When We Fall

by Marquita Valentine

  Baby, there’s no way you’ll be the one keeping me up at night. “That room—”

  “Oh, I don’t know what I was thinking. You probably want more privacy than that.” Her smile grows faint as she shakes her head. “Sorry. I’ll bring my stuff downstairs right now and move into the bedroom on the other side of the house.”

  Shit. I’ve hurt her feelings. “You didn’t let me finish, kitten. That room—the room you want—is perfect for you. Back when they built this house in the 1920s, it belonged to the owner’s wife.”

  “You can up the rent if you need to. I think that room is bigger than the rest—except for yours.” She blushes when she says this, and I can’t help but wonder if she’s thinking of the time she walked in on Angel and me.

  I’m not proud, but I’m not exactly ashamed to admit that it turned me on watching Piper watching us. She’d stood there, in the sexiest fucking dress I’d ever seen her wear, and hadn’t moved while Angel sucked me off, and I imagined that the lips around my cock were Piper’s instead.

  Only Piper hadn’t been thinking that. It had shocked her. She’d been embarrassed, not turned on. Hell, I’m pretty sure I disgusted her, given the way she’d suddenly turned and run down the stairs. My reaction, after I chased after her, hadn’t been the best, either.

  I’d insulted her, called her a princess, and generally treated the sweetest, most thoughtful person in the world like she was worthless.

  It’s my own fault for wanting what I can’t have. For allowing myself to think I could touch someone like Piper.

  I was already in hell, but now that Piper’s moving in, I’ll be in Dante’s Inferno.

  “Rent’s firm.” I inhale the floral scent of her expensive perfume. “Can you start work on Monday?”

  “Yes to Monday, and after the semester starts, I can be there right after my last class. It ends at two p.m.” She bites her bottom lip. “So about guests…What’s the rule for visitors?”

  I didn’t have any rules. Why would I? I’m twenty-six years old and spent the last seven years in prison. Rules fucking chafe.

  But I doubt that Piper feels the same way. Growing up with a cop for a dad, she’s bound to cling to rules. Unless she’s looking to rebel.

  “You need me to meet any potential boyfriends?” I ask, lifting a brow.

  “You would scare them off.” She keeps biting her lip. Oh, hell. She’s not biting it, she’s chewing on it.

  Reaching out, I gently touch her bottom lip. “You’re going to make it bleed.”

  Big hazel eyes gaze up at me and lust surges so hard that it nearly knocks me over. Her hand comes up, fingers wrapping around my wrist. Or trying to. “I’ll stop.”

  “Just like that?” I say. I should stop touching her or tell her to stop touching me. No good will come of us touching each other.

  She nods, dark hair sliding forward. “I’m very good at following directions.”

  My dick gets hard at the thought of all the directions I could give her. Spread your thighs wider. Touch yourself. Suck me.

  “Fuck,” I mutter, pulling out of her loose grip and pushing her hand away. “Take whatever bedroom you want. I have to go to work.”

  I stalk out of there, grab my helmet, and head to my bike. “Get it together,” I say to myself as I throw my leg over it and start it up.

  Piper

  Standing at the window, I watch Jase drive away. As usual, I have said something completely dumb and drove him to leave.

  It’s what we do.

  But this time, he touched me…and he let me touch him.

  My lip tingles with the memory. I rub my thumb over my fingers, in the exact spots that made contact with his hot skin. I want to touch him everywhere, to trace every tattoo, to kiss all the pain away.

  Jase’s sister, Rowan, insists I have a bad-boy complex. That I want some badass to show me how to be just as bad. But, honestly, I don’t. I want one bad boy who isn’t a boy at all anymore.

  The bad description, however, is apt. Jase Simmons is the epitome of bad. No good. An ex-con. All tattooed and motorcycle driving.

  Exactly the opposite of who my mother and father want me to marry. They want me with a boy from The Oaks, someone who stands to inherit money and power from his family.

  Funny enough, my father is chief of police in Forrestville, and while that position is very powerful, the pay isn’t exactly what my mother would call sufficient. Not that it matters. Our money comes from her side of the family. However, it does make me wonder why she married my dad. He wasn’t chief of police when I was born and his family is firmly middle class.

  I make my way back up the stairs to finish unpacking.

  Moving in with Jase wasn’t something I’d planned on when I originally left my parents’ house, but Rowan and Seth need privacy, and I have no desire to move someplace my parents would find acceptable. However, I haven’t told them I’ve moved in with Jase, mostly because that would require that I actually speak to either of them.

  Walking into my new room, I start to hang up my clothes and put away my things until there’s nothing left.

  Unsure of what to do next, I glance at the wall that separates my room from Jase’s and move closer, searching for the hidden latch. I press down and hear a click. The wall swings open like a door, and I giggle.

  When Rowan and I were younger, we discovered this hidden passageway by accident. Apparently, this house was a speakeasy in the 1920s and had hiding places for alcohol.

  Stepping through the opening, I pull out my phone and turn on the flashlight app, sweeping it around to check out the place like I’m a detective in a television show. Dust motes fall from the ceiling in the narrow passageway, but other than that, there’s nothing.

  Thank God. I have no desire to run into a mouse.

  Quickly, I walk to where streams of daylight pour through narrow holes in the wall. Grinning, I take in Jase’s room. The huge bed is made with stark white linens, and the furniture is completely devoid of anything personal. Unlike the last time I saw his room, there’s no stripper named Angel on his bed. Between his thighs…

  I flush hot, then cold.

  Giving myself an inward shake, I exhale. “This is stupid,” I mutter and make my way back to my bedroom. I give my eyes a moment to adjust from going to nearly pitch-black to full sunlight.

  “What were you doing in there?” Jase says, and I scream.

  “What are you doing in my room?” My heart pounds against my chest so hard that I’m surprised it hasn’t burst free.

  His full lips thin. “Thought I was being rude by not offering to help you, so I came back.”

  My knees get all soft. “Thank you, but I got everything out of my car already.”

  “Were you spying on my room?” he says, walking to the secret door, which is still open.

  Turning, I smack the wall, trying to get it to close. “No. Yes. I mean…you weren’t in there!”

  He spins me around and pushes me up against the wall as the door shuts beside us. “You like watching, don’t you?”

  This close his eyes are impossibly blue. Impossibly wicked. “No.”

  His head dips. Slowly. Purposefully. And I welcome his nearness. His lips are dangerously close to mine as he says, “Next time you want to watch, I’ll make it happen. You say the word.”

  Pain slashes through my heart, and my chest suddenly gets all tight. Not now, I silently beg. Please, not now. “I don’t want to watch you with another woman.” I all but wheeze the words. I can’t breathe at all. It feels as though I’m sucking air through a straw that has to go through mud first.

  “Are you having a fucking asthma attack?” he growls and I can barely nod. “Damn it, Piper. Where’s your inhaler? Never mind.”

  He practically runs across the room, takes my purse, and dumps the contents out on the bed before rushing back to me. “Here.”

  I take my inhaler and shove it in my mouth. Tears of frustration hit me as I try to make the canister release the medi
cine.

  “Baby, let me.” Jase pushes my hand away and presses down. I take a deep breath, staring up at him as he pulls my inhaler away. “Hold your breath for ten, kitten.”

  The tightness in my chest finally eases and I blow out a breath.

  “Better?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  He wipes away the tears on my cheeks. “Do you want to do it again? It might help.”

  “How do you know so much about inhalers?” His kindness isn’t foreign to me, but this goes beyond simple kindness.

  His blue gaze searches my face. “I might have done some research.”

  My heart slams against my chest. “For what?”

  He shrugs. “Just in case you needed help.”

  “You did that for me?”

  Jase’s face turns hard. “I did that because I don’t need a dead girl in my house. I’ve been accused of enough things in my life. Anyway, now that I see you don’t need my help, I’ll go to work.”

  Reeling from his change in attitude, I watch in silence as he walks away, tossing the inhaler on the bed.

  “And Piper?” He stops at the door and pins me with an icy look.

  “What?”

  “Stay the hell out of that passageway, or I promise you won’t like the consequences.” Finally, he leaves the room while I keep staring, silent as a doll in a toy store.

  Chapter 3

  Piper

  Good girls are quiet.

  Good girls don’t borrow trouble.

  My mother’s admonishments ring in my head, keeping my mouth tightly closed.

  The slam of the door makes me jump. I stifle a scream and press my hand to my chest.

  Get a grip, Piper. Jase would never hurt you.

  But he shot a man.

  I take a shallow breath. He might have shot a man, but that man had started the fight and had been the one to bring the gun in the first place. At least, according to Rowan, that had been what happened seven years ago. But Rowan is as biased as I am, perhaps more so, since Jase is her big brother and the one who raised her until she was sixteen.

  The fact also remains that he had gotten my inhaler to me in time. Dangerous men didn’t care about their little sister’s best friend’s asthma. Dangerous men didn’t do research on how to help an asthmatic, either.

  However, dangerous men did threaten their little sister’s best friend with consequences. Is it bad that I find his warning to be a complete turn-on? That I want to know what my punishment would be?

  While my experience with men is very limited, I’d have to be completely naïve not to realize Jase is attracted to me. I can see the lust blazing in his eyes when he looks at me, but that doesn’t really mean anything. He’s rather indiscriminate when it comes to dating. If he actually dates…though to be fair, he and Giselle were together for a long time. The entire time he was in prison, in fact—well, if you don’t count the times she cheated on him, which was every chance she had.

  She even cheated on him with a man my mother wants me to date. Mark Williams—the mayor’s son—who tried to pick a fight with Jase at Jase’s own homecoming party.

  Mark is always nice to me, but then again, most people are. It’s hard to be mean to someone who never rocks the boat, never voices an opinion…only nods and smiles. Most days, I feel like wallpaper—there for only decoration. There to look pretty and inoffensive.

  Unlike Jase.

  He’s vibrant, from his golden hair, dark blue eyes, and multicolored tattoos. You can’t help but notice him. I can’t help but notice him. I’m drawn to him, to the vibrancy that surrounds him. The way he talks and moves. He’s so animated. The opposite of wallpaper. He’s the painting in the room. The piece that everyone comes to see and marvel over.

  Maybe that screams puppy love to some, but to me, it doesn’t matter that I fell in love with Jase Simmons at the age of fourteen. I was an overweight, shy teenager with a slight stutter and a bad case of asthma, and I wore thick-framed glasses, yet he never pretended not to see me, the way my father did. Never said unkind things like the boys I knew in high school, the way my mother did.

  Jase always took the time to talk to me, asked me how things were going…gave me a special nickname. Quite simply, for the first time in my life, I felt special. Important.

  When he went to prison, I didn’t have that anymore, and the only person who came close to giving me that same feeling of importance was his sister, Rowan.

  Don’t misunderstand me, I love Rowan. Over the years, she became the sister I never had. When Jase and Seth went to prison, we became inseparable. In fact, I didn’t go away to the private women’s college in New Hampshire like Mother had planned. Instead, I stayed here and went to UNC Charlotte.

  After becoming friends with Rowan, that was my second and last act of rebellion.

  Until I moved out of my parents’ home, that is. And now, I’ve gone from the frying pan and into the fire by moving in with Jase.

  Be bold, I remind myself. Jase likes bold women. Women who know what they want and aren’t afraid of going after it. Women who are the complete opposite of me…Ugh. I’m doomed to fail.

  My phone rings. I move to the bed, searching my upended purse for it. In Jase’s hurry to help me, he’d scattered my things everywhere. Finally, I find it halfway under the pillow and grab it.

  Glancing at the screen, I frown. My mother is calling, for what I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to her or my father in months.

  Actually, I do have somewhat of a clue. Before I moved out of my house, I had signed up for a dating site that catered to the rich and famous. Which brings me back to Mark Williams. According to my mother and the woman who owns the company, Leslie, Mark is my perfect match. Therefore, in their eyes, I should accept the inevitable and date him. Get engaged and then marry. Have two kids and a perfect house in The Oaks.

  I’ll transform from wallpaper into a trophy wife.

  My stomach flips.

  I let the phone ring again and again, until guilt squeezes at my heart and my thumb hovers over the answer button.

  What if something happened and I never got the chance to talk to my parents again? What if they thought I hated them?

  Be strong, I remind myself. If it were an emergency, a police car driven by a new recruit would be parked outside.

  My parents, my mother especially, is a master manipulator. A character flaw that is good for fundraisers, charity functions, and making your only child do your every bidding.

  I shake my head and ignore the call, slipping my phone inside my purse before grabbing my keys off the top of the dresser. Gazing at the banister that I want to slide down one day, I force myself to walk down the stairs and outside to my car. In less than an hour, I have an appointment with a financial aid counselor to go over my obligations for the upcoming semester.

  The day of Rowan and Seth’s surprise engagement party had been a win and a loss for me. A win because Jase had not only agreed to allow me to move in with him but had given me a job as well. A loss because later that afternoon I had received my tuition bill.

  If I can’t find a way to pay for classes, then I’ll have to postpone my first year of graduate school. But if that’s what I have to do in order to become independent from my parents, then that’s what I’ll do.

  The irony of driving a car that they gave me as a twenty-first-birthday present doesn’t escape my notice. But until they either ask or take it back, I’ll keep driving it. I doubt my parents even notice the bills—their accountant pays everything for them.

  Besides, a car is nothing in comparison to housing and tuition, or credit card payments. Yes, they had canceled those as well. Plus, image is everything. I can’t be seen driving something other than this BMW without people asking questions. The only time my parents like questions is when they are the ones doing the asking.

  My phone rings for the second time that day and I press the Bluetooth button on my steering wheel.

  “Piper, it’s me. Don’t hang up,�
� Rowan orders.

  “Why would I hang up on you?” I ask, bewildered at her sharp tone. Normally, my best friend is the easiest-going person in the world.

  “Because you haven’t answered your phone all day.”

  “I’ve been busy moving.”

  “Are you sure that’s all you’ve been doing?” she asks, her voice laced with accusation.

  I purse my lips for a minute. “No, I’ve been doing your brother and he finally let me out of bed so he could go to work.”

  Silence greets me.

  “Holy shit, Piper. You had me going for a minute,” she says with a laugh.

  “I’m so glad.”

  “Don’t be that way. I was concerned for you.”

  “Despite what you think, I’m not your brother’s type. He’s not interested in me,” I say.

  “You don’t actually believe that, do you?”

  Only with Rowan could I ever be so bold to say, “He had the perfect opportunity to kiss me and didn’t take it.”

  Rowan makes a strangled sound. “Girl, you could do so much better than Jase. Yeah, he’s my brother and you know I love him, but the company he keeps—you can’t want that for yourself.”

  “Are you trying to say that I’m not good enough for your brother?” I ask lightly, knowing full well she means the opposite.

  “I’m saying you’re not bad enough for him. Baby girl, while I fully support this newfound independence and badassery you’ve displayed for the past seven months, this will not end well. You’re too soft and sweet for Jase.”

  “Maybe he needs soft and sweet,” I counter.

  “I actually agree with you, but I’m not the one you’d have to convince.”

  “Are you saying that I need to convince your brother of that?”

  “Yes. No.” She sighs. “I don’t want you to get hurt and then never speak to me again. I don’t want our friendship ruined over some stupid boy, even if he’s my brother.”

  My heart flips a little at her admission. “I won’t let that happen.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise…as long as you agree to help me convince Jase to take a chance on me.”