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“Trying to rope me into buying you more?” Piper teased.
Leo took a deep sip of his drink. “I’m addicted now, and it’s your fault for introducing me to it.”
“Fair point. We could all use a little extra caffeine after yesterday.” Her comment felt like a weight dropped between them. Their good-natured conversation was no more.
Leo frowned. “I barely slept at all last night. How is Emma?”
Piper knew exactly what he meant because she had tossed and turned all night, too, sick with disgust over Emma’s situation. “I don’t know how she’s doing. I assume not great.”
“What’s the plan?”
“Plan?” Piper repeated back.
“Yeah. What are we going to do? He can’t just get away with it.” Leo was vibrating with energy. She could practically see it with the way he couldn’t stand still. Not even Thea the fixer had been this adamant about taking action against Hornbill. But Thea was also a woman, so she knew just how nuanced the whole thing was.
Figuring it was best to chop Leo’s burn-the-world energy off at the knees, Piper got right to the point. “We are doing absolutely nothing.”
His mouth dropped open. “You can’t be serious.”
“We will not do a thing until Emma tells us otherwise.” If Piper had to body-check Leo to stop him from confronting Professor Hornbill, she would. “If she wants to do something, we will. If she wants to do nothing, we will keep our mouths shut.”
“But—”
“No.” Piper shook her head. “I know what you’re thinking, and I agree that Professor Hornbill deserves to go down, but you know who doesn’t deserve to be taken down with him? Emma. Regardless of the truth, the world will pin her as the problem. If she wants to take him on, she can decide that. We don’t get to decide it for her.”
“Moreno can help us, though. He trusts me implicitly. If I tell him what happened, then he’ll believe her. She can win this,” Leo argued. “We can help her.”
“There’s no way we can protect her from how cruel the world will be about this, Leo, and I will not let you tell one single person about this until Emma says otherwise.” Piper’s tone was firm. Leo might have thought that she never stood up for herself, and maybe she didn’t, but she had zero problems fighting for other people. “She trusted us with this information, and you don’t get to start a war on her behalf when she hasn’t told you to do so. You don’t get to make her feel guilty for not turning him in if she chooses that, either.”
Leo set the coffee carrier on the landing and started to pace. Piper half regretted getting him coffee now that she saw how wired he was and was about to inquire where his head was at when he came to an abrupt stop in front of her and let out a long sigh. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yes, okay.” Leo groaned. “You’re right. I wasn’t thinking about the repercussions. I just really wanted Hornbill to pay. I want to watch him go down in flames. He deserves to have his life ruined, and, vindictively, I want to be the one to do it. I want to break his fucking face, Piper. I stayed up most of the night going for the longest run of my life and then beating the shit out of my punching bag, and it didn’t help. I hate it. I hate him. I can’t stand the thought of him manipulating other people or the idea that he’s done this before. I’ve noticed how he looks at the girls in our class, how he looks at you, but I had no real proof, so I didn’t do anything. Maybe if I trusted my instincts, this wouldn’t have happened to Emma.”
Piper watched as Leo’s chest rose and fell, anger curling his hands into fists. She set the remaining breakfast sandwiches next to the drink carrier on the ground and reached up to place one palm against his chest. The action came out of some unfounded notion that she could slow his heart rate just by touching him. It was ridiculous, but she did it anyway. Leo reached up and encircled her wrist with one hand, not seeming to mind the contact.
“I had the same feeling about him,” Piper said. “It’s no one’s fault but his. We can only hope that justice will bite him in the ass eventually, but, if it helps, I’d love to watch you break his nose.”
“How do we just go in there and sit down in his class like nothing is wrong?” Leo’s hand gripped Piper’s wrist a little harder. “He’s teaching us about fucking ethics, Piper. I don’t know what I’ll do if he looks at Emma or you or any other girl sideways.”
“Sit with me. I don’t know if Emma’s coming today. I wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t come to class, but if she does, she can sit with us. We do the things that we can control.”
“Oh, Emma’s coming,” Emma’s voice said from behind Piper. She dropped her hand from Leo’s chest and turned to welcome Emma and Thea into the discussion. Piper didn’t miss Thea’s raised eyebrows and her cursory glances between Leo and Piper. “Where’s the coffee you promised me? My head feels like it’s going to crack in two.”
Eager to do something that would get Thea’s observing eyes off her, Piper stooped down to grab the bag of sandwiches at the same time Leo bent to grab the drink carrier. Drinks and sandwiches were passed out, and everyone fell into a prolonged silence.
“Wow, don’t everyone talk at once,” Emma said dryly.
“Are you okay?” Leo asked first. “We can leave right now. We don’t have to go in.”
“Please don’t start coddling me now, Diaz. Where’s the guy that gave me shit yesterday for botching all my lines? I want that guy back.” Emma took a sip of her coffee.
“He’ll be back when you botch your lines at rehearsal later. Right now, I’m just a friend,” Leo said and then turned to Piper with a smirk. “Told you she doesn’t want me to go easy on her.”
“You could have been less of an ass, and you know it,” Piper shot back. She also didn’t miss that Leo had called Emma a friend even though he had insisted several times before that he wasn’t directing to make friends.
“I do know it, but I’m sure you’d be happy to tell me again,” Leo said, and he wasn’t wrong, especially if Piper told him the same way she did last time. If she was freely admitting it, part of the reason she had gotten zero sleep, on top of tossing and turning over Emma’s predicament, was because she kept reliving her time with Leo in the dressing room. It wasn’t the fighting she was reliving, either—it was the way he had taken her on the floor like he had lost all control. Like they were wild animals incapable of holding back their desire. Pure, unadulterated lust.
