“No, Charlie.” I shake my head. “I can’t let you do that. It’s not the answer. Maybe you could go back to New York.”
Her head swings violently from side to side. “I’ll never do that. I don’t belong there. But Piper does—with you. She’s your responsibility now. Don’t fuck this up or I will hunt you down and kill you with my bare hands. I don’t care how impressively big you are.”
She stands and I stand with her. “Give me an hour,” she says, pulling a hotel key card out of her pocket and placing it on the table before me.
I offer her my hand but she pulls me in for a tight hug instead. I moan when her arms squeeze my angry, tender ribs. “Football taking a toll on you, big guy?” She laughs.
“Something is, but it sure as hell isn’t football.”
She gives me a questioning look and then she untucks my shirt, raising it to reveal the small area of red flesh on the right side of my ribs, just below my throwing arm. Her head tilts to the side as she studies what’s there. “I’m not even going to pretend I know what that means, but it sure as hell better have something to do with our girl.”
I smile down at her, tucking my shirt back in.
“You’d better wash it,” she says. “It looks like pieces of your shirt fabric got stuck to it. Did you take the bandage off too early? They say four to six hours, you know. Just run warm soapy water over it and put a little ointment on it, then let it air out.”
“You seem to know an awful lot about the subject.” I raise an eyebrow at her.
“I’d show you, but then I’d have to kill you,” she jokes.
“Listen, Charlie, if there’s anything I can ever do for you . . .”
“Just take care of her, Mason.” She smiles a brilliant smile and walks away.
“Count on it,” I call after her.
I look at the key card and then at my watch. This is gonna be the longest fucking hour of my life.
chapter twenty-seven
piper
I stare at the sweaty girl in the mirror, watching her keep a punishing pace on the treadmill in a futile attempt to run from her past. Run from him.
It’s ironic really, how fittingly accurate this is. I’m running on a treadmill—a device that by its very nature keeps you from moving forward.
It’s better this way. He’s a rising star. I’m a train wreck. He has a daughter to raise. He doesn’t need a girlfriend who clearly needs parenting herself.
He has a daughter to raise. The words bounce around in my head as I struggle to keep that fateful day from overtaking my thoughts. I don’t think about it. Ever. Except on one day every year. And today isn’t that day.
I turn up the pace, making it impossible for me to think of anything but breathing.
Then I see her in the mirror, approaching me from behind. I don’t miss Charlie’s disapproving look when she spots my distance on the digital display. Our reflections have a stare down, then her lips start moving quickly, undoubtedly scolding me in her sister-like manner. But I can’t hear her over the loud music so I point to my earbuds and shrug.
In slow motion, she dramatically raises her arm, pressing her finger on the button controlling my speed. She glares at me with a raised brow while repeatedly pressing the down arrow until the belt below me stops moving completely. Then she steps up on it, getting right in my face before ripping the earbuds from my ears. “Fifteen miles, Piper? Are you fucking crazy?”
“I do run marathons, Charlie. This should come as no surprise to you.” I step off the machine, finding a towel to wipe my face.
She huffs and grabs me by the elbow, pulling me out of the hotel gym, all the way back up to our room. She doesn’t say a word. Not until we are standing in front of the door. She holds her palm out. “Key,” she demands.
“Where’s yours?” I ask.
“Lost it.”
I roll my eyes and take my key card out of my back pocket, handing it over to her like an obedient child. She looks pissed. Nobody wants to be on the bad side of pissed-off Charlie.
She opens the door, pushing me through and guiding me over to the bed. “Sit.”
I look down at my brand new sweat-drenched workout clothes and ask, “Can I at least shower first, Mom?”
“No. You can’t. Sit your stupid, skinny, stubborn ass on the bed and listen to me.”
“You forgot steaming, as in mad,” I say.
“Mad?”
“Yes, Charlie. You sold me out. You’re the only one who could have known where I would be. You told him where to find me. Why did you do that?”
“Because you needed to hear the truth, Piper. When you were sleeping, he called me and explained the whole thing. The man jumped on a plane and flew across an ocean for you. And he did this knowing the worst parts of you.”
“Not the worst,” I say, my eyes meeting the ground.
“The worst,” she repeats. “Everything else was just circumstantial.”
“How could he ever see me the same way, Charlie? After he knows it was me on that bed. Having an orgy with multiple boys.”
“God, you are so fucking dense!” she yells. “Can you not see that man loves you? He loves you despite all that shit. Hell, maybe he even loves you because of it. You’re a survivor, Pipes. But until now, you’ve been surviving by running. Running from New York. Running from men. Running from yourself. It’s time to stop.”
My fingers lightly trace the outline of my bracelet. “I don’t know if I can, Charlie.”
“Yes. You can. And I’m going to give you the push you need to do it.”
I eye her inquisitively. “What have you done?”
“It’s not what I’ve done. It’s what I’m going to do. I’m leaving, Piper.”
“Leaving?” I tilt my head back to better study her face. “What, are you going to Australia with that douchebag after all?”
“Leaving as it I’m taking off by myself for a while. I’m going on a journey to find my inner peace.”
“What? Why are you going all Buddhist on me?”
She smiles, pushing herself off the bed. “We’ve leaned on each other for so long, Piper. Even when you were in New York the past few months, I was still tethered to you. I’m not sure I know how to be me without you. You’re my inspiration. If you can figure it out, maybe I can too.”
“Figure it out?” I laugh. “Are you kidding? What makes you think I’ve figured anything out? Have you not even seen me these last few days?”
“You can lie to yourself all you want, my friend, but we both know you were like five seconds away from staying in New York until that bitch showed you that picture.”
I sigh. She’s right. I thought about it a lot on Sunday after waking up in his arms. Hell, if I’m being honest with myself, I thought about it long before that. But there are a hundred things that could go wrong.
She pulls her suitcase out of the closet. I spring off the bed to stop her. “Stop, Charlie. If you need to leave for yourself, fine. But you leaving doesn’t change anything. I still can’t be with him. I told you what happened when I tried. I can’t be with anyone.”
She rips her suitcase away from me, quickly dumping the contents of the drawers into it. “That’s a choice you’ll have to make, Piper. But you’ll never know unless you try. You are twenty-two years old. You’re never going to get this time back. When you are old and grey and on your deathbed, tell me this, will you regret not going after this once-in-a-lifetime love? If not, you’re not as strong as I gave you credit for.” She stops packing to look me straight in the eyes. “Remember—nobody can hurt you without your permission.”
I blink, soaking in her words. “Now you’re quoting Gandhi?”
The door to the hotel room swings open and my heart stops beating as Mason crosses the threshold.
“I’m sorry,” he says to Charlie. “I couldn’t wait an hour. I couldn’t risk letting her run.”
Charlie smiles at him and then turns to me. “He’s a smart man. You’d be crazy to let him g
et away, Pipes.” She pulls me in for a hug. A soul-crushing, heart-wrenching hug that reeks of finality. I’ve never felt this vibe from her before.
She really is leaving.
I hug her back with everything inside of me. Because no matter what happens after she walks out that door, I know our lives are changing forever.
She drags her suitcase into the hallway before the door slams shut behind her. The sound echoes dramatically off the walls as it leaves me alone with Mason in this room that’s shrinking with every silent second we stare at each other.
“I’m sorry,” he finally says. “I know what she means to you.”
“It’s okay.” I shrug back my feelings. “I’ve been through worse.”
His breath catches and his face looks pained as if my words physically hurt him.
“You look like you’ve had quite a workout.”
I’m wondering if he’s talking physically or mentally, but I don’t bother asking. “Why are you here?” I say instead. “I already told you it wasn’t going to work between us.”
“I know you did. But I’m here to change your mind.” He conspicuously stands between me and the door, his penetrating eyes begging me to listen.
“You can’t.” I retreat, going back to the bed while pulling the tight elastic band from my hair that’s starting to give me a headache. I toss it on the bedside table.
“Piper, I’m in love with you.” His hand comes to his chest, right over his heart as if to punctuate his declaration. “And it’s a goddamn miracle. It’s something I never thought would happen. I was happy with my life—well I thought I was anyway. As happy as I could be . . . considering.” He absentmindedly runs a finger along his scar. “Football and Hailey. That’s all I needed. But the day I met you, all that changed. I knew I needed more. I don’t care about your past. What happened, happened to you, Piper. It wasn’t a choice. But this—today—this is a choice. You can’t deny you have feelings for me. You may even love me. But you have to decide to allow yourself to.”
Reluctantly, I shake my head. “Even if you could get past seeing me like that. On that bed with those boys. Even if all that didn’t matter to you, I still don’t think I could be with you.”
“Why not, Piper? Do you think you’re damaged goods? Because I can assure you, it’s quite the opposite. It would be a privilege to be with you.”
I’m exhausted. Emotionally. Physically. I’m tired of holding back with him. Maybe if I tell him, he’ll realize once and for all that I’m right. I close my eyes because I can’t stand to look at him as I bear my soul. “Because your daughter may always remind me of the one I lost.”
The air is audibly sucked from the room and into his lungs. I hear him step across the floor before I feel the bed sink down next to me.
“You had a daughter? Oh, Piper.” He runs a soothing hand down my back, landing it on the bed below, but still keeping his arm so close I can feel the heat from it through my thin running shorts. “Will you tell me about it?”
With my eyes still closed, I say, “You’ll hate me if I do.”
“I could never hate you, sweetheart. You were young. It’s understandable, expected even that you’d have an abortion after what happened to you. And if you can’t have kids now, we’ll deal with it.”
“No. You don’t understand.”
“Then make me.”
“Mason . . . it’s too hard.”
He rubs my back again while I try to control my breathing that threatens to be out of control. “It’s okay,” he says. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
I inhale. And exhale. And inhale. It takes me ten whole breaths before I can speak. And then—maybe it’s his soothing hand on my back. Maybe the weight of my secrets has gotten to be too much. Maybe I’m just ready. Whatever it is, I start talking and words spill out of me faster than water from a broken dam.
“You know how hours, sometimes days later, you’ll remember a dream? Well, that started happening more and more after the night of the party. I thought it was some normal part of puberty, dreaming about boys and sex. Then months later, I got the flu. Well, I thought it was the flu, but it didn’t go away. My mom finally took me to the doctor in November, almost four months after the party. It’s then when I found out I was pregnant. I didn’t even know I’d lost my virginity.”
“Oh, God, Piper.”
He tries to comfort me, but right now, I don’t want his hands on me. I scoot away from him and lean on the headboard, hugging my knees to my chest.
“My parents didn’t even believe me at first. After all, they’d been through it with Baylor already. But it didn’t take long to piece it together based on the estimated date of conception they gave me after the ultrasound. I didn’t remember much about the night of the party. I just thought the few shots I took got me drunk. The friends I went with joked around about making out with random strangers and losing track of me for a while. I just thought maybe I’d done the same.
“My parents took me to the police, of course. But they basically told us there was nothing they could do because I didn’t report it immediately. They said they’d go through the motions, fill out the paperwork and check out the residence. However, they said it would be a futile effort. After that, I started having different dreams. Dreams of fighting back. Maybe it was wishful thinking. Maybe it was more memories coming to the surface. But the thing is, I would never know who the father of my child was.”
A sick feeling washes through me. “You’ll never know what I felt the moment I saw that picture and Cassidy accused you of—”
“Shit.” He blanches. He actually loses all color in his face that always seems to be tanned from the sun. “You thought I could have been the father. And then you thought I would hate you for aborting my child. Maybe even as much as you hated me for raping you.”
My hand comes up to my mouth, covering the sob I feel welling up from deep inside me. “I didn’t have an abortion, Mason.”
Tears that have been building for over five years finally fall down my cheeks in an endless stream. Fire chokes my throat as I try to explain. “My seventeenth birthday was the day my daughter was born.” I heave and hiccup my way through the words. I look up with tear-blurred vision to see what his reaction is.
I’m met with a broken face that mirrors mine. I haven’t seen a man cry since the day my dad found out I was raped. I’m pretty sure Mason quietly sobbed into my back the night I told him about my assault, but watching him cry—seeing the sympathy and sorrow flow down his face and drop onto his jeans, that is entirely different. And it wrecks me. All at once, as if I’d been beaten over the head with it, I realize I don’t want to do anything to make this man sad.
Our eyes lock and emotions swell between us. Suddenly and simultaneously we reach for each other, planting our knees on the bed beneath us as we embrace. And we cry. I cry five years’ worth of tears. He cries for me. He cries with me. And oddly, it becomes one of the best moments of my life.
Minutes later, maybe hours, I’ve lost track of time, he lowers us to the bed and I settle into the crook of his neck. My arm swings over his chest.
He sucks in a sharp breath of air that has me wondering if I’ve hurt him. “Are you okay?” I stutter, my voice still thick with tears.
“I’ve never been better. And not even my defensive line could drag me away, sweetheart.” He kisses my hair. “Can you tell me more?”
I nod into his shoulder. “I know I could have kept her. I’d seen Baylor do it. I’d helped Baylor do it. But she had loved her baby’s dad. I didn’t even know who my daughter’s father was. He was just some nameless face in my dreams. I knew I couldn’t stay in Connecticut or anywhere near it. I couldn’t stay knowing I could run into any one of them and not even know it. Would they remember me? Ridicule me? Proposition me?
“I wasn’t equipped to raise the baby by myself, or even with Charlie, and don’t think she didn’t offer. But I was afraid the baby would be a constant reminder of what happened. I
didn’t want to look at her like that—like she was the product of something horrible. I wanted her to grow up with two loving parents, not a single teenage mom with an ugly past.”
The way Mason’s chest rises and falls with each breath calms me. “So now you know why I don’t celebrate my birthday,” I say. “I didn’t die that terrible night of my assault in August. My seventeenth birthday was the day I died. It’s the day I gave up my daughter.”
He struggles to steady his breathing, exhaling deep sighs into my hair. My smelly, sweaty hair that still reeks from my workout. He runs his thumb methodically over my knuckles, giving me the courage to say what I’ve felt for a long time.
“Ironically, on my twenty-second birthday, the day my daughter turned five, you brought the life back into me.”
“Piper.” He breathes my name like a prayer. He lifts my chin so my puffy, red eyes meet his. “Why did you think I would hate you?”
I shrug into his shoulder. “Because you have a daughter. Because you could have turned your back on her. You could have given her away, but you didn’t. So how can you love someone who did?”
Air spurts from his nose in a quiet huff. “Is that what you think? Because you are sorely mistaken. What you did was the greatest and most selfless act of love, sweetheart. You gave up a piece of yourself so she would have the chance at a wonderful, happy life. It was the ultimate gift. Hate you? I’m not sure I could ever love you more than I do this very moment.”
At a loss for spoken words, I squeeze his chest. He sucks in another painful breath and I shoot a questioning look at him. “Are you injured?”
“Not particularly,” he says.
“What do you mean, not particularly? You keep wincing when I touch you here.” I purposefully press my hand hard to his chest, by the ribs of his right arm.
Pain lines his face, causing me more than a little concern. I sit up and grab the hem of his shirt. I look at him for permission and he nods, rising up to sit on his haunches. I slowly peel it up his body, expecting to see him battered and bruised from football.
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