissed through clenched teeth. “We’ve got to get to the office.”
“My back’s hurting. I’m taking the rest of the day.” He was full of shit and we both knew it. But that didn’t stop him from clutching his back dramatically as he walked away.
The stuff I needed to get sorted would have to wait. “Give me a ride home?”
She nodded. “Yeah, but can you drive?”
I held my hand out to take her keys and noticed the tremor of her hand as she passed them to me.
I tucked her into my side and together we crossed the street to where her car was haphazardly parked.
“Listen, Pippie, about earlier…” I started, not exactly sure how to apologize for being an ass. But she turned and placed a hand on my chest.
“Thank you for getting rid of Hampton for me. You’re right, I do let him steamroll over me.”
I cupped a hand around where hers still rested over my heart and said, “I still shouldn’t tell you what to do. You’re more than capable of standing up for yourself.”
She pressed her lips together and then gave me a weak smile. “Let’s just call it a truce and go home.”
“Deal.” I leaned forward to kiss her, but at the last second, she turned her head and my lips landed on her cheek. I made a mental note to ask her about that, but later, after I got her home.
The drive home had been a quiet one and it had only been when we pulled into my driveway that she had stopped shaking.
Piper slipped into the house and disappeared into her room before I’d had a chance to ask her what the deal was with her major overreaction to my very minor car accident. It was nearly midnight and I’d finally decided to call it a night and go to bed, still not seeing a trace of Piper.
Settling beneath the covers, I’d just put my phone on the nightstand when my door creaked open and Piper tiptoed into my room, silently sliding in between the sheets and curling up behind me.
She slipped an arm around my waist and her soft hand slid up my bare torso until it came to rest over where my heart was beating. Her fingers flexed, nails digging into my skin slightly.
“Didn’t think I’d get this tonight after what happened earlier.” I slid my own hand over hers and linked my fingers between hers.
“Who said you were getting any tonight?” she murmured.
I shook my head and pulled her arm tighter around me. “Not sex.” I squeezed her fingers once more. “This. You wrapped around me, your legs tangled with mine, the sweet scent of you invading every square inch of my senses.”
“Oh.” Her voice was low, barely more than a whisper. “Your bed’s just more comfortable than mine.” She tried to joke, but it fell flat.
She didn’t say anything further, and I listened to her breathing hitch over and over again for as long as I could stand. When I knew she wasn’t going to volunteer anything more, I pulled my hand from hers and turned so I could face her. It was dark in the room, but there was light from the hallway that Piper had left on filtering in, so I could make out her features. A single tear was sliding down her cheek and I swiped it away with the pad of my thumb.
“You wanna talk about it?”
She shook her head. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“Really, it was nothing.”
“Pippie, you drove up like you were the stunt double filming a remake of The Dukes of Hazzard. I’m pretty sure your car got up on two wheels.” I would have been impressed if she hadn’t been wild with terror when she’d jumped out of the car. “That was not nothing.”
“Am I not supposed to be concerned about you?” she sniped through a sniffle.
That sass…I coughed to cover my chuckle. “Concerned? Yes. Looking like a banshee because you were terrified? No.”
“So now I look like a crazy person? Gee, Lawson, you sure know how to make a girl feel good.”
She was deflecting. Avoiding. Doing anything she could to not answer why she’d been a near hysterical mess. I stroked a thumb over her soft cheek and brought my face so close to hers that our noses were nearly touching. “I know exactly how to make you feel good. But that’s not what we’re talking about here.” I brushed my lips over hers and then pulled my head back. “Talk to me.”
Her mouth opened and closed again, her teeth clacking together before she finally decided to confide. “I guess I just had flashbacks to the night when Jack…”
She didn’t have to finish her sentence. I knew where her mind was. And I’d known since she’d clung to me at the scene of my accident that she was freaked because of the way she’d lost her brother. But I wanted to hear her say it.
“I’m fine. I’m barely even sore.” I made a show of rolling my neck.
When tears began to flow freely down her cheeks, my heart squeezed. I’d never seen her cry as much as she had these last few days. She was nearly broken, and it was killing me to not be able to put her back together again.
I knew we were missing an important piece of the puzzle that would clear her name and allow her to go back to doing what she was born to do. But I couldn’t figure out what it was, and every day that passed, she became more and more hopeless. My car accident, as minor as it was, was just the cherry on top of the sundae. And I was worried that if we didn’t get this shit sorted out soon, she wa
s going to lose everything she’d worked so damn hard for.
I brushed my fingertips down her arm and whispered, “Your tears are killing me.”
A sob escaped her lips. “Promise you won’t leave me.”
“Are you kidding me? I was about to make you promise me that very thing.” I swiped another one of her tears, but this time with my lips. “I’d never leave you.”
She choked another sob out. “First Jack left. Then you ran away to Vegas—”
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Let’s clear this up right now. No one left you. Jack died.” I wanted to clarify that I didn’t run away to Vegas, but the sob that tore from her throat stopped me in my tracks.
Her breaths were ragged, her chest heaving.
“Piper, have you ever talked to anyone about Jack? About your loss?”
“Of course. I talk to Hampton all the time.”
It didn’t shock me that she thought talking to Hampton was the equivalent to getting professional help. He may have been a brilliant doctor, but he was just as fucked up over Jack’s death as Piper was. There was no way he’d ever said anything to help Piper when it came to the guilt and pain she felt over her brother’s tragic loss. “Hampton is a trauma surgeon. Not a psychologist. Hell, I don’t think they’d even let him call himself a counselor.”
“But he knows how I feel. He understands,” she argued.
“No, he doesn’t. No one knows how you feel except for you. Jack was your twin brother. His loss affected you in ways Hampton could never fathom. You need to see someone and talk about it,” I told her firmly.
She shook her head as best as she could as it lay on the pillow. “Shrinks are for the weak.”
I laughed. Loud and sharp. “I didn’t know I was curled up in my bed with my brother.”
“What does that mean?” Her tone was clipped, defensive.
“Those words are straight out of Hampton’s mouth and you know it.”
“No, they are not. I just think it’s a waste of time to go talk to a stranger about how you’re feeling. I don’t know anyone it’s helped.”
“It helped me.”
She sucked in a breath. “It what?”
“After I went to Vegas, I saw a counselor for almost a year,” I confessed.
I’d never told anyone I’d struggled with guilt, so convinced I could have prevented the tragedy that there were many nights I didn’t sleep. But Piper needed to know she wasn’t alone. That she had never been alone.
“You did?” Her words were quiet, timid. “Why?”
It had taken time, but I’d learned in therapy that there are things outside of my control. Something I’d always known, but it was different when a tragedy struck. The things you knew went out the window when you thought there was any sort of glimmer of difference that you could have made. But even with the months and months of hard work, and the years since then, the pain of thinking of and talking about that night was still there. And I knew that if it hurt for me, it had to be downright brutal for Piper.
I scrubbed a hand over my face before I very carefully answered. “I spent a long time thinking I could have stopped Jack. Sometimes when I dream about that night, I wake up still feeling the guilt of his death, as though it was my fault he’d died. I was the oldest. The only one sober. I should have done more than just get in my fucking car and follow you.”
Her head bobbed. “That’s exactly how I feel. Every day I think about him. And every day, I try to convince myself it wasn’t my fault. And every day, I fail.”
Her eyes were wet again, quickly filling with more tears that would break my heart all over again. “You aren’t failing.”
“I am. I keep losing everything that’s good in my life. First, my brother. Then Hampton. Now, my career.” She motioned a hand between us. “This thing we’ve got, it’s too good to be true. I spent so long trying to ignore the way I felt about you, even after we got together. Because everything I love disappears. So, I knew that if I fell for you, it wouldn’t be long before something happened to ruin that too. But”—she broke off with a bitter laugh—“you can’t control your feelings, you know. And, dammit, you are so freaking amazing. Your texts were what kept me from going crazy while I was in Philadelphia. How could I not fall in love with you?”
My heart was thundering in my chest so hard I was convinced the entire bed was shaking with each beat. I blinked, trying to focus on her face as she continued.
“And so, when your friend sent me a cryptic text that you’d been in an accident, I convinced myself it was finally happening. That I’d lost you too.”
I wrapped my arms around her. “You’re in love with me?”
“Well, yeah.”
“And you think that every good thing in your life gets taken from you?”
“It does.”
“There is not a single chance in hell that anything will ever take me away from you. And when I do die, eighty years from now, I’ll claw my way back out of the grave just to be with you.”
She quirked a brow and pressed her lips together to stifle a smile. “You’re going to live to be one hundred and ten years old?”
“I’ll live exactly one day longer than you, whether that’s another eighty years, or eight hundred years.”
Her eyes were swimming again as she whispered, “God, Lawson. I love you.”
They were the words I’d wanted to hear my entire life. But when they tumbled from her lips, breathy and full of emotion, they were more than just words. They were an awakening. And maybe I was the Neanderthal she’d accused me of being a few months ago, because knowing she was in love with me, I felt like I’d just conquered the world. There would be nothing that would ever compare to the sense of relief I’d felt as those words passed through her lips.
I crashed my lips to hers and rolled us.
There was no hesitation as she wrapped her arms around my shoulders, clinging to me as I slid my tongue into her mouth, tasting her. She was even sweeter than when we first kissed.
Our mouths moved together in a relentless rhythm, and soon we were both panting and breathless. I pulled away but hovered over her, thankful she was so absentminded and always leaving the lights on. I wanted to be able to see her clearly when I told her I was in love with her too.
As my gaze roved over her face, I saw her eyes were once again sparkling, but this time it wasn’t from unshed tears. I placed a light kiss on her lips, brushing them gently, a stark contrast from the rough kisses we’d just shared.
“I love you,” I told her, my voice gravelly with emotion. “I have loved you since you were an annoying kid. I loved you through those awkward middle school years. Although, it was just me who was awkward. You’ve always been beautiful.” I stroked my finger down her cheek. “I loved you even when you thought I was an overbearing asshole. I loved you every single day I was in Vegas trying to convince myself I didn’t love you. I loved you when you moved into my house and reminded me of all the reasons I did in fact love you. I loved you so much I thought I would explode from it when you kissed me for the first time.” I dipped my head and grazed her earlobe with my teeth. When she shivered, I soothed the spot with my tongue and then whispered, “I love you, Piper Kelley.”
Her fingers dug into my shoulders as she rolled her hips into my aching dick. I wanted her, needed to feel her, more than ever before. Silently, I wished she would hurry up and put me out of my misery.
And as though she could read my mind, she turned her head and with her lips at my ear, became my own personal genie in a bottle. “I’m a liar. You are getting some tonight.”
35
Piper
“You don’t have to come with me, you know,” I told him as I pulled the brush through my hair. I’d been dressed and ready to go for half an hour, but I was so nervous I couldn’t stop looking at myself in the mirror.
Lawson didn’t reply, just wrinkled his brow at my reflection over my shoulder.
I shook my head. “Really, you have a job. I can’t k
eep asking you to take time off for me.”
“I don’t recall you asking me.”
I rolled my eyes. When I told him that the attorney needed to see me today, he’d basically just informed me he was going. “As a matter of fact, you’re right, I didn’t ask. What if I didn’t want you to go with me?”
“Too bad.”
It had been three days since his car accident. We’d spent the following day in bed, talking and laughing and kissing. He’d told me he loved me close to a thousand times that day, making up for all the years he’d thought it but hadn’t been able to say the words aloud. And every time the words left his lips, my heart would swell and the cliché butterflies I was afraid I would never get to experience would flutter away in my belly. I didn’t think I’d ever tire of hearing him say it. And I knew he wouldn’t ever ask me to stop replying with the same words.
But, along with the declarations of love, was a lot of talk about my case and what Lawson was doing to try and get my name cleared. It seemed like something in him had shifted, and he was no longer content to stand by and let someone else take the lead. I was beginning to feel sorry for the lawyer who had agreed to take my case.
Which led us to where we were standing, getting ready to go talk to the attorney for the first time, Lawson going alpha dog on me. “And while we’re there, you let me do the talking.”
I blinked at him. “Let you do the talking?”
He gave me a curt nod and then turned on his heel, stalking to the door. “Let’s go.”
“You’ve gotten so bossy the last few days,” I said as I slid out of the car door he was holding open for me.
He winked. “I can think of a few times you loved it when I bossed you around.”
I gave him a small smile and pushed at his shoulder. “Is that all you think about, pervert?”
He caught my hand and brought my fingers to his lips, brushing a kiss across my knuckles before lacing his fingers through mine. His strong, steady hand helped stop the trembling of my own and I leaned into his side.
