RIAN
I flip my phone over in my hand, waiting for a message I’m not sure is ever going to come. I feel ill. The same kind of ill I felt after my parents left Marley and me alone, with almost nothing.
If it’s over between me and Pierce, I have no one to blame but myself. Maybe I should’ve been honest with him from the beginning, but I was doing what I thought was right. I was protecting me and Marley. It’s what I’ve always done. And he’s supposed to be temporary. A fun summer distraction, not someone I want to keep around.
Regardless of whether or not I’m right about Pierce being in on whatever Lawson may or may not have planned, we’re so closely connected by all of these invisible threads. I’m sure he’s already figured it out by now, which might explain the silence on his end. The pieces of my past that I’ve kept hidden threaten to destroy this brief blip of happiness.
Instead of putting trust in Pierce, I villainized him. I accused rather than asked questions, and now I’m facing the consequences. He has every right to be angry with me because my omissions are as bad as lies. In trying to protect myself, I only ended up hurting us both.
Last night I slept on the couch at the Paulson reno. Because it still smells very faintly of Pierce. I’m so pathetic.
The knock on the sliding door startles me. It’s almost eight, and the finish carpenter is supposed to be here at nine to take care of the last little details, but I expect him to come to the front door. I peek over the end of the couch, mortified that I’m still in my pajamas. Except it’s not the finish carpenter. It’s Pierce.
My heart stops and then beats double time. I throw the comforter off, no longer worried about my sleepwear, or the fact that I probably have pillow lines etched in my face. I’ve slept like crap the past two night and based on Pierce’s stubbled chin and cheeks and dark eyes, so has he.
Maybe I’m not alone in my misery. And I’m definitely miserable.
My stomach clenches, and not in a good way as I open the door. He looks angry. Maybe angrier than he did the last time I spoke to him. “Hi.”
I don’t get so much as a smile in response. He glares at me with stormy eyes, full of confrontation. “Why didn’t you tell me who your family was?”
I clasp my hands so I don’t fidget under his rightfully angry gaze. “I didn’t think it was important,” I say meekly.
He purses his lips, eyes moving over my face. There’s no warmth, just hurt. “You didn’t think it was important to tell me that my sister’s fiancé’s family were responsible for exposing your parents?”
“I didn’t put it together until I saw that article when I stayed at your place.”
“Is that part of the reason you bolted then? Was everything else just a way to push the blame off on me?”
Shame and fear make it hard to speak. Shame over who my family is, fear that my omissions are going to cost me so much more than some embarrassment. In hindsight, maybe I’ve made a bigger deal out of it than necessary, but explaining who my family is and what they did is mortifying beyond belief.
“Where are your parents, Rian?”
I look down at my feet, unable to see his disdain for me. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know or you don’t want to tell me?”
I curl my toes under, hating the way my stomach knots. “I haven’t heard from them in three years.” They could be dead, although I have a feeling if that was the case, I would probably get a call.
“Three years?” His voice is laced with disbelief.
I twist my hands, remembering the last time I heard my mother’s voice; the sound of her laughter, the music in the background, the crashing of waves. “The last time my mom called was our twenty-fifth birthday.” There’s bitterness in the memory I don’t want.
His face falls, his anger ebbing slightly. “And you’ve had no contact since?”
I bite the inside of my lip, trying to keep the tears they don’t deserve from falling. “They said it was too dangerous, someone could trace the calls. We had a small trust come due that birthday, so…”
“They called to get money out of you?” I loathe his pity because it confirms what I already know—my parents are beyond horrible.
There’s no point in keeping any of this from him anymore. Whatever his reaction, I’m done hiding the truth. “When we wouldn’t wire them money, they tried to redirect it into their account. Of course, it didn’t work because the money was in our names. After that Marley and I changed our phone numbers and switched over to new accounts so it wouldn’t happen again. It was too painful to hear from them, especially when we knew it wasn’t because they cared or were worried about us, but because they wanted something.” I smile, but it’s pained and my throat feels tight. Marley’s been my only person for so many years. I haven’t let anyone else in; I’m haunted by a legacy anyone would be ashamed of.
Pierce’s lip curls. “That’s disgusting.”
“It is,” I agree. “You see why I wasn’t eager to share any of this? My parents are bad people. They’re cheaters, liars, and thieves. My dad used me to swindle people. I didn’t know what he was doing, and when I realized I’d helped him … it was devastating. Marley and I did everything we could to separate ourselves from them. We legally changed our last name to sever the ties. My dad left us ten thousand dollars in cash and no way to contact them. Why would I want you to know that about my life? Tell me it doesn’t change how you see me.”
He shakes his head, and I despise how sad he looks, because it makes me feel pitied. “I can’t, because you’re right, this most definitely changes the way I see you.”
I drop my head and wish my hair wasn’t in a ponytail, that it could provide a curtain of protection for the pain I can’t hide. I hate that I have to carry this past with me forever. I press my palm to my mouth, fighting back a sob, because even though they’ve disappeared from my life, my parents still manage to ruin all the things I love.
“Hey.” Pierce’s rough, callused fingers skim my jaw. I can’t handle this gentle affection, not when I know it’s coming from a place of pity, and that the end is inevitable.
I twist my head, unwilling to see how this truth changes everything. And it’s now that I recognize how much I wanted to keep this, us, him. I want him to want me regardless of who my family is.
“Rian, you need to look at me.”
“I don’t want to.” I sound petulant, and my voice cracks.
He ducks down so his face is right in front of mine, and his nose brushes the tip of mine. “I think you need to ask me how what you’ve told me changes how I see you.”
“I already know.”
“You think so?”
“You feel sorry for me. You’re going to tell me how awful that must’ve been, but I’ll understand if you can’t be with me anymore. I know I should’ve told you the truth right from the start, or maybe I shouldn’t have gotten involved with you in the first place. But I didn’t think it was going to get complicated like this. I thought—”
“Can you shut up for a second?”
“You don’t need to explain. I get it, P—”
His mouth crashes down on mine. I keep my lips pressed together because I haven’t had a chance to brush my teeth, and I do not want his tongue in my mouth. Well, I do, but not until I’ve had a breath mint.
“Open.”
I shake my head. “Nuh-uh.”
“Yes.”
“I can’t,” I say through gritted teeth.
He backs off a bit. “Why can’t you?”
I hold a hand in front of my mouth to prevent him from launching another lip attack. “I need to brush my teeth.”
He rolls his eyes and sweeps his fingers gently along the hollow under my eyes. They’re damp, I realize. Because I’m crying.
“Stop being so sweet when you’re supposed to be running the other way.”
He smiles softly and brushes the tip of his nose against mine. “There’s my girl. I’m not going anywhere. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“But you’re angry and I lied to you.”
“I am and you did, but I understand why.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I can see that you are. It hurt, that you could think the worst of me, Rian. I hated knowing I was missing something, and I wanted you to feel like you could tell me, but I get why you couldn’t. I needed some time to manage my own emotions. Needing time doesn’t mean I’m going to walk away. How pushy do I have to be to get that through to you?”
“Marley’s been my only constant for the past decade. When people find out who we are, they tend to walk away, and I can’t blame them. We’ve worked so hard to get where we are and make our own name so we aren’t connected to our parents. It’s just so shameful.”
“It’s not your shame to own, though.” He threads his fingers through mine and leads me to the couch. Pushing the blankets aside, he pulls me down with him.
“I helped my dad. I knew numbers. I didn’t know what he was doing. He stole so much money from so many people.”
“You were a teenager and you trusted the people who were supposed to take care of you.”
“I don’t need you to rationalize this for me, or feel sorry for me, or pity me—”
“I’m not doing any of that. I’m cutting you the break you can’t seem to cut yourself. And it’s not pity, it’s awe. You did all of this on your own. You made a life, you protected yourself and your sister, and built your own career. That takes an incredible amount of resilience and determination.”
I want to sink into him, absorb some affection, and forget that my past still creates so much turmoil in my present. “So what now?”
He stretches his arm across the back of the couch. “We talk.”
“About me?” I say it slowly, as if the words are made of lead and painful to spit out. I’ve worked so hard to stay focused on the present, on the now and not the then, even though my past has shaped me, and not always in a good way.
“Well, yeah. I think it’s about time, right? I want to understand, so I know how to handle you moving forward.”
“I don’t know how to deal with it when you say things like that.”
“You’ll get used to it, like you’ve gotten used to me being a pushy asshole.”
I laugh and then sigh, considering how I want to approach this. “I’ve spent the last decade trying to separate myself from my childhood. I think the most painful part wasn’t losing things, because it’s just stuff. It’s physical comfort, but the emotional comfort, not having people to rely on, that was devastating.” And now here’s this man, who knows who my family is and what they’ve done, and he’s still here, still wanting me even after the omissions and the accusations I threw at him. I need to trust that he’s not here to screw me over. God, I wish my parents weren’t such fuckups and that I could believe in the good in people.
“I can’t imagine how hard it was for you to go from that kind of life to something so—”
“Pathetic?” I smile sadly.
“No. Not pathetic at all. You went from having everything to having almost nothing at eighteen. That couldn’t have been easy.”
“I used to take so many things for granted. My parents bought me a Range Rover for my sixteenth birthday. What sixteen-year-old needs a freaking Range Rover? Also, it had a roomy back seat, not ideal for preserving teenage virtue. Not that my parents cared, either way.”
Pierce’s expression darkens. “Are you speaking from personal experience?”
“Marley was the defiler of the back seat. I wasn’t really a get-it-on-in-the-back-of-the-car kind of girl.”
“You like dryers and beaches better.” He winks.
I appreciate the moment of levity. “Well, dryers anyway. Maybe not the beaches.” After a few moments of silence, in which I’m sure my face turns red at the memory, I continue. “My parents would drop us off as soon as school finished for the year, and they’d come back and get us before it started up again.”
“So you didn’t see them all summer?”
“No. But that wasn’t unusual. We didn’t see them much, period. We had nannies and housekeepers. So while other teenagers were getting part-time jobs and doing meaningful things, we were hanging out on yachts. Well, that’s not completely true. I did a lot of volunteer work in the summers, thanks to my grandmother. She was big into charity work, and she taught me to give back where I could. I probably would’ve been a complete spoiled brat otherwise.”
Pierce fingers the end of my ponytail. “I can’t imagine how hard it is to be so close to something you know so well, with so many memories attached to it.”
“Painfully nostalgic, I suppose. Some of my best memories are there. And worst. It’s why I wanted this flip. I feel close to what I once had, I guess.”
“I get it. Sometimes I go back to my old neighborhood to see the first house we had. A reminder of what life was like before. But for you, it’s the opposite.”
“The fall is hard. You find out exactly who’s real and who isn’t when your grace is gone.”
“You lost a lot more than financial stability and your parents.”
“We lost everything and everyone. And honestly, I couldn’t blame anyone. My father swindled so much money out of people. It didn’t matter if they were friends or not, he destroyed a lot of lives. In a lot of people’s eyes, our family got what we deserved.”
“No eighteen-year-old deserves to have her entire life turned upside-down like that.”
“People experience losses far worse than what we did, who deserve it far less than my family did. Like I said, I took a lot for granted until I had to go without, and I don’t want to do that again.”
“You really are incredible,” Pierce says softly.
“I’m really not. Mostly I’m just good with numbers, and I hurt a lot of people because of that.”
“Don’t take that on, Rian. You’re a hell of a lot more than good with numbers. You were taken advantage of by someone you loved and trusted. You’re phenomenal and brilliant, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
I expel a slow breath, wanting to tell him he’s wrong, that I’m none of the things he thinks I am.
“I can see you trying to form an argument in that head of yours, and you need to stop. How I see you is not up for debate.”
“None of that changes where I came from.”
“You think that matters to me? I don’t give a shit who your parents are, or how much of a spoiled rich brat you think you were as a kid, or whether you messed up your dating profile questionnaire so we ended up as a two out of ten on some ridiculous compatibility test score when we should be a ten.” Pierce takes my face between his palms, his expression determined and serious. “I’m one hundred percent in love with you, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to change that.”
For me, love has always been such an unstable, conditional emotion outside of my twin. Except as I look at Pierce, I can see that he means it, that it’s real and warm and comforting. Stupid tears well and track down my cheeks.
Pierce wipes them away gently, his smile an echo of that tender touch. “I’m overwhelming you with the declaration, huh?”
I laugh, but the sound ends on a half sob. “I love you back.” It comes out a broken whisper.
He places a soft kiss on my lips and pulls back. “That was hard, wasn’t it?”
I nod. He gets me in a way no one else does, not even Marley sometimes. Saying it out loud makes it so much more real. Telling the person who owns your heart that you love them gives them power—the kind that can make you whole or shatter your world.
“I promise I’ll take good care of your heart, Rian. And I promise it’ll get easier if you keep saying it.” He kisses me again, whispering against my lips, “I love you.”
I give up caring about brushing my teeth and try to keep our mouths connected, but he holds me firmly between his palms. “Your turn.”
I bite my lip and meet his earnest, patient gaze. My God, this man.
“I love you.” This time the whisper isn’t broken.
“See how much easier it is already.” This time when he kisses me, he doesn’t stop.
We make love; those whispered words turn into moans and sighs and pleas for more. And I allow myself to fall completely, hopelessly in love.