She smiles.
I expect her to ask about Whitney, or my hand, which aches. Instead, she says, “Henry, I shouldn’t have left you at Hudson’s. That was awful of me. But when you went inside, I read this text on your phone, and then Damon… I just had to get out of there.”
How is she so poised and steady-voiced after what she went through at Hudson’s?
She says, “If you’re mad, I understand. I betrayed your privacy by looking at your phone, and then I ditched you. If you don’t want to see me anymore, I get it. I would hate that, though, and I was coming to tell you as much.”
She lets me weave my fingers through hers.
“I was coming to tell you the same thing. Well, not the same thing, exactly. I was coming to tell you that last night sucked and I want to make it right. That text you saw…it was from Whitney?”
“Yes. I was confused. Iamconfused. I thought—”
“It was a miscommunication. A mistake on my part. I set it straight. I’m staying in Florida, Piper. As long as my dad’s sober, I’m staying. Whitney’s part of my past. That’s all.”
She looks at our joined hands. Gently, she runs a fingertip over my bruised knuckles.
“Do you believe me?” I ask.
She lifts her gaze, nodding. No more tears.
“Is there something else?”
She nods again.
I trail a hand up her arm, then down again. It comes to rest against her wrist, her pulse beating under my palm. “Piper, what?”
“When you saw me with Damon,” she says, whisper-soft, “you knew I didn’t want anything to do with him, right?”
“Yeah. Shit—of course I knew.”
“Your face, though. When you came around the corner. Itseemed like you weren’t sure.”
My cheeks catch fire. How—how—could I have put that idea in her head?
I wrestle for a comprehensible explanation. “I’d just talked to Gabi. She’d told me what Damon did to you. Seeing you with him, knowing the backstory, knowing what he put you through…I’ve never felt so out of control. This instinct kicked in, and Jesus, I wanted to choke the life out of him. It lasted a heartbeat before I remembered that you were a thousand times more important than retribution. Then all I wanted was to be sure you were okay.”
“Iamokay.”
“I know. You’re tougher than I’ll ever be.”
She raises her eyebrows. “I’m not the one who drilled my fist into someone’s face.”
I shrug. “You should’ve seen me at the hospital last night. I was half a second from weeping on your sister’s shoulder.”
She sits quietly, swirling her toes through the pool’s illuminated water before she voices a question. “Henry, do you think we’re defined by our mistakes?”
I ponder that for a minute. “Shaped, maybe, but not defined. At least, I’m trying not to let hard stuff from my past shit all over the good stuff in my present.”
She smiles up at me. “I like that.”
“Yeah, I can be pretty philosophical.”
She laughs. There’s forgiveness in her eyes, and her palm is warm against mine. She leans into my arm, her weight and herpresence a grounding wire. As much as I’ve come to care about her this summer, I’ve fallen flat-on-my-back in love with her in the last five minutes.
I lift a hand to touch her cheek, and she presses back against my palm. I swear to god my heart blasts skyward.
“Can we kiss now?” she whispers. “Or do you have more deep things to say?”
