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“I have an idea.” Leo leaned forward and thumbed her bottom lip, pulling it free from her teeth. “What if we skip the mediocre part of your coping strategy?” Warmth licked up her spine, and she shifted in her seat in a poor attempt to tamp down any inappropriate desire. She was surprised at how easily he could flip the script. Her emotions felt like a loose cannon around him, going from crying to laughing and then lusting in a matter of minutes.
“I’m not sure that sex is a good coping strategy at all,” Piper said. All the times they had already slept together didn’t change the fact that she didn’t want Leo to regret a decision he made in the thick of grief.
“I know it’s not a good idea on paper, and maybe this proves that I am selfish, but I want a break from how awful I feel right now. You make me feel good.” Leo sighed and shook his head. “But I shouldn’t drag you into my misery. Sorry.”
“I know exactly what you mean.” Piper sucked in a contemplative breath and tapped her fingers against her thighs. “Well, maybe it’s not so bad to take a little break.”
Leo, whose head had previously hung low, staring at his feet, snapped his gaze up to look at her with hopeful and watery eyes. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she decided.
Leo leaned forward tentatively and met her lips with a slow press of his own. It wasn’t like their usual carnal passion. Both their faces were still wet with tears, and instead of begging for sex, it felt like he was begging for something else entirely. Take the pain away, he pleaded in the soft brush of his thumb against her arm. Piper’s fingers stroked the nape of his neck and responded in kind with desperation. His lips were dredging up her own grief that she kept stowed away in the back corner of her brain. Nothing was enough to quell the pain, even when she moved to straddle him, her legs dangling off the back of the first violinist’s chair. Leo groaned when she rolled into his groin, and she felt the destruction of their decision waiting for them like a phantom symphony in the orchestra pit was playing the Jaws theme.
“Please,” Leo whispered against her lips. Her favorite word to ever leave his mouth sounded different this time. They both knew the plan wasn’t working. Instead of masking the pain, this was heightening it, soaking into her bones as she sought out her pleasure. Neither of them seemed willing to stop, though. She could feel it in the way he moved, hopelessly asking for her to give him something to be happy about. And she tried, she really did, but the connection was too… too everything. Her nerves were pricked with emotion like she was sixteen again and looking for any way to dull the pain that losing her parents had caused. It didn’t matter that pleasure was a part of it this time, unlike when she’d tried to drown it out in high school. Sorrow was right under her skin. Right below the surface of Leo’s mouth and fingers, searching for release.
And so, Piper continued despite knowing it would be raw and vulnerable for them both. It would rip her limb from limb, split her down the middle until she was flayed open to the core. The very thing she didn’t want to happen with Leo.
Piper unclasped his belt with shaky hands and adjusted on his lap so he could pull his cock free from his underwear and pants. Between slow and deliberate kisses, his warm fingers pulled her underwear to the side under her flannel dress, and he helped lift her long enough for Piper to sink onto him with an agonizingly slow drop of her hips. When he was fully seated inside, they both let out a simultaneous gasp and nothing more before they were moving, chasing a high that was sure to only be a low when they reached it.
“Fuck,” Leo panted, squeezing his eyes shut hard. “This feels—”
“Do you want to stop?” Piper moved through choppy breaths as she tried to hold back the grief lodged in her throat and chest. Each shift of her hips made the pleasure rise in her stomach, and it was only a matter of time until the grief and pleasure collided inside her in what was sure to be a disastrous upheaval of emotion.
“No, keep going,” he breathed, chest heaving as his eyebrows pulled together in concentration. His eyes were pools of darkness until the tears finally dropped past his waterline to roll down his face in clear tracks of misery. “Make it stop, Piper, please.”
“I can’t,” she choked out and canted her hips to try to get a better angle. When he hit the spot that usually made her cry out in pleasure, a broken sob escaped her lips instead. Leo clutched onto her harder, scooting out to the edge of his chair so her legs could wrap around him. Urgent thrusts had her underwear hitting her clit as they jerked forward, and the warmth coiling in her stomach started to rise quicker than she wanted it to. One look at Leo’s desperate face, and she knew he was terrified to tip over the ledge, too. They were both hanging on for dear life.
Leo heaved air into his lungs and kissed her in a blind panic. Piper kissed him back hard, feeling his wet lips tremble against hers as her nostrils burned with the bite of incoming sorrow. She dipped her tongue into his mouth as if that could solve what was about to pour out of them, but all she could taste was the salt of Leo’s tears. Everything they did was futile. Her sanity hung in the teetering balance between them, an object just barely out of grasp. No matter how far she wanted to toss her grief aside, it was rising like a destructive tidal wave. Leo was her anchor, but instead of grounding her, he was tied around her waist and pulling her to the bottom of the ocean.
“Damn.” Leo’s curse as he bucked against her felt prophetic. The dam was about to break. They both knew it, and yet they chased release anyway. Their bodies demanded it. Sought it out. Begged to break. “I’m gonna come.”
“Me too.” Piper groaned, closing her eyes as the first set of tears began to fall onto her cheeks. “I can’t stop.”
“Oh, God,” Leo croaked. There was no stopping it now. A wave of misery descended on them, ready to eat them alive. His muscles tightened and jerked forward underneath her, his hands pressing into her back like she could save him from the onslaught of grief when she couldn’t even save herself. The culmination of everything she had held back during the last five years poured out with the quivering of her legs and an aggressive tingle up her spine. She wasn’t soaring into an orgasm, but dropping into a bottomless pit.
When it was over, the hysterics started. They were still connected, falling into each other, broken and choked with grief. Leo’s face was sopping wet, and Piper tried to help by wiping at it. It was a fruitless attempt for both of them. He was doing the same to her, running his thumb under her eyes to no avail. There was no point in cleaning up a mess when they were still in the middle of a shared mental breakdown.
“They’re gone,” Piper finally whimpered as her eyes fell shut.
“Why did she have to leave?” Leo’s thick lashes, damp and clumped together, fluttered to let more tears drop down his face. “She was so healthy when I saw her last. You were there. You saw how she was.” Piper bobbed her head in agreement, making her tears fall faster. “She was only sixty-seven. That’s too young. Your parents?”
“Thirty-eight,” Piper sniffed. “It’s not fucking fair.” Death didn’t care how lively or wonderful someone was. It just took.
“It’s not fucking fair,” Leo repeated in barely a whisper, leaning in and holding onto her tighter. “Don’t ever leave early, okay?”
“You either.” She buried her face in his neck.
“Piper.” His hand cupped the back of her head as his body shook with another sob. “I'm sorry I ever judged you for how you dealt with it.”
“You were right.” Her voice trembled. “I hide. I don’t let people see until the grief overflows like—”
“This,” Leo finished for her, sniffling. “I get it, though. This…”
“Sucks,” Piper whispered.
“Yeah.” A few deep breaths seemed to calm him a bit as his hands brushed up and down her spine with a gentle touch. “Will you go to her funeral with me?”
The last time Piper had gone to a funeral, she had stood next to her siblings, uncle, and grandfather as they stared at a framed photo of her parents. They were smiling and happy in the picture, and she remembered believing that she would never feel that way again. She could still hear Carter’s sob beside her. She could feel her sister’s fingers entwined in hers as Pearl cried into her shoulder. Cooper’s tears were quiet, while Colin and Walker wore matching stone-faced expressions. Her grandfather had reeked of alcohol and swayed on his feet. And maybe she had internalized that at the time, thinking that alcohol would somehow mask the pain. It hadn’t. Sex hadn’t, either. This time, however, even though the sex didn’t heal her, she felt almost relieved to let the pain out. It was excruciating, but she didn’t feel like she had to put on a smile for the first time in a very long time. Leo had given her that, so the least she could do was attend another funeral.
