I look back at the door. Noah follows my gaze. The older-brother thing drops away, replaced by a small smile.
“Griffin, Madison and Rowan are in there. That poor fucker was safer with us.”
I stand on the path for one more minute before I turn.
Behind us, the house holds everything I want to stay for.
I trust her completely, but I still hate every second of it.
Forty-Eight
Piper
It takes ten minutes to convince my family to leave us alone.
Rowan, who has the subtlety of a foghorn, announces she’ll be in the next room in a tone that clearly means she will be listening through the wall. Madison squeezes my hand at the door like she’s leaving a person in a burning building because they were asked to. Dad looks at Ezra for a long moment before he looks at me. I see every conversation we’ve had and haven’t had in his face. I give him a small nod that saysI’m okayandI need to do thisandplease go. He does because he has always known when to hold on and when to let go.
Mom is last. She looks at me the way she sometimes does, that look that reaches deeper than most. I used to think it was about checking if I was okay. Now I see it’s about showing mesheis. That she’s here. That she’s not going anywhere. She touches my face once, then she leaves.
The kitchen is simply the kitchen. It’s always been just that—the one I grew up in—with the same table and the same window overlooking the backyard. It should be neutral ground, but it isn’t.
Ezra sits at the table with his hand against his jaw. There’s a nasty cut at the corner of his mouth, and his cheekbone is turning a violent red. I grab a clean cloth and run it under cold water because the alternative is just standing here, and I can’t do that.
He looks up at me as I bring the cloth to his face. There’s calculation in his expression, the rapid assessment of what version of Ezra this moment calls for.
He goes for wounded.
“Piper,” he says.
“Hold still.”
“You let him do this.”
“Hold still, Ezra.”
“You ran away from our wedding, and you came home with him, and you just stood there and let him—”
“I didn’t let him do anything,” I say. “What he did was his choice.”
I press the cloth against his cheekbone. He watches my face as I do it. He’s always watching my face. I realize that now in a way I hadn’t before. The attention I once thought was intimacy was just monitoring. It was an evaluation of where I was and what needed fixing.
“Come home,” he pleads.
I step back. “No.”
“Piper.” He says my name with a patience that isn’t really patience. It’s a controlled quality that indicates he’s being reasonable, and I’m the one making him work for it. “You don’t have to do this. Whatever this was, running off with him, this little whatever you needed to prove, you’ve done it. It’s over. Come home.”
“I’m not coming home,” I repeat. “Not to your apartment. Not now and not after this.”
He stands up. He’s taller than me, and he uses that height without seeming to. It’s just how he positions himself, the way he fills a space. I used to find it reassuring. Now I see it differently.
Griffin is an inch taller, definitely broader, and he has never made me feel like he’s going to use it against me. I’ve never felt small around him.
Ezra rolls his eyes. “You’re not thinking clearly.”
“I’m thinking very clearly.”
“You ran away from your own wedding. You’ve been gone for two weeks with a man you’ve known your whole life in circumstances I don’t want to think about. And now you’re going to stand here and tell me you’re thinking clearly?”
