by Tara Leigh
She glanced over at me, then sat back down in the room’s only chair. “How do you know I still want it?”
Piper was giving me an out. I could easily shrug and walk away.
But I didn’t want to keep Piper at arm’s length anymore.
Leaning against the door’s molding, I scrubbed a palm over my face. “Can’t say I’d blame you.” I glanced back toward the courtyard, sunlight glinting off the surface of the pool. “I hope you still do though.”
She rose from her chair, and we walked back to where we’d been sitting a few minutes ago, a few feet away from a lemon tree growing in an enormous pot. I gulped at air tinged with the scent of chlorine and citrus as Piper took a seat beside me, resting her hand on my knee. Her palm lingering just long enough to sear its imprint into my thigh.
Piper crossed her long legs, slipping her fingers between her thighs as if protecting them. I stared at her delicate wrists, wanting to bend down in front of her, spread her legs as I pulled her panties over her hips, dragging the material from her legs until I had unfettered access to the flawless stretch of skin she was covering up. Access to every hollow and crevice. I wanted to touch and taste and feel every fucking tremble. I wanted. God, how I wanted.
Realizing I was staring, I lifted my eyes to Piper’s face, expecting to be met with the same anger she’d shown earlier. But instead I saw something else. There was a flicker of lust, as if she’d been reading my thoughts and had similar ones of her own. But more than anything else, just an open-eyed interest. I had her undivided attention. Piper wasn’t fidgeting, or searching for distractions. No, she was entirely focused on me, and the overdue explanation I’d offered to give.
As if to underscore the point, she swept a tongue over her lips and shifted toward me in the chair. “I’m listening.”
“I have a brother. His name is Jake.”
* * *
My adoptive father, Mike, was sitting at the kitchen table, papers spread across the surface, his laptop in front of him. The TV was on in the background, some basketball game. And Jake was in his high chair, the remains of his dinner smeared across his tray, the floor around him littered with pasta and peas. Mike barely looked up from his screen. “You’re home already?”
“Yeah. Thanks for letting me go.” He had surprised me by coming home early so I could go over to my friend’s house. Of course, he didn’t know that my “friend” was my girlfriend, and her parents weren’t home. “I’ve got Jake now, if you need to get back to work.”
His only response was a quiet grunt that could have meant anything as he pecked at his keyboard, entering invoices for the auto body shop he managed.
I should have stayed home, after all. Since she wasn’t expecting me, my now ex-girlfriend, had invited someone else over. Typical. I was easily replaceable. But my family—Mike, Sarah, and Jake—I couldn’t afford to lose them, too. I’d been a jerk this past week, annoyed that I was going to miss out on getting laid to babysit. What an idiot. Sex was great, but finally having a family…it was everything.
I walked into the kitchen, intending to take Jake out of his high chair and get him cleaned up and ready for bed so that when Sarah came home she could relax.
That was when I noticed the grapes on Jakes tray. Whole grapes. Horror curled a fist around my throat, squeezing tight. Jake wasn’t smiling and reaching out his arms to me, like he usually did. In fact, he was looking kind of—
“No!” I screamed, nearly slipping on the greasy floor as I dove for him, sweeping inside his mouth with my pinkie like they’d taught us in the CPR portion of gym class every year. Sure enough, I felt the slippery skin of a fat grape lodged behind his tongue.
I yanked Jake out of his high chair, holding him against my chest as I gave a swift compression with the back of my fist into his soft stomach. Mike was already calling 911 as the grape finally shot across the room. I put Jake on the floor to check his pulse. He had one, thank god. But he wasn’t breathing. The next seven minutes were the longest of my life, breathing air into my little brother’s mouth, forcing his tiny chest to rise and fall. Praying, hoping, wishing, wanting.
Knowing this was all my fault.
Mike went into the ambulance with Jake while I waited for Sarah at home. She rarely kept her phone turned on, and certainly not at choir practice. And Mike didn’t want her driving to the hospital alone. So I waited. Stacking up all of Mike’s papers, closing his laptop, putting everything into the bag he brought from work. I cleaned the kitchen, wiping down Jake’s tray and mopping the floor. Throwing away all the uneaten pasta and peas. And grapes.
When Sarah came home, I explained what had happened. Except for the part about me not actually being home. I told her I had fed Jake grapes with his dinner. The ones she’d told me a million times to cut into halves and sometimes quarters, because they were a choking hazard.
I didn’t want her to blame Mike when I was the one who should have been home with Jake. Feeding him dinner and taking care of him. Cutting his damned grapes.
I had just gotten my license so I drove us to the hospital, each one of her shuddering breaths and broken sobs a nail through my heart.
We sat in the waiting room together. Lots of crying and praying, very little talking. I didn’t stand when the doctor walked through the swinging doors, but I could hear every word he said. Oxygen deprivation. Limited brain function. Wait and see. We were allowed in Jake’s room, and he looked just like he was sleeping. We were told he would wake up, but he would be “different.”
Between science and health class, I knew what that meant—that my baby brother might just remain a baby his whole life.
And it was all my fault.
The baby brother who’d taught me what love was with the first squeeze of his tiny fingers around my pinkie.
That love transformed into toxic sludge as I walked out of the hospital in a daze, packed a few things into a duffel bag and hitched a ride to L.A. I met Shane within days, and eventually we hooked up with Jett, then Dax. After Travis signed us, I told him about the family I’d left behind. And that I wanted every penny I earned to go toward Jake’s care.
Chapter Fifteen
Piper
Interior courtyards were open to the elements, save one. Wind. Protected on all sides, there was no breeze, no gusts of air to shield against. I was shaken to the core by Landon’s confession, and yet not a single hair on my head had moved. It was unsettling. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”
Landon’s handsome features twisted in an expression of anguish that ran deep, well below the ink peeking through the cuffs of his sleeves. My skin prickled, the hair at the back of my neck standing on end when his eyes met mine. Darker than I’d ever seen them, each one a whirling dervish of rage and regret. “You think admitting I’m responsible for my brother’s brain damage is easy?”
“Landon, no.” The denial scraped from my throat, each word leaving a sour aftertaste on my lips. “It wasn’t your fault. Your brother’s…injury wasn’t your fault. You weren’t even there.”
I was almost glad when he looked away from me; at least I could draw a breath when the weight of his stare wasn’t pushing down on my chest, pressing against my lungs.
“Injury.” He repeated the word I’d used, for lack of a better one. “I always thought an injury was something you’d recover from. You see a doctor, get a prescription or stitches or a cast. Maybe you have a scar, or walk with a limp, but you’d get better.”
Landon tilted his head back, his strong profile like carved granite as he glared up at the sky, his stare so intense it wouldn’t have surprised me if every cloud in sight chose to hide behind the sun. “I didn’t want a brother. I didn’t want Jake. Not at first anyway.”
“That’s normal. You were a teenager, you were used to having the Coxes all to yourself.”
“No.” He stretched out his arms, glaring at the textured skin beneath his tattoos. “This is what I was used to. The lit end of a cigarette, the slice of a razo
rblade. Pissing myself in a closet during one of my parents’ benders, then being beaten for the mess.” He pulled his shirt entirely off, his eyes now on mine as I studied the map of pain he’d hidden with ink but couldn’t erase. “The metal end of a belt, the cut of a knife. Blood. Pain. Being scared to close my eyes at night. Feeling hungry all the fucking time.”
Landon had always been reluctant to talk about his past, and I had never pushed for more than he willingly offered on his own. We were treading on delicate ground now, and I could feel it shifting and trembling beneath me. I was afraid to say anything, but I was desperate to envelop Landon in empathy, soothe the wounded boy inside of him.
A minute passed, then two. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until Landon started speaking again. “I knew crackhead parents and the government system. Some fuckin’ system—bouncing back and forth from what felt like kiddie jail to families looking for a benefit check. Figured I’d just bide my time, age out, or run away if things got unbearable.” His cadence matched the uneven thud of my heart. Sentences pushed out, words tumbling over each other. Then a deep inhale before the next.
“I didn’t expect to be adopted, ever. Thought I was just doing my time, like a prison sentence. But then I met the Coxes and everything changed. I had a home, was treated like a human being instead of a punching bag or a burden. Life was good, finally.”
Landon’s jaw was tight, a vein pulsing at his temple. I knew if I looked into his eyes I would see a maelstrom of torment and, selfishly, I was glad he didn’t turn my way. My heart was breaking enough just from listening to him.
“So when I learned that things were going to change, that they were going to have the baby they’d always wanted, a kid of their own, I wasn’t happy about it—at all. Not that I said anything. I was too worried I’d be sent back. But when Jake came home, he was just…my brother. I loved him. Loved him so damn much.”
Landon’s voice cracked and I reached out a hand to cover his knee, giving it a squeeze. He picked it up, running his fingers up and down my pinkie. “What the fuck was so important that I couldn’t watch him while Sarah was singing in the choir and Mike was working? They had given me everything, and I couldn’t give them a few hours of my time?”
I removed my hand, but only to crawl into Landon’s lap, pressing my cheek to his chest and winding my arms around his waist. Offering comfort with my body, knowing words wouldn’t be enough. “He’s why I don’t want kids of my own. I’m not even related to Jake by blood, but when I saw him turning blue, I’d have ripped my own lungs out of my chest if it would have helped. But there was nothing I could do for him, not that day.”
“You did, Landon. You were the one who saved him, breathed for him when he couldn’t. If you hadn’t come home when you did, Jake would have died.”
“If I had been home in the first place, he would be healthy.” Landon’s anger was directed inward, his chin digging into my shoulder as a sigh shuddered through him. “Piper, the one good thing that’s come out of my career has been the means to pay for Jake’s therapy. That’s why I left. Why I disappeared that summer and didn’t look back. I had a chance to try—not to make things right, that’s never gonna happen—but to do something to ease the strain on the Coxes. I needed to earn money. Real money—the kind that came from signing with a big label and having an album make the charts. I needed to do whatever it took for that to happen. Make any sacrifice. Even if it meant sacrificing you.”
I pushed at Landon’s chest so I could meet his eyes. “But why couldn’t you just be honest with me? Or at the very least, say goodbye?”
He blinked. “There was a meeting at Travis’s office, right after Shane was collared for buying drugs downtown. Travis gave us an ultimatum—commit to our band, and only our band, or get lost. We all had to turn over our phones and get on a plane immediately. I missed you, Pippa. Missed you so fucking much”—his hands reached up to cup my cheeks—“but I owed it to Jake to give everything I had to music. And by the time I came back, I’d decided I didn’t deserve to have a girl like you.”
“Landon.” His name was a breath that quivered from my lips. “You deserve to be happy, to be loved. Everyone does.”
He shook his head, sadly. “If that were the truth, life would be fair. And you know damn well it’s not.”
There was no disputing that. No, life wasn’t fair. I ran a hand through Landon’s thick blond mop glinting like a crown in the sunlight. With his hard muscles and chiseled jaw, it’s easy to pretend that the man in front of me was all hard angles and impenetrable emotions. In reality, Landon’s heart was just as fragile as mine. Not that he’d ever admit it. “How about honesty, do I deserve that?”
“Yeah. Yeah, you do.” He exhaled. “I’m sorry, Piper. I’m sorry for lying, and for all the times when I could have told you the truth about what I was thinking, feeling, doing—and instead said nothing at all. I was a complete dick. Can you forgive me?”
My hands curled in his hair, ready to give a tug if he tried to look away. “That depends. Are you done being a dick to me?”
But Landon didn’t look away, his gaze remaining firmly affixed to mine. “One hundred percent. And, believe me, my dick is entirely at your disposal.”
Our faces were barely an inch apart and there was a distinct shift in the mood between us. As if we’d stepped from a confessional into the dark of a sultry night. I felt a hardening against my thigh, the solid press and pulse of his desire.
I opened my mouth to speak, but Landon stopped me with a finger to my lips. A finger that traced the curve of my mouth, so softly it was like being kissed by a ghost. I held my breath, focusing entirely on the sensation. And when he pulled his hand away, I moaned in protest.
“Are we done talking?” he asked in a husky whisper that had me wet in an instant. “Because there are other things I’d like to do with my tongue right now. Other things I’d like to see your mouth doing.”
Air caught in my throat and I gave a jerky nod. So. Done. Talking.
Big hands gripped my ass, adjusting my position so I straddled his lap, one knee on either side of his hips, the apex of my thighs flush against the bulge between his. The skirt of my sundress flared outward, offering false modesty. Beneath, only the lace of my panties and the cotton of Landon’s new sweatpants prevented us from joining.
One hand pushed into my hair, making a loose fist, tugging just enough that my back arched, my breasts on display. My nipples tightened, pointing at Landon, silently begging for attention.
Blood thrummed beneath my veins, every cell brimming with lust and want and desire. A needy cocktail infused with emotions that had grown more potent with Landon’s confession.
My eyelids fluttered closed as Landon cupped my shoulder with his free hand, drawing his fingertips down one arm than back up again, trekking across my collarbone, then repeating the movement with my other arm. Goose bumps trailed after his touch.
My hips rocked forward instinctively, craving friction.
The hiss of Landon’s breath was a reward. Proof he wasn’t immune to me, to this. To us.
My chest cracked open, the heated air coming off Landon’s skin rushing in, invading every dark corner I had intended to keep from him.
I thought he was the sum of my assumptions, most of which had been wrong.
I thought he was the product of my low expectations, most of which had been undeserved.
How could I have been so wrong? I needed to know him. The rock star and the wounded boy.
The loner.
The legend.
Landon Cox was all of those things.
And then some.
Landon
I released the knot of Piper’s hair to push at a strap of her sundress. The narrow strip of fabric was an insult, covering up way too much of her flawless skin. “Take it off,” I muttered, my voice hoarse with pent up desire.
There was no objection to my rough demand. If anything, Piper’s eyes smoldered with hunger, a tranquil sea roi
ling from an unexpected storm.
Her delicate hands plucked at the hem of her dress, lifting it slowly. Agonizingly slowly.
And in those suspended moments when Piper’s dress had yet to pull free of her face, exposing a buffet of soft skin and lacy lingerie, I pushed away all that remained unsaid between us.
After I got back from that cabin—where I’d spent most days in the recording studio, working on what would become our breakout album—I didn’t want to go back to Piper.
Just like Shane had purged his body of alcohol and drugs, those months stripped away the comfort I’d found in Piper’s arms. At first, I’d craved her sweetness like a diabetic. But as the weeks wore on, I realized I was the better for it. I needed to be hungry, focused.
I had the chance to take over the financial burden of Jake’s care. To help Mike and Sarah, who had given me everything. Maybe one day there would be a treatment that would cure Jake, some way of restoring function to the parts of his brain that had died from oxygen deprivation. And if there was a way, any way at all, I wanted to be in a position to afford the best doctors, the best therapies, the best everything.
So I’d buried the memory of Piper Hastings in the deepest, darkest recesses of my mind, drowning the lingering taste of her kisses with alcohol, diluting the memory of her touch with dozens, maybe hundreds, of other women. Nameless, faceless women whose laughs scratched at my eardrums, whose perfumes made me itch.
Piper’s head poked free of the fabric, a smile playing on her lips and a fire blazing from her eyes. Creamy skin, petal pink lips, and long lashes that cast shadows on sculpted cheekbones. A mosaic of attractive pieces, exquisitely arranged. Piper Hasting was so damn gorgeous it nearly hurt to look at her.
And her body…breasts swelling above a navy blue strapless bra, the firm, flat plane of her belly leading to matching lace panties.