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“Selfish?” Piper rolled her lips over her teeth. “Yeah, it probably is. I do my best to make sure I’m not a burden to other people, though. I try not to use people.”
“I don’t feel used,” Leo said, his voice cracking. All he felt around her was desperation to know more, the exact opposite of what she wanted to give.
“You don’t?” she asked, locking eyes with him.
He shook his head and leaned forward. “And I was going to say that that sounds really lonely, princesa.”
“Sometimes it is.” Her blue eyes met his, and he could see right through them to the depth of pain behind them, to where the sad person lived just behind the happy front.
“Use me, Piper,” Leo whispered. “You don’t have to feel alone when you’re with me.”
“We can do this without love being in the equation?” Piper asked.
The way her gaze pleaded with him and softened when he reached out to hold her hand was damning. She wanted hope when all he could give her was false confidence. Leo’s thoughts warred with one another, one telling him he needed whatever piece of her he could have because unlike her, he was selfish, and the other saying it would be wrong to agree to something he had already broken. They had agreed to be honest with one another. Being in love with Piper made him the bad guy. It made him that person she so adamantly proclaimed he was at the beginning of the year. The one who took what he wanted and didn’t care who he hurt in the process. The one who would, no doubt, end up hurting himself.
Leo gave a microscopic nod of his head and finally became someone she should hate. “Yes.”
Piper could now add liar to her list of reasons he would never be good enough for her.
Part Three
Try with me
Forty-Six
PIPER
Piper slipped in through the front door of the bungalow, hoping she could somehow get to her room unscathed and without an altercation. She majorly owed Thea an explanation, so she shouldn’t have been surprised when she turned on the lights to walk through the darkened living room only to find Thea sitting in their leather accent chair, facing the doorway with a stern expression and her arms folded over her chest.
Piper jumped and clutched at her heart. “You scared the shit out of me! Why were you sitting in the dark?”
“I was going for ‘disappointed parent waiting for their kid to get home from illicit activities,’” Thea said dryly. “How’d I do?”
“I’m having flashbacks to that one time senior year when Walker and Talia were sitting on my bed and waiting when I climbed in through my window.” Piper moved to set her keys and purse on the decorative wall hooks she had measured a thousand times to get level and perfectly spaced when they had moved in.
“Wasn’t your window on the second story?” Thea asked.
“Yep. I think they should have given me an award for managing to climb in and out in the first place.” Piper gave a cursory glance at Thea’s posture to see how pissed she was before sitting down on the large maroon sofa kitty-corner to her.
“Hm, can’t say I’d give you an award, either.” Ah, so, she’s very mad, Piper thought. “Where were you just now?”
Piper swallowed and looked down at her hands as she answered truthfully, “I spent most of the day with Leo.”
“Are you two together now?” Thea’s eyes were wide as she leaned forward on her forearms.
“No.” Piper shook her head. “We agreed that this is just for fun and we’re using each other. And I know that sounds bad, but he agreed to it, and—”
“Piper,” Thea cut her off with her hand up in a stop position. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this? Is it me? Did I do something to make you not trust me?”
“You have never made me feel that way. It’s the opposite, actually. I know I could tell you anything, and you’d still be here.” Piper bit her lip and looked away. She had mistakenly thought that telling Leo why she was so closed off would make it easier to tell Thea, but, for whatever reason, this was harder. When Piper was with Leo, it was almost as if she told him things involuntarily, too sucked in by the warmth of his skin and his clean laundry scent to notice when they were so far deep into the conversation that she was spilling all her secrets. With Thea, she only shared things on purpose. Piper knew she owed her friend something, or she would be exactly what she always feared she was: selfish.
“Then why?” Thea’s voice choked, and Piper could see the hurt on her face.
“It has nothing to do with you,” Piper pleaded. “I promise. I just—I have a hard time letting people in, and you specifically because I know you’ll understand. You’ll love me no matter what I do.”
Thea’s eyebrows cinched together. “And that’s a bad thing?”
“For me? Yes. I have this…” Piper searched for the right words, the ones that had come so easily when she had been in Leo’s arms earlier. She remembered the look in his eyes when he asked if she was scared—soft and earnest. “I have a fear of losing people. It feels much worse than a fear at this point, like a reality. Like the more I let people in, the more I realize how painful it would be if they were to leave or die.”
