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“Yep.” Jared nodded, looking bored.
“Fine. I’ll get a medium iced vanilla macchiato with two pumps of caramel drizzle and cold foam.” Piper slammed her card down on the counter with a dramatic flourish of her hand.
“Card reader,” Jared said boredly. Flustered, Piper picked her card back up and tapped the chip against the reader she had used hundreds of times at that exact coffee shop, then tipped him thirty percent for the inconvenience of having to deal with her. “What’s the name on the order?”
“Leo and Piper,” she replied, this time without a stutter. Their names paired together didn’t sound as weird as they should have. They rolled over her tongue naturally despite how aggravated she was with Leo for forcing her hand.
They moved to wait for their drinks off to the side and stood in silence for a moment before Piper finally spoke up.
“You didn’t have to make a scene,” she grumbled, knocking her shoulder against Leo’s.
“Making a scene is quite literally in my job description.” Leo, as usual, wore a smug expression.
Piper rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean. Was that the entire reason you came with me?”
Something flashed behind Leo’s eyes before whatever it was vanished, and he gave her a curt nod. “Yeah. No one should make you feel like the things you want for yourself are an inconvenience, not even yourself.”
“I don’t get it. It’s just coffee. It’s not a big deal,” Piper said, even though it felt very big. Like a strange sort of turning point where she was starting to agree with Leo on some small front.
“Maybe not, but the little things add up, Piper.” Leo shrugged. “You order what you think will be easy for someone else one minute, and the next thing you know, you’re pushed to the back of every room, and no one can hear you when you’re ordering at all.”
“That seems extreme.” Piper grimaced and folded her arms over her chest, pinching the apatite between her thumb and forefinger.
“Tell me this, then.” Leo tapped his finger against her arm. “Why do you do it, princesa? When you had dinner with my family, you seemed genuinely excited to work on Antonio and Saanvi’s room, and then you diminished your skill immediately. You said nothing about your brother not coming home for Thanksgiving. The other day, you had an idea about your scene, you let Sam talk over you, and then you didn’t bring it up again until I asked you. You cross your arms over your chest when you feel uncomfortable, like you’re trying to make yourself smaller. You let me steamroll over you when I asked you to join the show. When—”
“Leo, stop,” Piper pleaded, her hands shaking as her thumb pressed harder into the stone. The way he had laid it out in front of her felt like a road map to how she had become weak and spineless, and it made her want to vomit.
“Piper? Leo?” a barista called out their drink orders, and Piper practically bolted to the counter to grab them. She lodged the apatite stone between two fingers, took a cup in each hand, and walked straight out of the crowded cafe. Leo followed her step for step, meeting her at the bottom of the staircase outside, where she sheepishly passed over his coffee.
“I’ll probably spill this everywhere if I’m holding both,” she muttered. Leo didn’t respond, just wordlessly took his coffee and watched her fumble with the delivery as the apatite stone slid through her fingers. It fell from her grasp and to the ground, bouncing across the pavement. In a matter of seconds, the stone had slipped into the shadows and out of sight. Piper’s head began to whip back and forth in a panicked search. If she lost the stone, she would never forgive herself. Her mom had given it to her after the first time Piper had helped on a design project, and while painting the kitchen cabinets in her childhood home wouldn’t usually seem like a big deal, to a six-year-old, being entrusted with choosing the right shade of blue felt like magic. The important memory was practically bottled up and stored in the stone she had so carelessly dropped. Before her anxiety turned into a full-blown attack, Leo reached down and picked something up from behind his foot, handing her the blue stone a moment later. Piper exhaled with relief. “Thank you.”
Leo raised his eyebrows, apparently waiting for her to say something in response to his earlier demand to know why she constantly undercut herself.
“What do you want me to say?” she asked.
“What do you want to say, Piper?” Leo retorted. The black rims around his irises seemed to intensify as he waited for her to speak.
“I know I’m practically invisible now, and I know I made it that way, but I feel like when I try to be visible, people think I’m a burden. People don’t like it when I’m sad, Leo. I’m not allowed to be sad.” Piper looked down at her feet and slid one of her tennis shoes along the ground to side-kick a pine cone.
“You could never be invisible.” Leo shook his head. “Even when you’re sad, you’re so… bright.”
“I know I’m smart, but that doesn’t mean anything, apparently, because I still can’t figure myself out.”
“You are smart, but that’s not what I meant. I mean you’re a light. It’s hard to be invisible when you shine that brightly. Happiness isn’t the only valuable emotion, Piper. I think you should stop letting people turn you off just because you want to save them from how you feel,” Leo said in earnest, his mouth twitching at the end. The double entendre was clearly not lost on him.
Piper let out a long-held breath and slowly let a playful smile take over her face. “So, you’d prefer if I let people turn me on, then?”
“People? No.” Leo stepped closer to her and dropped his mouth to her ear. “Just me. What are you doing right now?”
A shiver ran down Piper’s spine, and a warm, coiling feeling in her stomach replaced the knots of anxiety and panic she had been feeling before. Leo’s breath whispered across her ear, and her body screamed for more pressure—to dominate him and show him exactly how sure of herself she could be.
And suddenly, her plans were set.
Forty-Five
LEO
The front door to Leo’s apartment had barely shut before he had Piper pressed against it, kissing down her neck. They’d hustled to get to her car, and Leo hadn’t touched his coffee since he knew from the look in her eyes that she wanted this just as badly as he did. The sound of her soft whimper as he sucked at her pulse point made him that much more desperate to rid her of her clothes and feel her silk skin sliding against him again.
