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Now I just wait.
Right on time, Piper arrives, but instead of just walking in like she has been all week, she knocks on the door.
She doesn’t look a bit impressed when it opens, and she sees me standing there.
“Where’s Peyton?” she asks from the front stoop, making no move to come inside.
“Shower.” At least I could hear her shower going when I came down earlier.
“And Preston?”
“Either asleep or already playing video games.”
“I’ll wait for your sister in the kitchen,” she says as she steps past me.
“We can’t have a relationship based on lies,” I tell her back as she walks away.
Piper freezes in her tracks, a long-suffered sigh escaping her lips.
“You’re delusional.”
“I’m delusional?” I ask as I walk around, so she has to look at me. “I’m not the one with the fake boyfriend.”
“I love him.”
“I don’t doubt that for a second,” I tell her, and it’s the truth. Their connection would be evident to a blind man. “But I think he loves something you can’t give him.”
She swallows, the apples of her cheeks turning the bright red that I love so much.
“Like what?” she asks weakly.
“Dick,” I answer simply, pulling my phone from my pocket.
I turn it around when I open the pictures I screenshotted after hours of research yesterday. After going through old yearbooks, something I kicked myself for not thinking of sooner, I found his real last name. After entering that into the social media platforms, I was rewarded with a plethora of evidence that Piper lied to me yesterday.
“So?” she says, barely glancing at the picture of the two guys snuggling. “He’s affectionate with his friends.”
I swipe the image, bringing up the one I found of him in a heated lip-lock with another guy.
“Crap,” Piper mutters. “You’re stalking Dillon now, too? His family knows he’s out, so you can’t use him as ammunition against me.”
“What?” My brows crease. “I wasn’t planning on blackmailing you into keeping his secret.”
She doesn’t look like she believes me.
“I’m not that guy, Piper.”
Frustrated, I shove my phone back in my pocket and pinch the bridge of my nose.
“I keep telling you that, but you seem to have a hearing problem.”
“I hear you just fine,” she argues.
“Let me prove to you I’m not that guy.”
We had this same conversation two days ago before we got in the pool, and I ruined everything by putting my lips on hers. Now I regret doing that. I mean, I don’t regret the kiss, but the timing was shitty. If I had waited until I had more control of the situation, she wouldn’t be pulling away from me right now.
“So, just friends?”
My eyes snap to hers. I was prepared to beg and barter to get her to agree to what we’d already settled on, so I’m a little surprised right now.
“No labels,” I clarify.
Her head immediately shakes, and she takes a step back even though I’ve maintained a couple feet of distance between us already.
“I can’t. We can be cordial, but I won’t ever trust you.” Tears well on her lower lashes, but she takes another step back when I reach up to swipe them away. “When you get your memories back, it’ll only make things ten times worse.”
“I don’t want my memories back. I don’t want to be that guy. I can’t be the guy who avoids his family, keeps crappy friends, and is mean to pretty girls. My memories won’t matter because I’ll never forget how I feel when I’m close to you.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she grumbles before turning back toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
She doesn’t stop her stride. “Home.”
“You have to keep an eye on Preston.”
“You’re more than capable of watching after your brother and making him a sandwich,” she says as she pulls open the front door. “Tell Peyton I’ll call her and let your parents know I couldn’t make it today.”
“You want me to lie to them?” I’m grasping at straws. I already spent all day yesterday without seeing her or hearing her voice, two days in a row is bullshit.
She spins around. “You can tell them the truth.”
“Which is?”
“That you keep pushing yourself on me when I repeatedly turn you down.”
“That’s not exactly the full truth, though, is it?”
She gives me a wicked smile I’ve never seen cross her lips before, and just the sight of it makes my heartrate ramp up. She’s going to be mean back to me, and for some reason that turns me on more than it should. I deserve it more than anyone else, and I’ve been waiting for her wrath, knowing she couldn’t keep it bottled up forever.
“I think I’ll make a list for you, detailing all the hateful things you’ve done, all the mean things you’ve said over the years. I have them all written in my journals, as you know, so I’d never risk forgetting what you’re really like. You can read them off to your parents. If you want to rat me out for going home today rather than suffering through another round of ‘please forgive me,’ I’d like them to be fully informed of why I made that decision.”
