by C. M. Owens
Somehow, they’ve turned this all around on me.
Since I’m not ready to deal with this shit right now, I turn and walk off. Hale was smart enough to get gone before all this started.
Great. Now a fucking Vincent is smarter than I am.
My life is officially going to shit.
Wild Ones Tip #782
We’re clingy motherfuckers. Ye’ve been warned.
Chapter 21
PIPER
*******
“I can’t be there. I have four meetings, and Piper has twice as many, Mother,” Reese is saying with an exasperated tone. “We’re not destroying our name by putting Dad’s drama into the mix. We did the PR campaign, and Dad couldn’t keep his mouth shut. When you’re an insensitive asshole being accused of being an insensitive asshole, you shut your childish mouth and act like an adult,” she carries on, her voice in full rant mode now.
I idly flip through Liam and Lilah’s Instagram accounts, since they’re the only two that freaking have social media.
Liam has posted several pictures of Kai and Hale lately. In this latest one, Kai is smiling.
It’s been over a month since we left. I’m glad he’s smiling, and I wish I could smile like that too.
“We just got home. I’ll deal with this some other time, but I’m not wrecking our name to help him salvage his. Sometimes, you’ve got to deal with the consequences that follow the cruel shit that comes out of your mouths,” she says as she hangs up and tosses her phone to the bed.
She gives a muffled scream behind tight lips and stomps her feet several times, before she finally collapses to the ground.
“I know they gave us money, shelter, stellar educational opportunities, and basically all the material things we could have ever wanted…but sometimes I wonder how much of our lives they expect back in return for their offerings,” she groans as she puts her arm over her eyes.
“Liam posted a new picture of Hale if you want to see it,” I tell her. “Lilah too.”
She starts to lean up, but she drops back down, putting her arm back over my eyes. “It’s been a month. I’m over it,” she lies.
She talks a big game, but she seems to forget I know her better than that.
“When we were in Tomahawk, away from the egos, and the competitive, aggressive personalities…I got used to so much ease and honesty,” I say on a sigh. “It’s harder than ever to deal with people here.”
She laughs bitterly for a minute before that laughter turns into another groan.
“It’s sadly where I fit in. I’m not good with all that blunt honesty. I like my masks and my many faces. I like keeping up appearances instead of dialing it way back. I’m competitive too. This is my world. Tomahawk was just a nice vacation from it, while I was doing a little soul searching.”
I don’t always know when she’s lying, but that sounds more true than false.
“I think I took his virginity now that I look back on it. I feel awful about that.”
The confession catches me so off guard that I snort out a laugh.
“It’s not funny. I’m a terrible person,” she grumbles, whimpering a little as she keeps her eyes covered.
“He’s a grown man. I watched him leap at the opportunity, if that’s the case. He made his own choice. Don’t take responsibility for it.”
“If not for me, he’d still be a virgin, possibly saving himself for his wife, like the good boy he is. He was too good to be around me. I knew it, and I stuck around to tarnish him. I’m like poison to a guy like that. This really is where I belong.”
I glance over at her, watching as she turns and puts her face in her pillow.
This hotel room is small and quaint compared to the luxurious ones she usually picks out. But we’re living life on our own dime now, and cutting corners is a must.
California isn’t all that far from Washington. Well, at least not compared to everywhere else we’ve been since we left Tomahawk.
What am I saying? I can’t just drop in for a visit.
Kai’s smiling in this picture. I’d ruin his smile if I came back just long enough to confuse us both.
“What about you?” she asks me.
I lift my head, glancing over at her, finding her peering down at me from the bed as I remain seated on the floor.
“What about me?”
“You’ve been a vacant shell since we got back. It’s like your body is here, but you never really left Tomahawk. I mean, for Pete’s sake, Piper, you check your phone every three seconds to see if a new picture of him has been posted or not.”
I put my phone down, and I slide it out of reach, my lips thinning. It is a bad habit I can’t seem to break.
“Liam’s account looks fake as shit, by the way. I thought his last name was Harper instead of Flapper.”
“His family is searching for him to guilt trip him into coming back and paying for their lives, so he had no choice but to build a fake account,” I tell her absently.
When did I pick my phone back up? How did I end up scooting this far over without noticing it?
No new pictures.
“Seriously, I’m worried about you. It’s been over a month, and you haven’t even started moving on.”
“Says the girl who goes on a new date every week, but suddenly stops even glancing at a guy even when he’s model material and overtly checking her out,” I point out.
She shrugs, a distant look hitting her eyes.
“It was nice to be seen as something more than I am, instead of being seen as something less than I am. It’s going to take a minute to remember how most guys see me. Until then, I’m not really interested in passing the time with a fleeting romance that won’t measure up—”
She stops talking when I arch an eyebrow.
“That doesn’t mean I’m not over him. It just means he raised the bar for my standards, which isn’t a terrible thing at all. Stop giving me that condescending look.”
Rolling my eyes, I start to argue, when my phone rings. Glancing down, ready to hit ignore, I pause.
LILAH is flashing across the screen, and I actually end up dropping the phone as I squeak.
Hurriedly, I scramble to answer it in the next second.
“Hello?”
“Hey! Long time no chat. I was just wondering when you two were coming for a visit!” she says, sounding way too enthusiastic, as though she’s trying too hard.
I blink a few times.
“That’s rather sudden thing to say after an even more sudden phone call out of the blue,” I tell her.
“I don’t call people too much. I prefer talking face to face. You’re too far away for that, so I think you should come visit.”
“Why are you trying so hard to get me to come visit?”
Reese sits straight up, eyes on me like she’s listening to every word I say.
“Is Kai okay?” I ask when worry hits me from out of nowhere.
“Yeah, he’s fine. He and Hale had us worried when they disappeared into the mountains for a bit, because they’re already one step away from not belonging in society at all, but they came down a couple of weeks ago and have integrated back into society. At least by Tomahawk standard anyway.”
I blink a few times, my mouth opening and closing.
“What?” I finally manage to ask.
“What what?” she asks back, sounding confused.
“What are you talking about, Lilah?”
“Oh, you know how Wilders are. They go from overly laidback to excessively crazy with very few gears in between. Hale joined him on the excessive end, but they’ve returned. All’s okay on that front. Mostly. Sort of. Hale’s weird now, but he’s getting better. Kai’s a bit more of an asshole than usual, but that’s to be expected. Wilders are Wilders. Anyway—”
“You’re not making any sense at all,” I say on a sigh as I pinch the bridge of my nose.
“Anyway,” she says again, not bothering to explain all that gibberish she just spewed, “I was wonder
ing if you could come back for the New Year carnival. It’s coming up in a few weeks. Christmas is over. I didn’t get a Christmas card, so I’m assuming it’s because you were planning on returning and bringing in some New Year cheer. Otherwise, that’d be rude. I sent you a card.”
She did send me a card. I sent her a thank-you note for the card.
I’ve never sent out Christmas cards before. I thought that was an after-marriage-and-kids thing people did to show off how happy their families are.
Lilah sent one with her and Benson hugging their new puppy while wearing Santa hats. Even the puppy had a Santa hat.
It was sickeningly adorable.
“I thought if you came, you could bring Reese with you. I’m pretty sure my brother would apologize for the way he left things, and then he would be a little less weird…if only he had the chance.”
Ahhhh. So that’s why she’s calling.
Reese has refused to talk about how they ended things.
She hasn’t seemed mad.
Hurt? Yeah, but not mad.
“Reese, Lilah wants us to come back for the New Year so Hale can apologize to you properly. Do you—”
“No,” Reese says as she stands and starts to walk out. “Tell her to let Hale know that I don’t have one single hard feeling against him. No apology is necessary, and he shouldn’t feel bad in the least,” she says as she leaves, shutting the door behind her.
“I guess we’re not coming, but did you hear all that?”
Lilah’s quiet for a moment.
“What about you? Why can’t you come without her?” she finally asks.
I laugh under my breath. “Lilah, I think it’s best for me not to come back on my own. I’m still mending.”
“Because you fell in love by accident? Yeah, I know the feeling. Same thing happened with me and Benson. Well, it was more of a surprise than an accident. Kylie’s was an accident, though. She spent a year pining over Liam until he moved to Tomahawk because he had the same problem she was having.”
I scrub a hand over my face. Lilah Vincent is very bluntly pointing out all my feelings to me, and I don’t know if it makes me angry or relieved that someone else is telling me I’m in love.
I’ve never been in love before.
It’s just as consuming and destructive as everyone as all the songs say it is.
“This is a little different,” I remind her. “I have—”
I pause, the words refusing to budge from my tongue. I have what?
Since we’ve been back, Dad has only made a bad situation so much worse that Reese has had to distance us from the entire situation. Our business—that has been in the works for three years—has finally launched, and we’re in the process of rebranding ourselves with it.
We’ve already done the hard work, and that was building a name with trust by separating our identities from our parents. We just didn’t know what a decent job we’d mostly done prior to the scandal.
We took a hit, but it wasn’t as big as we expected it to be once we took a step back.
I have an apartment I’ve barely visited since we left Tomahawk.
I’m on the last leg of the trip for business, but Washington has airports too. It’s not like I can never leave Tomahawk if I go back and need to travel.
“Why are you so quiet? Did I lose you? Helloooooooo?”
“I’m still here. I’m just…trying to figure out what’s keeping me here at this point besides Reese.”
I no longer feel like I owe a debt to my parents. Just this latest scandal is a reminder of all the shit we’ve had to live through. I feel like I’ve paid my dues in full. Reese is right: they expect the rest of our lives to be dedicated to repaying their generosity.
It’ll never be enough.
“Reese can live without you for at least one weekend. I think it’d do Kai some good to see you,” she tells me.
“What do you mean?” I ask her as I stand up.
I grab random clothes and start dropping them into my suitcase, not even folding them. I’ll deal with the wrinkles later.
“I mean…I don’t know. He’s here, but he’s not really here. It’s not the same Kai. He’s never said anything about how you two left things, but if it’s as bad as Hale—”
“We left with one of the sweetest goodbyes two people could share,” I confess like a lame schmuck.
“Good. Then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t come back. After all, we’re all friends. Friends visit from time to time, especially around the holidays. You missed Christmas and New Year’s, but it’s not too late to celebrate a little,” she drones on.
“Kai misses me?” I ask, needing some freaking clarity throughout her insistent rambles.
My heart is pounding like it hasn’t done since I left Tomahawk, other than when I saw the first picture of Kai that Liam had ever posted.
Until then, it was like Kai had never had a picture posted on any platform ever. I stalked the internet and came up empty.
Was he posting them because he knew I’d be looking and hoping for one?
Lilah did the same thing.
“He smiles too much. Kai Wilder has always been a smirker, not a smiler. He only smiles when he’s done something evil, which means he’s playing pretend really hard. Those two are depressing the shit out of me, if I’m being honest,” she finally confesses on a weary sigh, as though she was doing all she could not to be that honest.
It didn’t take much to make her fold like a cheap table, and for that, I’m grateful.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can get a flight out,” I tell her, pausing. “Thank you for calling, Lilah.”
She squeals in my ear, and I pull the phone away, hanging up so I can focus on packing.
My hands are trembling as I bounce around on one foot, throwing things toward my suitcase, while multitasking and ordering my plane ticket.
It’s all chaos.
Reese comes in, eyeing me as I drop an armload of my best underwear into the next suitcase.
“How long are you going to be gone?” she asks as she gawks at the five suitcases I’ve somehow almost filled full.
I pause, just now realizing I’m packing this much.
“Apparently a while,” I tell her, even as my stomach clenches.
“A while or forever? You’ve almost emptied out the entire room, and we’re supposed to live here for the next two weeks…”
She pauses, her eyes darting to mine and widening. I chew on my bottom lip as nervous butterflies start ruffling through my stomach.
Her look softens, and she gives me a sad smile.
“Don’t let me hold you back,” she says when she finally rolls her eyes. “If you’re sticking around for me, I’ll punch you in the tit. I’m perfectly capable of being on my own. We don’t have to be side by side to run our business or our pages. Go be happy.”
I start to speak and stop. Then start and stop.
Sucking in a deep breath, I try to ignore the pounding in my chest that is making me impatient and focus on my sister.
“You could go be happy too, you know. It’s not guaranteed this is going to work out, but I’ve spent a month regretting how safe I played it, and—”
“And you should go,” she cuts in very calmly, talking over my excited chatter, as she grabs both of my shoulders and stares me in the eyes. “But I belong here. Besides, Hale and I were hot and fun, but we would have teetered out eventually. We have absolutely nothing in common, and he’s way too sweet for a bitch like me.”
She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.
“Lilah Vincent said I was in love like it was a common, easy observation. I think she’s right,” I blurt, immediately regretting it because it sounds so insensitive when she’s forcing a smile for my sake.
Her lips stretch in a genuine, wide grin that does meet her eyes.
“Then you really don’t need to be here. I can handle the rest on my own. We can work out a schedule in the future, and you can go to the events you wa
nt to go to. You won’t have so much free time on your hands if you’ve got a man waiting for you at home, so there will have to be some cuts in our scheduling. It’s an easy fix, though.”
She shoves me toward the suitcases.
“I’ll pack the rest of your shit when I get home, and I’ll even ship it out to you. Come on. I’ll help you get the rest of this shoved in a suitcase, and then I’ll give you a ride to the airport.”
I hate that I’m leaving her on her own, but the excitement of seeing Kai again seems to drown it all. He misses me.
Lilah Vincent better not be wrong about that, or this is going to be devastating.
Wild Ones Tip #508
If you break it, you fix it. That’s just a common courtesy.
Chapter 22
KAI
*******
The lost and found box still hasn’t been touched, so all those dishes that were delivered to Piper when the shit-tastic fuckers in town thought Piper wasn’t mine anymore are still piled up.
Cowards.
I shove my half-eaten food aside, my stomach souring. I need to stop coming to the diner for a bit if I’m ever going to get Ma off my back.
She’s worried I’m sinking into a depression and cries every damn time I don’t act like myself.
She’s driving me out of my motherfucking mind so much that I’m actively avoiding my mother for the first time in my life. I feel like an asshole, but she really does have boundary issues.
Vick comes walking up to my table, and takes a seat across from me as he orders a cup of coffee, shaking out his paper while getting comfy.
“Why are you sitting with me?” I ask him dryly, arching an eyebrow.
“Because your fucking cat is outside and she growled at me. I figured it must have been a while since she saw us friendly. If you’re going to be a tense asshole, the least you could do is leave your cat at home,” he answers like he had that rehearsed and ready to fly, never looking up from his paper.
