“Okay, but I can’t be the thing that breaks you and Travis for good.” The words fight their way past my throat. “Some things you can’t take back.”
“You can do whatever you want to do, Piper. I won’t force you to stay here, but I don’t want you to leave, and I’m certainly not ready to let you go. If that helps your decision.”
Jesus, this man is going to own my heart so completely, then break it without even trying. He’ll ruin me in ways he never means to, and I’ll be wrecked before I even realize I’m falling apart.
“I believe you promised me some food.”
“Amongst other things.” The smile he gives me makes my heart skip a beat.
There’s more I should tell him—about Travis’s threats, about all thepoison he spat when Christian wasn’t around. But right now, with everything so raw, what good would it do? It would only add to the weight Christian’s already carrying, and all I want is to find out if there’s any way in this messed-up world that I could make him happy. To see what “us” might look like if we dare to try.
“If you want me to leave at any point, please tell me. I won’t be offended.”
He reaches out, his hand sliding into my hair, his fingers brushing against my scalp. The touch is probably meant to comfort, but it only makes me ache for more of this impossible thing between us that feels too good to be real.
“Never gonna happen, darlin’.”
Chapter 16
Piper
Freshly showeredand sitting in my towel like a girl who has zero intention of actually drying herself, I take my phone out and hit call on my sister’s name. My hair is dripping water everywhere, and I’m probably soaking the edge of the bed.
Pick up, pick up, pick up.
She’d better answer because I need someone to tell me that what I’m doing, despite being so far from okay and messy as hell, is somehow acceptable.
“Pip, you haven’t frozen to death up there, have you?”
“Still kicking. Miss me yet?”
“Oh yeah, desperately.” Vi’s laughter crackles through the phone. “I’m only enjoying unlimited hot water, full control of the TV, and an empty house while you’re living your best Hallmark life up at the farm.”
“God, it really is disgustingly perfect up here. You’d hate it.”
There’s a pause, and I can practically hear her rolling her eyes. “I resent that. I can do festive. Where do you think my tree came from?”
“Christian’s annual delivery service?”
“Wrong Crawford. Unfortunately, Travis dropped it off, and bydropped off, I mean he nearly put a hole in my wall. And before you start defending him, save it. That ship has sailed and is decomposing at the bottom of the ocean with Rose’s giant-ass blue diamond.”
Of course, Travis couldn’t just deliver a tree like a normal fucking person.
Violet has never liked Travis, something she made clear from day one. She always said he had the kind of energy that made her teeth itch, like he was constantly trying to figure out the best way to cut me down and make me smaller, chipping away at my confidence one backhanded comment at a time. And she wasn’t wrong.
But then, I always knew he was an ass. A selfish, manipulative, gaslighting piece of crap, and yet, like an idiot, I just let it slide every single time. Maybe because deep down, I never really cared enough about him to fight back.
He was emotionally abusive, and yet it was me who spent our entire relationship fantasizing about another man’s hands, another man’s voice, and another man’s everything, which probably makes me the bigger piece of shit in this story. At least Travis never pretended to be anything but exactly what he was, but me? I was the liar. I was the girl pretending not to feel the earth shift whenever his dad entered a room.
“You’ll be happy to know you won’t have to see Travis again.”
“What happened? Did he get eaten by a bear? Wait, no, bears have standards. Did he fall out of a tree? Get dragged away to the North Pole? No, scratch that. There’s no fucking way he’d survive somewhere so magical and happy and not turn it into a shithole. Did he get swallowed by his own ego? Or did his dad finally put him up for adoption because he’s such a colossal letdown of a human being?”
“Are you done?”
“I think so… for now, but give me five minutes, and I’ll come up with more. What’s up with him though? What happened?”
“I ended things.”
