“Needed to do it now while you still had your nerve?” I grinned.
She grinned back. “While I’m still in a good mood.” Sobering, she said, “I had no idea I’d let her down. Once she arrived on campus, she had her own schedule, her own friends. Until this minute, I didn’t know she still needed me.”
“Don’t beat yourself up, babe. She’s a big girl. She could have said something rather than cheat with your ex and set her sights on me.”
“Good point.”
“Remember it when you meet with her.” I stood and walked my empty plate and the empty platter of pancakes over to the dishwasher.
Piper joined me at the sink, and in minutes we’d cleaned up the kitchen. As we walked through the living room to the stairs, we passed Callahan sitting on the couch with his books open on the coffee table. At the sound of Piper’s voice his shoulders tensed.
“You got something you want to say, ’Han?” I asked. Might as well clear all the air while we were at it.
“Did you figure out your shit, Piper? ’Cause my boy Bax didn’t deserve what you put him through this last week.” The steel in ’Han’s tone was misguided.
I was about to set him straight when Piper said, “You know what I’ve learned about football players? You’re always there for each other. You always have each other’s backs. It’s one of your more attractive traits.”
His brows shot up, but he didn’t relax until she continued.
“I did hurt Wyatt. I let my past and my own insecurities tell me lies about him.” She slipped her arm through mine. “I’m so lucky that he has my back and his heart’s bigger than he is, which is saying something.” She grinned up at me. “You don’t have to worry I’m going to hurt him in the future, Callahan. For the rest of my life, I’m going to do my best to see that nothing hurts him.”
My friend slumped back against the couch. “I can live with that.”
A few minutes later, we headed out to a coffee shop in one of the shopping malls, somewhere we could be relatively sure wouldn’t be crowded at this hour on a Sunday morning. Phillipa was already there when we arrived.
Piper
When we walked into the coffee shop, I sucked in a breath, straightened my jacket, and walked over to the table in the corner where my sister was waiting. Per the plan we’d worked out, Wyatt headed over to the barista to order our drinks. Once he dropped off my order, he’d sit a couple of tables away.
“Hello, Phillipa.”
“Hi, Pipes.” She opened with her old nickname for me. Guess she needed to soften me up.
We sat in awkward silence. I may have called the meeting, but it was her show. For several minutes she picked at a napkin, shredding it into bits of lint. At last she figured out I wasn’t going to take the burden, make it easy for her. The pain in her eyes when she finally glanced up at me seared through me, but still, I said nothing.
“I screwed up, Piper. I screwed up so much. I’m sorry.”
“You have to say it, Pippa. You have to say how you screwed up—say what you’re sorry for.”
A tiny sob escaped her before she rearranged herself on her chair and dropped her hands to her lap. “I didn’t even truly like Charlie, especially after I started flirting with him, and he raised the stakes the way he did. But you were never around, and I was lonely and bored, and I let it happen. It never occurred to me you’d walk out of my life.”
“I caught you in bed with my boyfriend in my apartment, and you thought I’d stick around?” My voice rose on that last word, and I cleared my throat to calm down.
“When you put it like that, no. Of course you’d walk away.” She went back to shredding her napkin.
“You stayed with him.”
“I didn’t know what else to do. All I wanted was your attention, but instead, I betrayed you, alienated you.” With one napkin in bits on the table in front of her, she pulled another from the dispenser and went to work on it. “I lied to Dad and Mom because I thought they’d be so disappointed in me, but they like Charlie, so I got away with it.” Her hands stopped for a brief moment before she went back to shredding. “It didn’t feel good.”
She glanced up to gauge my response. Though it killed me to see her hurting this way, I remained stoic.
“Charlie said you were a handful, not what he needed for his political ambitions. I was easier. But when he started making all my decisions for me, I saw why the two of you fought sometimes. We had a big blowup when I changed my major back to education, and I walked out.” She blew out a breath. “I wanted to tell you, to talk to you, to have someone in my corner who thought I should pursue my own goals. But you wouldn’t let me in.” A single tear tracked down her cheek. “I deserved that, but I couldn’t accept it, so I threw a fit with our parents and figured out over that long weekend that you’d moved on. You were seeing someone—someone who truly matters to you.”
“And you wanted to ruin that too.” The words were bitter on my tongue.
“I wantedyou. I wanted my sister back. I wanted Piper and Pippa against the world.” The tears tracked down her face in earnest. “Of course, I should have known not to try the same tactic again when I ambushed Bax at that party.” She swiped at her face with a napkin. “I’m sorry, Piper. I’ll be twenty-one at the end of the month. I’m long overdue to grow up, to stand on my own without you there taking care of everything for me. But I’m afraid.”
“Everything okay here?” Wyatt asked as he set my latte in front of me.
