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“I’ll tell you however many times it takes,” Piper mused. Leo’s eyes flicked over her face as if searching for more meaning behind the statement. He must have found it because she was no longer talking about whether he was an asshole, and he knew it, considering the corner of his mouth was tipped up in a coy smile.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Leo reached his hand up to her cheek and brushed his thumb just under her eye. “You had a streak of dirt or something on your face,” he explained.
There was no way Leo could telepathically know what the streak was from and link it to the groceries left on his doorstep, but paranoia kicked in anyway. “Weird,” Piper said and cleared her throat a little too forcefully. “Thanks for getting that.”
“Sure. Anytime.” Leo’s hand clenched and unclenched at his side.
“Okay, what the fuck is going on here?” Thea twiddled a finger between Leo and Piper.
“Nothing,” they replied simultaneously.
Thea scoffed. “You two are hooking up, aren’t you?”
“Thea!” Piper gasped, her face heating. She glanced at Leo, who looked unbothered by Thea’s outburst. “No, we aren’t!” The lie filled her mouth with a bitter taste, and she hated it. She could feel Leo’s eyes on her, but she was terrified to look. The idea of Leo having a real reason to hate her made her insides churn. She snuck a peek at him and found him taking a massive bite of his breakfast sandwich, effectively ignoring her, which felt worse than his disappointment.
“You look like you got caught stealing cookies out of the cookie jar,” Emma said.
“Okay, fine, we are, but it’s not a big deal. It’s just to let off steam,” Piper said, shooting an urgent look in Leo’s direction for him to corroborate her story.
“What? I was just trying to mess with you.” Thea gaped at Piper. “I didn’t know you were actually having sex with Leo! What the fuck, Piper?”
Piper opened her mouth like a fish several times before looking to Leo for help. He finally swallowed his bite and said, “I told Piper I didn’t want anyone to know.”
There was no way Leo had just saved her. He would never do that. And he had technically agreed that they shouldn’t tell anyone.
“Right, we still hate each other. We’re just, I don’t know, having a little fun.” Piper brushed it off.
Emma coughed and shot Leo a look Piper couldn’t quite read, and he pointedly took another sip of coffee as Thea berated him, “I don’t count as anyone. I’m the one person who when someone says ‘don’t tell anyone,’ she’s still supposed to tell!”
“Well, apparently not,” Leo shot back.
Piper lowered her gaze to the floor. Thea always told Piper everything—sometimes, a little too much—and while Piper shared enough to give the illusion that she was vulnerable with Thea, she always kept some things close to her chest. There were levels to her vulnerability, and out of anyone standing outside the Condor Building, Leo was the one who had gotten the furthest down her ladder. Before the several breakdowns Piper had had in Leo’s presence, Thea was the person she’d opened up to the most, but now, for some inexplicable reason, it was Leo, a guy she didn’t even like, who knew her pain the best. It both terrified Piper and made her feel like shit. She was a horrible friend, and she knew it. Not everyone was as brave as Emma was.
“I’ll tell you everything later tomorrow when you get back from Yuri’s,” Piper said to Thea. “I promise.”
“You better.” Thea grumpily took a sip of her coffee. “I have to go to class now, but if you want to do literally anything else, I’m happy to skip with you,” she said, directing the invitation at Emma. Unlike Piper, Emma had told Thea everything the night before, and that reminder was enough to make Piper feel like she had been punched in the gut.
“I can’t.” Emma’s face fell. “It’ll hurt my grade in the class. I don’t want to give him an excuse to make everything worse. He can’t win.”
“He’s not going to do shit,” Leo ground out. “Are you going to turn Hornbill in?”
“And say what, exactly?” Emma scoffed and dove headfirst into sarcasm. “He touched my leg a little bit and breathed on me? What exactly do you think anyone is going to do about that, Leo? There’s no proof. No one is going to see that as what it was.”
“But maybe—” Leo started, but Piper cut him off with one hand on his arm. He sighed, but stopped talking.
“Unfortunately, she’s right,” Thea said. “She can make a complaint to the administration, but the likelihood that any real repercussions will come from it is low.”
“It’s my word against his.” Emma sighed. “I just want to get through class. That’s my goal today.”
“Okay.” Piper nodded and turned to Leo with her eyebrows raised. “We can do that. Right?”
All four of their gazes swung to the front door of the Condor Building, where students were starting to file inside. Piper dry-swallowed and looked between Emma and Leo, her eyes finally landing on Leo and pleading for him to harness all his self-control. His chest inflated and deflated once before he responded.
“We can do that.”
Forty-Three
LEO
