Page 61 of When You Became Mine

I nodded. “That’s how Hampton feels too, I bet. And, don’t you want him to be happy that you feel that way?”

His lips pursed together as understanding dawned on him. “You’re too clever for your own good. You know that, don’t you?”

I whispered my lips across his, and then tipping my head back, looked directly into his soft eyes. “I’m right is what I am. Let’s go have dessert so we can finish this at home.”

Lawson let the word die from my lips and then he crashed his mouth to mine in an all too brief kiss. “I don’t need pound cake when I have you.”

A laugh erupted from my throat. “Smooth, Lawson Reed.” I pressed my chest to his. “So very smooth.”

26

Lawson

“Nice throw pillows.” Pieters smirked as I led him into the living room.

I grimaced. “My…” What exactly was Piper to me now? She wasn’t just my roommate anymore. Our make-out session last night when we’d snuck out of my parents’ house early had proven that. Was she my girlfriend? It was probably too soon for that. Friend? We were way past friends now. Childhood tormentor? She’d always be that. Fuck, I didn’t know. What I did know was that I needed to figure it out, and soon. “Piper picked those out.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Your Piper, huh?”

“Don’t even start.”

He strode over to the living room and picked up one of the picture frames. Throwing his head back, he roared in laughter. “Jesus, Reed, is this you?” He continued to laugh, doubled over at the waist, his whole body quaking.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, snatching the frame from his hands. The picture behind the glass was no longer the stock photograph that comes with all frames.

My eyes widened. Apparently, at some point, Piper had replaced it with a picture of the two of us.

I glanced around at the other frames in the living room. She’d put pictures in all of them. Of the two of us. I wasn’t even sure where she’d gotten them from, and I was shocked that there were so many of just me and her. And it would have been sweet, except that the pictures were all terrible.

The one in my hand was from the Halloween that I was obsessed with the rapper Eminem. I was thirteen, had spent the entire summer memorizing every last one of his inappropriate songs, and that fall had declared I was going trick or treating as the one and only Slim Shady. The only thing I’d gotten right was the whole ‘slim’ part. I’d been pathetically scrawny and had looked ridiculous in my blue doo rag and fake gold chains.

Piper, on the other hand, had been the perfect Baby Spice. The two of us standing together, her arm thrown around my waist and grinning with her gap-toothed smile had looked ridiculous together, but apparently someone, probably my mother, had thought it was a look that needed to be captured.

He was still chuckling when I put the picture back where it was.

“Shut up, asshole. Like you didn’t look ridiculous as a child,” I grumbled, snagging another frame from the coffee table and bringing it to my face for inspection.

He came to stand behind me, looking over my shoulder. This picture was from my college party, the night I’d half-heartedly tried to tell Piper how I felt.

We were both smiling, but it didn’t reach our eyes. The sadness from that time in our lives radiated from the frame so strongly that I quickly put it down.

“Hey, who’s the babe?” my partner asked.

Jealousy, like I’d never experienced before, bubbled up and I whirled, pinning him with a glare. “None of your business,” I growled.

He threw his hands up in surrender, but the corner of his mouth tipped up. “Ah, so that’s Piper.”

“Like I said. None of your business.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Let’s just get this over with before she gets home.”

Pieters grinned, shoving a toothpick between his teeth. “What’s the matter, Reed? Worried I’m gonna steal your girl?”

I scowled at him. He was taller than I was by a head, and roughly the same size as Hampton. In his late thirties, he appealed to women of all ages, with his rugged good looks and that slow smile he used any chance he could. Yeah, Piper would probably take a moment to appreciate the man standing in front of me. But Mark Pieters was a womanizer. And there wasn’t a chance in hell that a man like him would appeal to her.

At least, I wasn’t about to give him the chance to find out. “You’re not her type,” I said dryly. “She doesn’t go for meatheads like you.”

He laughed again, sliding that toothpick from one side to the other. “Whatever you gotta tell yourself.”

He clapped his hands together. “All right, let’s get this shit over with.”

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