Page 36 of Reckless

She drops her backpack and launches herself at me.

There’s absolutely no dignity involved.

One second, she’s on the other side of the barrier, and the next, she’s hit me with enough force to make me stumble backward. She is laughing into my shoulder while I hug her right back like I’m making up for every birthday, holiday, and random Tuesday we’ve spent in different states.

God, I have missed this.

She smells like citrus shampoo and Piper. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed something as stupidly ordinary as that until this exact second.

I laugh, the sound rougher than I expect after standing in my own head for most of the morning. “Hey, Pipes.”

Piper’s smile somehow gets even bigger. “Hi, Sage.”

She never hesitates.

Never asks me to repeat myself.

She never has.

I pull back first, because she needs to see my face to catch what I’m saying, and I sign at the same time I speak because that’s how we do it. With the two systems running together, neither of them are sufficient without the other.

‘You’re here.’

She gives me a look—obviously. Then she leans back just enough to get a proper look at me. I know that look. She’s checking for all the things I never tell her—whether I’m sleeping and eating, or whether work is chewing me up again.

She doesn’t miss much.

She never has.

“What?” I speak loudly this time.

She smiles but signs back. ‘You’ve been worrying.’

‘I’ve been working.’

“Sage,” she says in a monotone.

‘What? It’s basically the same thing.’

‘It really isn’t,’ she signs back to me with added emphasis.

Piper lifts her hands and signs, clearly, with the directness she brings to everything. ‘You’ve been spiraling. I can tell from the texts.’

I sign back without missing a beat. ‘I’m fine.’

She looks at me for another second. Long enough to tell me she’s seen whatever I was hoping she’d miss. Long enough to let me know we’ll be having this conversation later.

She doesn’t call me on it.

Not here.

Not while we’re standing in the middle of baggage claim with people dragging suitcases around us and families crying over reunions.

Piper is patient.

She always has been.

Which, unfortunately for me, usually means she’s just waiting until I can’t escape. Instead, she grabs her backpack off the floor and her suitcase off the carousel, then knocks her shoulder into mine and grins. ‘So,’ she signs, adding her voice for the sheer delight of it. ‘Show me this city you’ve been hoarding all to yourself.’