by Tabatha Kiss
“Well, that was interesting.”
I roll my eyes. “I really don’t want to talk to you right now, Mandy…”
She steps inside the room, easily sliding past me. “I figured as much,” she mutters.
I close the door and trudge back over to the bed to throw myself back down onto it.
“Wow, you really went all out on this trip, didn’t you?” she asks as she looks around the room.
“Yep.” The Paris hotel room is rather similar to the London one, but slightly bigger with a much better view of the city featuring an unobscured view of the Eiffel fucking Tower. I had planned on sitting out on the balcony with Piper later, naked and sweating. Oh, well. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather be alone right now.” I speak to the ceiling with a dead tone as she wanders around the bed.
“Well, I don’t.” I feel her plop down onto the bed next to me.
“How did you know I was here?” I ask.
She shrugs. “I followed you from the train station.”
“Any idea where Piper is?”
“Nope,” she says. “She took off like a bat out of hell as soon as the train stopped.”
Fuck.
Hello, feeling of utter helpless panic.
It’s been ages since you’ve made yourself known to me. It’s almost nostalgic, to be honest. For the last few years, I knew exactly where Piper Lynch was in the world, mostly because she was either right beside or would have been right beside me within the hour. Right now, she’s somewhere in Paris (I’m assuming) and I have no idea when I’ll see her again — if ever. She has a knack for disappearing as soon as the shit hits the fan.
And here I am, so fucking wrecked that I can’t even bring myself to get up and go look for her.
“How long have you known?” I ask, the words slipping through my teeth before I can stop them.
“Known what?”
“You know what.”
“Oh.” Mandy sighs. “I don’t know — like three days.”
I shake my head. “She tells you before she tells me…”
“Hate to break it to you, girlfriend,” she says, “but running shit by your best friend first is actually a really common practice. Don’t sit there and pretend like you never ran things by Shawn before bringing it up to Piper.”
“Nothing like this,” I argue. “She should have told me first. The second she found out, she should have come to me.”
“She didn’t want to tell you, Kai, because she thought it would tear you two apart.”
I look at her. “What?”
“I told her she was wrong. I told her you two were stronger than that and it would bring you closer together. Clearly, I was wrong.”
“Was that your master plan then?” I ask her. “Let the secret slip out to bring Piper and me closer together? A little hypocritical for someone that fucking flipped her shit at the idea of us tricking you and Shawn back together.”
“I guess I may have overreacted.”
“Yes, you did. And for the record, we didn’t fucking do that.”
“I know… I was just being a bitch, like you said.”
I sigh. “It doesn’t matter anyway… She was right. It did tear us apart.”
“Yeah, why exactly did it do that again?”
“I panicked.”
“Well, duh.”
“I don’t want to be a father.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t.”
She chuckles. “That’s not vague or anything.”
I sit up on my elbows. “Okay, then. Why don’t you want to be with Shawn?” I ask her.
“Because he’s an immature man-child that refuses to grow up and look after himself, forcing me to pick up his slack and I don’t want to be his mother for the next fifty years.”
“Wow.” I sit back. “That’s really specific.”
“I’ve had longer to digest it,” she says. “Kai, you just found out. Maybe you should wait twenty-four hours before you implode.”
“More time won’t change anything.”
“Time changes everything.”
“Not this.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I have it on pretty high authority that she probably feels the same way.” Mandy sits up and leans against the headboard. “You should go talk to her.”
“No, thanks,” I mutter. “I’d rather just find a flight and go home.”
“Remind me…” she bites. “Which one of you runs off when things don’t go their way? You or her? It’s getting more difficult everyday to keep that straight.”
I glare at her out of the corner of my eye. “What was that about you being a bitch, again?”
“Once I start, it’s hard to stop,” she smirks at me for a moment before her smile slowly drops from her cheeks. “Sorry I told Shawn about… well, you know.”
“Oh, yeah…” I push myself up to rest against the headboard. “I’d almost forgotten.”
“Think you two will be okay?” she asks.
“Doubt it. He was right. I knew better.”
She giggles, her voice high and fun. “Like we would have taken no for an answer. You were doomed from the start. He knows that.”
“Still.” My phone vibrates in my pocket. I reach in and grab it. “Speak of the devil,” I mutter, reading Shawn’s name on the screen.
“Answer it,” Mandy says.
“I’d rather not…” I toss it to the bed.
She grabs it. “Communication is the first step to healing all wounds.”
“That’s not a real phrase.”
Her eyes narrow as she answers the phone. She immediately thrusts it forward and slaps it against my face.
“Kai?” I hear him say.
I take the phone from Mandy and hold it to my ear. “Hey.”
“Kai— you need to get down here now.” Shawn talks fast, his voice out of breath.
“Get down where?”
“I don’t know, some hospital. It’s Piper.”
I sit up straighter. “Piper’s in a hospital?” Mandy’s eyes go wide with fear and panic grips my chest. “Why? What happened?”
“I’m not sure. One minute we were talking, and the next, she was on her back — and not in the good way. I’ll find out the address and text it to you.”
“Okay…”
Shawn hangs up, but I sit still for several moments while my brain goes wild.
Piper’s in the hospital. She’s pregnant with my baby.
My baby is in the hospital.
“Kai!”
A fist connects with my shoulder and I wince in pain. “What?” I spit, jerking up to look at Mandy.
“Hello!” she shouts. “What the fuck happened? What’s wrong with Piper?”
“I don’t know, he wasn’t specific—”
“Did something happen to the—”
“I don’t know.”
She falls silent and slides off the bed. “Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s go,” she says.
The phone vibrates in my hand. It slips from my fingers onto the bed and I pick it up again to read the hospital’s address in Shawn’s text message.
Mandy snatches the phone away from me. “I’ll navigate. You try to get your shit together. Can you do that?” she asks.
I nod. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Good,” she says. “Now, take a deep breath and get your ass up. Piper needs you.”
Piper needs me.
But I need her more.
***
“Wait… you want to follow Piper to Europe?”
I nod across the table of the nearly deserted diner. “Yeah.”
“And you don’t see this backfiring at all?”
“It’s perfect, Shawn,” I say. I hold up the xeroxed pages of her itinerary. “We know exactly where she’s going to be and when. All we have to do is intercept her, you distract Mandy, and I’ll seal the deal.”
“I don’t think it’s going to be as simple as you think, Kai,” he says. “
Piper’s not going to be happy with us crashing her trip. What makes you think she’ll sleep with you once she figures it out?”
“You let me worry about that,” I say, slapping the pages back down onto the table. “You worry about Mandy Black.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” he says, “I’m all for worrying about Mandy Black. I was born to worry about Mandy Black. I’m more worried about you.”
“What about me?”
He sighs and leans forward in the booth. “You’re a little… obsessed.”
“I’ve come this far, Shawn,” I say. “I can’t drop the bet now.”
“I’m not talking about the bet, man.”
I blink. “Then what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Piper Lynch.”
“Piper Lynch?” I roll my eyes. “I’m not obsessed with Piper Lynch. I’m obsessed with what’s between her legs, but I’m not obsessed with her.”
“I honestly don’t see a difference at this point,” he says, shaking his head. “We should just drop the bet. I’ll even let you keep your car. Twenty-two out of twenty-three ain’t bad.”
“Shawn…” I rest my elbows on the table and interlock my fingers together in front of my face. “I need this.”
“No, what you need is therapy.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Are you sure this is just about the bet, Kai?” he asks. “Are you sure this has nothing to do with Piper Lynch?”
“Of course, Shawn. I have a legacy and a reputation to uphold.”
“I’m literally the only person that knows about this bet,” he chuckles. “Trust me, your reputation will be fine.”
I sigh. “Come on, man…”
“Okay. Admit that you have a thing for your stepsister and we’ll go.” Shawn grins and sits back in his seat.
I stare across the table at him with a flexed jaw. “No,” I say. “I do not have a thing for Piper.”
He raises an eyebrow at me. “Dude…”
“I don’t!”
“Fine.” He crosses his arms. “I hear Stewart Ryan is having an end of summer party this weekend. Wanna go?”
I exhale through my nose and bite into my lip. “Okay,” I say.
“Okay what?”
“Okay,” I say it again.
He smiles. “Was that so hard?”
***
“Excuse me—” I wave at the nurse behind the counter. “I’m looking for Piper Lynch. She was just brought here—”
“Je serai avec vous, monsieur.”
I growl with frustration. “Fuck.” I look at Mandy. “You don’t speak any French, do you?”
“Umm…” she thinks. “Voulez vous coucher avec moi—”
“That’s a no.”
My instincts scream at me, telling me to ask Piper, but I can’t because she’s already here. She’s not standing next to me like she should be. No, she’s lying in a bed somewhere in this fucking place, connected to machines for all I know. I’d give anything to hear her voice right now. Her deep, femme fatale voice sounds ridiculously sexy when she speaks French.
“Kai!”
I turn around and see Shawn at the end of the hall. Mandy and I bolt away from the counter and rush towards him, ignoring the foreign cries of the nurse behind the desk.
Shawn appears distraught and panicked, a look I’ve never in my life seen on him in the decade or so we’ve been friends. “She’s in there,” Shawn says, pointing to a doorway down the hall. “A doctor is with her now.”
I swallow hard, frozen in place. “Is she okay?” I ask him.
“Yeah, I think so. It happened so fast…” His voice tappers off and he takes a breath.
“You were with her?” Mandy asks him.
He nods. “We were on our way to a hotel when she suddenly just passed out.”
“A hotel?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Well, she wasn’t bunking up with either of you tonight,” he says, his eyes silently judging both of us.
Oddly, the blow up on the train seems so distant now in my memory, like it never even happened. “I’m happy you were with her, Shawn,” I say.
“Me, too,” he says.
“Thank you.”
“Yeah…” Mandy steps a little closer, her eyes soft on him. “Thank you, Shawn.”
His face turns red.
I glance over his shoulder to see a doctor exiting her room. I step around Shawn and stop in front of him. “Excuse me, doctor—”
He looks up from his chart. “Hello,” he answers, his voice thick with accent.
“Oh, good. You speak English…”
He nods. “One of the only physicians here today that does.” He pulls a pen from his coat and scribbles a few notes onto the chart.
I point to the doorway. “I’m with her — Piper Lynch.”
“Are you family?” he asks.
“Yes, she’s my sister. What happened? Is she okay?”
“Stress and exhaustion, mostly,” he explains. “Little bump on the head from when she fell, but she’s fine.”
I peak around him, but I can’t bring myself to look into the room. “Is the…” I hesitate. “She was…”
“Pregnant?” he asks.
I nod. “Yeah…” I understand now why the P-word made Piper feel so uncomfortable. It’s surreal to hear it so bluntly, especially from a total stranger.
“Fortunately, mother and baby are both fine,” he says, “but she should take it easy for awhile.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. “Okay.”
Mother and baby.
“Is he the father?” he asks, gesturing behind me at Shawn.
“No, I am.” He raises an eyebrow at me and I stumble over my tongue. “She’s my stepsister,” I explain.
The doctor nods with an awkward smile. “All right, then.”
“Come on, dude,” I say. “You’re French.”
He stuffs his pen back inside his coat, his lips curling to the side. “You can go on in. She just signed her discharge form, so you can take her home whenever she’s ready.”
“Thanks, doc.” He walks away and I turn back around to the others. Shawn stands with his arm wrapped around Mandy’s shoulders and she clings to him with a nervous face. “He says she’s fine,” I say to them.
Mandy sighs. “Completely fine?” she hints.
“Completely fine. She can go home.”
“If she even wants to,” Shawn says. “I’m just saying, she wasn’t too happy.”
I run my fingers through my hair as a nervous dread plagues my guts.
“Do you want me to talk to her?” Mandy asks.
I shake my head. “No, I’ll go first.” My eyes fall back to the open doorway. “I just need a minute…”
No, I am, I told the doctor.
I’m the father.
I said it without a second thought. It felt like that same instinctual urge I felt before. Suddenly, my own shoes feel strange, like I just took them out of the box and haven’t worn them in yet. Or maybe I have it backwards. Maybe the shoes are the same, but it’s me that’s changed.
I step towards the doorway and look inside. Piper lies on the bed in a hospital gown, thin and white as her own skin. Her black hair sits bunched up on her right side, falling down along her shoulder while a small bandage rests on the left side of her forehead. She stares at her hands in her lap, oblivious to the world around her. For a blissful second, I’m happy she doesn’t see me watching her. I could stand in this moment forever if I could.
I reach out and knock on the open door.
Chapter 13
Piper
The old mattress quakes beneath us, squeaking with each thrust Kai gives me. The moonlight floods through the window and I fill my lungs with the sweet scent of the Spanish countryside. His rhythm is slow and smooth, unlike anything we’ve done before. It’s intense and wild. The bewitching pleasure radiates throughout my body, rolling me ever so close to that perfect edge. I look into his eyes, dark and brow
n, and he smiles before giving me a soft kiss.
Kai Casablancas isn’t fucking me right now.
He’s making love to me.
It’s a sudden thought, molded together by cosmic dust and maybe a little bit of dark matter. I embrace it at first, clinging to the eternal comfort of it all, but I can’t keep hold of it for very long.
I never should have let him follow me to London.
A cold shiver travels throughout my body until it finally settles in my brain. This isn’t right. This shouldn’t be happening right now. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I was supposed to be alone, enjoying my freedom for the first time in my life. I was supposed to be hooking up with random strangers, having the time of my life, not caring about anything that I was forced to care about back home.
Instead, it’s Kai Casablancas in my bed.
What the fuck am I doing?
“Piper?”
I snap out of the trance. “Kai?”
“What’s wrong?” His lips curl into a delicious smile.
I want so much to ignore my thoughts and kiss his sweet lips, but I can’t do that anymore.
Kai, I’m so sorry.
***
My breath catches in my throat. “Hey…” I look up at Kai’s eyes across the small room. They’re so full of concern and worry, it throws me off guard a little. “You got here fast…” I chuckle.
He steps forward. “Of course I did,” he says. He grabs a chair and pulls it closer to the bed.
I run a few fingers through my hair, suddenly very nervous about my appearance. I’ve never felt quite as self-conscious before in my life. It’s embarrassing to wake up in the hospital and make everyone rush to your side. I can’t stop thinking about how ugly I must look.
“You feeling okay?” he asks as he sits down. He begins to reach out to me, but he quickly changes his mind and forces his hands into his lap.
“Yeah,” I nod. “Little nauseous though.”
“I guess it wasn’t the best idea to bring you here immediately after finals week,” he jokes. “Probably should have waited a little while…”
“Maybe,” I shrug. Silence falls between us, but his eyes speak volumes. He stares at me like a frail porcelain doll, as if I’m about to topple over at any moment and shatter the rest of my face.
