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When the tears finally built up enough to roll hot down Piper’s face, Leo stopped dead in his tracks, his face falling as he stepped forward and caught one rolling tear with his thumb.
“I’m sorry.” His pained voice broke her. More tears fell from Piper’s eyes, coating her cheeks and the palm of his hand. She shook her head repeatedly, trying to tell him not to be sorry as her words caught in her throat. “I know this isn’t what you wanted, but I can’t separate sex and emotions. Not with you. I never could with you. I tried, Piper, I did, but I’ve been falling for you since you tipped that glass of ice over my head. Maybe even before then. I lived to argue with you. I craved the way you told me exactly what you thought of me and how right you were about my flaws. I’m always desperate to know what you’re thinking. And then when I kissed you in the library, I couldn’t handle that I didn’t have more of you. I couldn’t handle you smiling for everyone else but me, so I took what I could have. And now that’s not enough of you, either. I don’t just want pieces of you, princesa. I want to be the one you can’t stop thinking about, too. And yes, there are better guys out there for you than me—like Elliot, maybe—but I want it to be me. I know you think I’m an asshole, but I’m an asshole who can’t stop imagining what it would be like to love you forever, and it’s torturing me to not have your heart when you’ve had mine for months. I don’t think I can keep holding you at night if I’m not allowed to love you all day.” Piper was freely crying now, frantically trying to wipe at her face so she could speak. So she could tell him he wasn’t crazy.
“I—” she started, and before she could get the words out, Leo got on his knees.
“Give me a chance. Please. Try with me.”
Piper’s knees hit the floor again before she even knew what she was doing. She reached forward to wrap her arms around him and clung to him like he was a life raft she needed to hold onto, his touch keeping her afloat. His arms wrapped around her back, and it felt like home. Every fear she had was right there on the surface. The knowledge that if she lost him, she might just be broken forever.
“Leo, I don’t have to try,” she said, and let go of the embrace to cup his face. He nuzzled into her palm as his deep brown irises met hers in an agonizing plea. “I told Elliot it’d be wrong of me to go out with him because I was in love with someone else.”
“You did?” Leo choked out.
Piper nodded, biting back her bottom lip. “It’s you.” Leo barely let her finish before his lips were on hers. She pulled back a second later with a sad smile. “You make me want to be a better person. You’re thoughtful and hardworking and charming and annoying.” Leo chuckled as she smiled at him and continued, “And I love every part of you. I love you, too, Leo.”
Leo broke out into a grin and swiped at one of her tears. “Mi vida, ¿por qué lloras?” She sniffled and pulled her eyebrows together, getting partway through the translation before Leo caught on to her struggle and repeated it in English. “Why are you crying?”
“I’m so scared,” Piper whispered. Leo’s smile softened as he tucked a golden strand of hair behind her ear.
“I am, too,” he said.
“I can’t lose anyone else.” She shook her head and looked away, trying to pull back her emotions. Leo’s finger met the underside of her chin, and he tugged her head back to look at him. “Losing you would kill me, Leo.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“You don’t have control over that.” Piper buried her face in his neck as love, joy, and utter sadness lodged in her chest, mixing like buckets of paint to create an entirely new color. “I didn’t want to get close to you for that exact reason, but I couldn’t stop myself. You wormed your way in. and now it hurts to not have you. I’m losing something if I don’t admit I want you, and admitting I want you means I’ll eventually lose you. You’re an asshole for making me fall for you, Leo.” A half laugh, half sob escaped her throat, and he pulled her in closer, the both of them still kneeling outside her door.
“I know.” Leo pressed a kiss into her hair. The first layer of his lips felt cold until he pressed further, and she could feel the heat underneath. It was the way her heart had felt for so long. It looked warm and inviting on the surface, but it was cold to the touch. Leo hadn’t retracted from the cold at all—he had dug in, found the warmth underneath, and made her admit it was there. “But if being an asshole got me you, then I’m not sorry. I’d do it again. But you don’t know that you’ll lose me. We don’t know anything, Piper. All I know is I’d rather assume that I’ll get to have you forever and love you like I could lose you any second.”
“I want what my parents had. And I think, with you, I can have it.” It was little more than a whisper, choked back with emotion, but Leo nodded with a soft smile.
“You can have it with me.”
Piper leaned in to kiss him again, tasting the salt from her tears and letting her mouth find peace in his touch until they were just sitting, clutching onto each other with Leo’s blanket wrapped around them as he slowly stroked her hair.
“What do we do when you go to film school?” Piper sniffled.
“I haven’t gotten in yet,” Leo pointed out.
“They’re idiots if they don’t accept you.” She laced her fingers in his. “You pulled off something big last night.”
“We all did.”
“You got us there. But I’m still going back to Archwood. That has always been my dream, and my family is there even if my parents aren’t. I want the job I wanted as a little girl. I want to make my parents proud. And it’s not even just about that anymore. I love the work, and I know I’m capable of doing it.”
“Your set spoke for itself. And, even if I do get in, this will work, Piper,” Leo said. “We can love each other and still do what we want. We’ll do long distance. We’ll do whatever we have to. I’ll drive ten hours to come see you every weekend if I have to. I’ll work overtime at a shitty side gig to afford the gas or find some rich relative that I didn’t know existed to bequeath their entire life savings to me. I don’t know, but we’ll make it work. If anyone can do it, it’s us. We don’t back down from fights, Piper, and I’m not going to stop loving you just because I’m far away.”
“Okay.” Piper nodded, her bottom lip wobbling. “I’ll fly out to see you. I’ll be so organized with the company that I can take some weekends off. I’ll hire a personal errand boy to do all my grunt work.”
“That’s the spirit.” Leo chuckled. “But can we make it a personal errand girl or someone who rivals the sheer amount of gay that Sam is?”
Piper giggled and rose to her feet, flattening out Leo’s hoodie against his chest. “On a scale of one to ten, how jealous were you when you thought I was going out with Elliot?”
“The scale was broken.” Leo hopped to his feet and scanned his eyes over what she was wearing. “Am I ever getting that back?”
“Nope.” Piper grinned as he helped her up, and she pushed open the door. “This has been mine from the second you lent it to me. I’m going to need you to wash it with your laundry detergent, though.”
“Figures.” His lips met hers in a quick kiss before his face contorted. “Now, I would love to take that hoodie off you, but right now, I think I’m gonna throw up. Where’s your bathroom?”
