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“Fine. If this is moving too fast for you, then I’ll take my stuff back to my place until you’re ready. However, let me just say that you have had no issues with me living at your place for over a month. So why this is a problem now is beyond me.”
“Because you tricked me!” she yells in my face.
“I did no such thing.”
“Stop fucking gaslighting me, Trent. That’s exactly what you did, and you know it.”
We stare at each other, very aware of the fact that this horrible moment is threatening to fuck up and replace the beautiful memory of the first night we had together in an elevator. Unwilling to let it happen, I try to put myself in her shoes since one of us needs to have a cool head about this.
I think long and hard about what she’s saying.
About how she feels that I’ve tricked her somehow.
It doesn’t matter if I did or didn’t do something with intent since her feelings are valid either way.
But maybe she’s right.
Maybe I did do all those things she’s accusing me of.
Maybe I did try to push the envelope with her and see how far I could go.
And now I’m fucking paying for it since Piper is fucking furious with me.
“Maybe… subconsciously, I did move into your apartment without even realizing it,” I finally admit to her and myself. “It wasn’t something that I strategically planned for if that’s what’s pissing you off. I just wanted to be with you, Piper. I just wanted to get close to you and make you feel like you could get close to me, too, in a familiar safe environment. Don’t you understand that?”
“What I understand is that you’ve been playing me from the start. I don’t know what you’re after, but it ends now.”
“What I’mafter?” I mimic, exasperated. “All I’m after isyou. All I want is you. I fucking love you, Piper. How can you not see that?”
Instead of responding, she just stares at me in complete horror, like I’ve dug a knife right into her chest where her heart lies.
“Piper—”
“No,” she says, raising her hands in fake surrender. “Don’t say anything else. I don’t want to hear it.”
“You don’t want to hear that I love you? That I have loved you from afar for over two years now? That all my thoughts start and end with you?”
She shuts her eyes as if each word digs the knife in deeper, causing her excruciating pain.
“Piper, answer me.” I grab her hands, gently squeezing them. “Tell me I’m not alone in this.”
It’s only when the elevator swings open that she raises her eyelids and snatches her hands away from my grip.
“I’m sorry. All I wanted was to have a little fun. I didn’t sign up for this,” she says dryly, leaving me inside the elevator, jaw agape, watching her walk away from me.
It takes me a minute to snap out of it, but sure enough, I leap out of the elevator and follow her into the open-space office, filled to the brim with her partying associates and coworkers. Once she’s within arm’s reach, I grab her wrist and spin her around to face me.
“No. You don’t get to quit us without me fighting for you first. You’re mine, Piper, whether you want to acknowledge it or not. This… you… me… it’s fucking real. And I know that scares you, but I’m not going anywhere. Not until you tell me to.”
“You keep saying shit like that as if it meant something, but it doesn’t,” she says vehemently. “I don’t belong to you. I don’t belong to anyone!” she all but yells, pulling her wrist out of my grip just as one of her colleagues comes to greet her.
“Boss, you made it!” a ginger-haired kid—who looks like he should be tucked in bed at this hour—slurs in greeting.
“Hi, Toby,” she says before looking up, realizing he’s stepped under the mistletoe.
“Piper, don’t you fucking do it,” I warn just as she looks at me over her shoulder.
“Merry Christmas, Toby.” She smiles, pulling on his shirt and kissing his lips.
