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Piper patted Angel, who was curled up on the pillow, then she grabbed the comforter, wrapped it around herself, and padded across the room. She crawled onto the window seat with him and tucked herself against his side.
He immediately put his arm around her, pulled her against him, and kissed the top of her head, making her smile.
"What was good about being there?" she asked.
He took a breath. "You're very persistent."
"I am. One thing. One good thing about being there."
He was quiet for a moment, but his arm was still tight around her shoulder. "The people. I forgot how many friends I have there.I walked away from that life and left everyone behind. It felt good to see them."
She spread her palm on his stomach. "I was very alone when I first moved here," she said. "Loneliness can be devastating."
"I'm not lonely." But his arm tightened as he said it. "At least not right now, while I have a gorgeous, naked woman tucked up against me."
She laughed softly. "Name one bad thing about being there."
"I could feel the energy of the building pressing down on me. It felt like I was suffocating."
Piper was startled by the rawness of his answer. It was so honest, and she was touched that he trusted her with it. "Did it go away after a while?"
"No, but it felt familiar. I think it was always like that, but I didn't notice. I notice now." He shrugged. "I'm sure I'll get used to it again."
"But do you want to?" She knew she was pressing at him, but she wanted to know. She felt like there was so much boiling inside him, and he had no way to relieve the pressure.
Silence for a long moment, then, "It's who I am, Piper. It's in my soul."
That wasn't a yes, and she knew it. "It's a part of your soul, yes, but maybe its time has passed. Maybe it's time to listen to another part of your soul."
"And build houses?" He laughed softly. "Bartend? Nothing else moves me like being a cop. It makes my heart beat."
Sudden sadness filled Piper. Sadness that he was going to go back into a dangerous job, but also sadness because she knew he didn't want to go, and he knew it, too. But it was the only path he knew. She wrapped her arms around his torso and rested her cheek on his chest. She didn't know what to say, because there were no answers.
He leaned his chin on her head. "Why do you want to be a wedding planner so badly?" he asked. "Why is it your soul?"
She smiled at the memories his question evoked. "One of my mom's jobs was waitressing for a high-end caterer. She was always working these fancy weddings and parties. I would go with her and sit in the corner. We would pretend the party was for us, and that we were the guests of honor. It was the best part of my life, when we got to go be with fancy people and pretend we mattered."
His arm tightened around her. "You do matter."
She watched the colors of the sky change as the sun woke up, evolving from a dusky orange to a vibrant pink. "My dad used to beat my mom up. And me. And my brothers."
"Fuck, Piper?—"
She cut him off. "It's okay. He's in prison now. When I got old enough to understand, I asked my mom why she stayed with him. She believed she didn't have a choice. She got pregnant and married at seventeen. She didn't have a high school diploma, and he controlled the money. She believed she was trapped, and that it was all she was good enough for." She touched her necklace. "She hid her tips for years to buy this for me for my sixteenth birthday. She gave it to me, and made me promise that I would get out of that life. That I would escape the way she hadn't been able to. I told her I would start my own wedding planning business, and she would come work for me, and we'd be powerful, rich women who no one would ever control. We'd make weddings that were real fairytales, not the shotgun trap that she'd had."
As she spoke, her throat got tight, and the words started to slow.
Declan wiped a tear off her cheek. "You're trying to earn the money to bring her to Boston?"
"No. She died a few months after my sixteenth birthday, and I've been trying to keep my promise to her ever since." She looked down at her hands. "She wanted freedom of choice for me, Declan. The ability to choose who I wanted to be with and how I wanted to live. And I almost married two different jerks in town, and then I almost married Clark. All three men were a betrayal of the dream she had for me, and now, I've screwed up even mybusiness." She leaned her head back against Declan's shoulder. "I have to make her proud. I have to be the woman she wanted me to have the chance to be," she whispered. "I can't let her down, and I'm about to do exactly that."
To her surprise, she started to cry.
Real, wrenching sobs that were years of failure, of trying, of apologizing to the woman who had given everything up for her kids.
Dammit. Piper worked so hard to be strong, to keep going, and she was caught unprepared for the sudden onslaught of emotion.
"Oh, sweetie." Declan pulled her into his arms, and she let him, burying herself against him, letting the strength of his embrace and the warmth of his body keep her body from breaking apart, shattering into fragments of guilt and shame, which she fought to get back on track.
