Page 35 of Reckless

Some things don’t need to be said out loud.

She’s happy I bought her flowers, and I’m happy I made her happy.

Fuck!

Chapter Eight

SAGE

Four Weeks Later

Harry Reid International is doing what airports do best. People are pacing, kids are already bored. Someone is holding a balloon that’s making a determined effort to escape into the ceiling. And every time the arrivals doors slide open, half the people waiting instinctively lean forward before remembering they can’t make the passengers walk any faster.

I’ve been here twenty minutes already.

Too early.

Not early enough.

If you’d asked me this morning, I would have sworn I wasn’t the sort of person who showed up to the airport before they had to.

Turns out I was lying to myself.

Piper is coming home.

Of course, I was going to be here.

My hands stay in my pockets as another wave of people spills through the doors—none of them are her.

More people spill into the baggage claim area—business travelers, families, a couple arguing quietly over which carousel their luggage is on. I scan faces without really thinking, my pulse climbing another notch anyway.

Then I see her.

For one ridiculous second, my brain refuses to catch up.

It’s just… Piper.

Backpack hanging off one shoulder. Sunglasses shoved into her hair because she never remembers to put them away properly. She’s talking to someone beside her as she walks, hands animated while she talks like they always are, completely unaware that my entire world has just narrowed to one person crossing an airport floor.

Something catches in my chest so hard it almost hurts.

God, I have missed her.

She looks exactly the same.

She looks older.

Both things somehow manage to be true at once.

Like life kept happening while I was busy missing it.

Her gaze sweeps across the waiting crowd, still talking, still smiling, then she sees me.

And everything else disappears.

Her smile breaks so wide it steals the breath right out of me. “Sage!” her muted tone calls out. Her face does the thing it’s done since she was five years old. The smile that starts at the edges, builds through the middle, and then takes over.

I step forward.