Without them, the room is bright, and I’m just standing here, looking at a door. My face is wet, and I don’t know when that started.
His hands come to my face, turning me around slowly until I’m facing him. He’s right there, towering over me in that way I’ve come to love.
“You were not a mistake,” he says. “What I said—the way I said it—was wrong. That’s not what I meant, and I need you to hear me.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“I mean that you ran out of your wedding, and every day since, you’ve been figuring out who you are without someone else’s hand on the dial. And I—” His jaw shifts. “I was supposed to be something solid in that. Something safe.”
“You were. You are.”
“I don’t want to be someone who took advantage of that. Of you being—”
“Vulnerable?”
“Yes.”
I step back from his hands. “I’m not vulnerable, Griffin.”
“Piper—”
“Don’t.” The tears are still on my face, but I don’t have the energy to care. “I made a choice last night.”
“I know.”
“No.” My voice is steadier than I expected. “You don’t. You’re calling it a mistake. You’re calling me vulnerable. You’re doing the same thing everyone has always done. Deciding for me. Deciding what I meant. What I was capable of. What I should and shouldn’t have.”
He’s very still.
“I know what I did last night,” I cry. “I know who I was with and what I wanted. That wasn’t confusion.” I breathe through it. “For the first time in years, I was completely myself, and I made a choice from that place, and it felt good. It wasgood,Griffin.”
“I know that.”
“Then don’t call it a mistake,” I beg. “Don’t take that from me.”
He opens his mouth.
“I’m a grown woman. I’ve spent years with someone who decided what I thought and what I felt and what I meant before I could finish the sentence. Don’t do that. If you didn’t mean it—” I scrub my face with the back of my hand. “If you regret it, if you want to pretend it didn’t happen, just say that. Justsayit. Don’t wrap it up in something that sounds like protection and hand it to me like I should be grateful.”
He takes a step toward me.
“Say what you mean.” My voice breaks, but I keep going. “Fucking say it, Griffin. Not what sounds right. What’s true.”
The room is completely still.
He looks at me for a long time, and then something in him gives way.
He crosses the distance in two steps. His hands are back on my face, and his mouth is on mine. It’s nothing like last night.Last night was a door opening. This is something else. This is a man saying what he means without a word. I grab the front of his shirt because the alternative is falling, and I’m not falling, not this time, not here.
He pulls back just far enough to breathe and rests his forehead against mine.
“The opposite,” he says, his voice rough. “The opposite of regret. That’s what’s true.”
“Say it properly.”
The corner of his mouth moves, broken but warm.
“Give me a minute,” he says. “I’m not built for sentences right now.”
