Piper
“Everything OK? With you and Vanni?”
“If you mean, does he suspect that the man he’s asked to keep me safe slept with his wife then, no. He doesn’t. And yes, everything’s fine.”
Logan goes over to the fridge and helps himself to a beer. “Want one?”
I shake my head and sit down on the couch, drawing my knees to my chest, hugging them to me as I watch him move around the kitchen. “What about you? Are you OK?”
He looks at me, a slight smirk on his way-too-handsome face. He’s everything Vanni isn’t, and for some reason that only makes me want him more. Because I do, want him. I want him so much I’m terrified, because I don’t know why I’m suddenly feeling this shit, why it’s happening now.
“I’m good, sweetheart. I’m real good.”
My eyes follow him as he comes out from the kitchen and into the living area, stopping out front of the counter that separates the two spaces, leaning back against it as he downs a mouthful of beer.
“What did you hear, Piper? What was so bad that your daddy needs you dead?”
I drop my gaze and start picking at the hem of my dress. “If I tell you, that puts you in danger, too.”
His laugh causes my head to shoot up. “You don’t think I’m already in enough danger, huh? I fucked you, Piper. And if Vanni finds out you know as well as I do that sorry just isn’t gonna cut it. So, y’know…” He shrugs as he downs another mouthful of beer. “I’m already up to my neck in danger.”
I drop my gaze again and I stay silent, I’m not sure this is a conversation I want to get into.
“What did you hear, Piper?”
I get up and walk outside, onto the terrace, but he’s beside me before I can take a breath and I swing around to face him. “What do you want from me, Logan?”
“I want you, Piper. I want you, in my bed, all the fucking time, at least, that’s the kind of shit my head’s filled with right now.”
“You can’t have me.”
“Do you want me?”
“You can’t have me.”
“Answer the question, Piper. Do you want me?”
I turn and head back inside, this isn’t fair, what he’s doing here. It isn’t fair.
“I love my husband.”
“Answer the fucking question, Piper.”
“You really want to do this? On top of everything else…?”
“Answer the question.”
I shake my head, and I know that only agitates him more, I can see it in his eyes, he’s angry. But so am I, because nobody needs this. Nobody.
“I need to know if you’re worth fighting for, Piper; if you’re worth me betraying my club for, worth putting my life on the fucking line for so, come on, darlin’, just answer the question.”
“I want you.”
The words fall from my mouth before I even realize I’ve said them.
“And that’s all I need to hear.”
He starts to walk away, and I panic, my chest’s so tight I can barely breathe. I don’t even know what I’ve done here.
“No, Logan, wait!”
He turns around and looks at me and now I don’t know what I’m feeling. If I’m feeling anything. It’s like a strange, almost comforting numbness has taken over, and all of a sudden that Pink Floyd song fills my head – Comfortably Numb. The words are dancing around my brain, making me slightly confused.
“This doesn’t change anything, Logan, it can’t, change anything.”
He frowns, and then he takes a step toward me, but the second he reaches out to touch me I recoil. It’s not that I don’t want him to touch me, I do. I want him to kiss me, to fuck me until I forget the twisted reality we’re mixed up in here, but what I want and what I have are two very different things.
“He’ll kill you, Logan. Even if we never touch each other again he will kill you, if he finds out what we did.”
“Tell me something I don’t know, Piper.”
“He’d kill me, too.”
My voice won’t rise above a whisper, the words are sticking in my constricted throat because I’m terrified. I’d been scared before, but that’s nothing compared to the fear I feel now. And he should go, but I can’t tell him to leave because that would only raise suspicion, cause Vanni to ask questions, and I can’t risk that.
“I don’t know about that, Piper. I think Vanni – he really does love you, yeah… that crazy asshole might actually have feelings…”
He trails off, and I back up against the wall, taking what feels like a hundred deep breaths, one after the other, as I try to lose that well of fear that’s bubbling away inside of me. But it isn’t going anywhere, and I don’t know what to do now.
“You’ve gotta get tough, Piper. You know that, right? You can’t go back to being that pampered princess…”
“You think I was pampered?”
“You telling me you weren’t a daddy’s girl?”
“I had a nice life, OK, but that was… that was before I found out the truth. Before all those slightly blurred pieces of my father’s fucked up world suddenly came together. That’s what changed me. That’s when I knew I had to turn into someone else, be someone else. I’m not going back there, Logan.”
He takes a step toward me and this time I stay where I am, I can’t go anywhere anyway, I’m up against the wall.
“We’ve started something we can’t take back now, Piper.” He places his hand against my cheek, his thumb lightly grazing my jaw. “So what’s the point in stopping?”
I wrap my fingers around his wrist and gently pull his hand away, and he looks at me, right into my eyes, and I try to find that numbness again, I try to claw it back because I need to feel that now. I need to feel nothing. I don’t need to feel this.
I let go of his hand and his arm drops to his side, he lets me walk away, but where the hell can I go? I’m still trapped, in this world I became a part of because I thought I’d be safe here. I’m anything but, it’s just that, the threat within these walls isn’t my father. It’s my own weakness, my own inability to say no to a man who is – what is he, exactly? A distraction? Someone to take my mind off everything that’s happening? I can’t afford that luxury.
“You ever been in love, Piper?”
I look at him, and I frown. “I love Vanni.”
“Have you ever been in love, there’s a difference.”
I’m not sure why he’s asking me this, and again, I don’t know what he wants from me. “I love my husband.”
“Sure you do, sweetheart. Because of what he can give you? Huh? Is that it? You love him in return for his protection?”
“It’s not like that…”
“It’s exactly like that, Piper. You telling me that if your daddy weren’t coming for you you’d still be with a man like Vanni Colletti?”
His words are like a punch to the solar plexus, each one hitting harder. Because he’s right? Is he? And I still can’t tell him to go, he can’t leave, I can’t escape what he’s telling me.
“My life changed, the second my father put a hit out on me. It changed, I changed, I just told you that. I did what I had to do.” I sit down on the arm of the couch and pick up the bottle of whiskey that’s on the table beside me. “And what could you offer me, anyway? A more stable, comfortable life?”
He raises an eyebrow as I down a mouthful of whiskey straight from the bottle. “I never said I could offer you anything. I’m not offering you anything, I’m just trying to work out…”
“Then what the hell is this, huh?” I stand up and walk over to him, still clutching the whiskey bottle by the neck. “What me and Vanni have is none of your goddamn business, so just do what he put you here to do, and quit with the amateur physcology.”
I turn away from him but he grabs my wrist, swinging me back around to face him.
“You really are one cold bitch, aren’t you? Princess.”
He barely gets the words out before my palm connects with his cheek, so hard it twists his head to one side and I step back from him, but he isn’t giving up.
“Like I said, one cold, crazy bitch.”
“Fuck you.”
He takes the whiskey from my hand and places the bottle down on the counter behind him. “You ever speak to your daddy like that, huh?”
I shake my head and make to go again, but once more he grabs my wrist, pulling me around with so much force I almost feel the breath physically leave my body as it crashes against his.
“But I kinda like a dirty mouth.”
“Fuck. You.”
He smirks, a low chuckle escaping before his mouth lowers down, moving closer to mine and I try to push him away but it’s like I’m fighting an immovable object, he isn’t going anywhere.
“You said you wanted me, Piper.”
“Sometimes I lie.”
Sometimes I do. But that wasn’t a lie, that was true. Do I still want him? Now? After this? I don’t know. I don’t think I know what I want now, except –
“I can’t offer you anything, Piper.”
“Then why are you risking so much?”
He can’t answer that, and I don’t blame him. We’ve created an unnecessary mess that needn’t have happened, it wouldn’t have happened, if we’d both been stronger people.
“I won’t let anything happen to you, Piper.”
“Vanni’s already made me that promise.”
He lets go of me, and whatever we’d been about to do just then, the moment’s gone. I step back from him and reach behind him for the whiskey, taking another mouthful as I walk outside, onto the terrace, watching as day slowly blends into night; as darkness takes over the light, and l know exactly what I’m feeling now…
Logan
I can’t offer her anything, that’s true. I can’t offer her shit, we can never happen, I don’t know why I thought we ever could. That was the old me, that other person I thought I’d left behind – that was him talking. And I don’t think like him anymore, he’s gone. I didn’t go through all that crap just to go straight back to everything that had almost destroyed me before.
I watch her as she stands outside, swigging whiskey from the bottle as she watches the sun go down, and I try to forget that we did what we did but I can’t. I don’t want to. But I can’t give her anything more than Vanni can, it’s just a mess. All of it. All I can do is my job – keep her safe, and when all this is over and she’s back in Nevada, with Vanni, I’ll move on. Again.
She turns around and walks back inside, leaving the French doors open, I’m guessing that makes it feel less like a prison in here.
“What happened to you, huh?”
She hands me the whiskey, and I frown slightly. “Nothing happened to me.”
She throws me a look and I take the whiskey, helping myself to a long draft, the warm hit of alcohol welcome and necessary as it settles in my stomach.
“You weren’t born into this life. Right?” she asks as she heads into the kitchen, opening the fridge and taking out a plate of cold meat and a bowl of salad.
“No. I wasn’t.”
She places the food on the counter that separates the kitchen from the living area and looks straight at me, her blue eyes boring so deep into mine it’s like she’s staring into my soul, shit! I need this crap like I need a gun to my forehead.
“Then that’s something we have in common. Isn’t it?”
It’s about the only thing we have in common.
“You hungry?”
I’m not, not really, but at the same time my stomach’s telling me something different. And I can’t actually remember the last time I ate, so I nod and slide up onto a stool, taking the beer she’s just slid toward me, watching as she dishes up two plates of cold cuts, salad and bread. And I wonder how we’ve suddenly arrived here, at this picture of calm domesticity when five minutes ago we were this close to fucking.
“Here. Eat something. You can’t protect me on an empty stomach.”
I look at her and smile slightly, she had her tongue in her cheek when she’d said that.
“There’s something about you that tells me you can look after yourself, Piper.”
She sits down opposite me and bites into a chunk of buttered bread, her eyes fixed on mine. “You might think I grew up a pampered princess, but my father also made sure that me and my cousins knew how to defend ourselves. He taught us how to use a gun, how to bring a man down with one swift kick to the right place. He taught us how to fight.”
“You know how to use a gun, huh?”
She raises her eyebrows as though I’ve just asked her the most ridiculous question ever. “Why’s that surprise you? I was born into one of the biggest gangland families on the east coast, Logan. We were all in some kind of danger, all of the time, ‘cause of my father’s business. He just wanted us to be able to take things into our own hands, if we ever needed to.”
“You needed to, he saw to that. And you couldn’t do anything.”
She drops her gaze and starts picking at her salad with her fork. “That was different.”
The silence between us hangs heavy in the air for a few loaded seconds, punctuated only by the sound of the waves outside and the muffled noise of traffic and people somewhere in the distance.
“Have you ever been in love?”
Her question throws me slightly, even though it shouldn’t.
“We’ve moved past that conversation now, Piper.” I’m not getting into this, not with her. Not with anyone.
“So, you can ask me that question but you’re not up for answering it yourself?”
“It’s got nothing to do with you.”
“But, somehow, my life’s got everything to do with you?”
Her eyes are back on me, refusing to break the stare this time, she’s not letting go of this one.
“What was it your daddy and his men specialized in, huh?”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“I know what I’m doing, Piper.”
The corner of her mouth twists up into a slight smile. “Yeah. You do… My dad ran a great line in protection rackets, OK? Threatened anyone who wronged his clients with the kind of shit he’s not averse to doling out to his only daughter.” She pops a forkful of salad into her mouth, her gaze never shifting from mine. “He protects people. Amongst other things.”
The irony drips from her voice, and she drops her gaze again, once more picking at the food on her plate. And I watch her, for a couple of beats, willing her to look at me again.
“I was in love. Once.”
She finally raises her head, her eyes once more meeting mine. “Just once?”
“Yeah. Just once.”
“Who was she?”
I don’t really want to talk about this, it’s reopening old wounds I vowed I would never pick at again, but it’s like the words are falling out of me before I can stop them. Like I have no control.
“We’d known each other since middle school. Hung out with the same crowd, lived a couple of blocks away from each other… it just happened, y’know? We fell in love.”
She says nothing for a second, but I can tell she’s trying to read me, and I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this, this wasn’t how I’d envisaged this night was gonna turn out. I thought we’d be fucking by now, not sharing heart-to-hearts over dinner. How the hell did that happen?
“Were you together long?”
Her eyes are still fixed on mine, but I drop my gaze, focusing on the food on my plate because I can’t look at her. Not when I’m doing this. “We had everything, at least, I thought we had. We were settling down, finding our feet in the world and I… I was gonna ask her to marry me. We had good jobs, a nice house, we’d even talked about kids, our lives, they were going somewhere…” I finally look back up at Piper. “She broke my fucking heart. Ripped that fucker from my chest and tore it apart, she killed me.”
She says nothing for a second or two, but her expression doesn’t waver. My change of tone, the harshness in my voice, it doesn’t rattle her in any way.
“What did she do?”
“She’d been sleeping with her boss. For months, apparently, by the time I found out. She told me it had only happened once, at a staff party; that drink had been to blame, but she’d been lying. He’d offered her a promotion in return for sex…” I can’t help the laugh that escapes me, it’s almost a defense mechanism I’ve enabled to stop this from hurting me all over again. “She got her promotion. He got way more than he should’ve done.”
Again, Piper leaves a few beats before she speaks, almost as if she’s weighing up just what she should ask next. “Did he… did he blackmail her or…?”
“No. No, he didn’t blackmail her. She just decided that once wasn’t enough. She went there, and she liked it. Before him there’d only been me, the only man she’d ever slept with, and I guess she wanted to try something new. And he wasn’t gonna turn down anything when it’s handed to him on a fucking plate.”
She drops her gaze for the briefest of seconds, laying her fork down on her half-empty plate, crossing her arms on the counter in front of her as she looks back up at me. “It must’ve been hard, when you found out.”
Hard doesn’t even describe what I felt the night I found out what she’d done to me. The night I saw no remorse in the eyes of a woman I would’ve taken a bullet for. She took it all, that night, when she stood there and told me she was leaving our life, just like that. One sentence, that’s all she gave me. One fucking sentence, and she was gone. And that bitch, she took my battered heart with her, when she walked out that door. She took the person I used to be, and she made sure he was never coming back.
“Logan?”
Piper’s voice drags me back from memories I’d swore wouldn’t get to me again, yet, here I am, reliving every last, painful second.
“That was the day I changed. Loving someone as much as I loved her… to have that love thrown back in your face the way she…” I drop my head and drag my hands back over my hair, sighing quietly. “I promised myself I’d never go there again. Never love someone, never open my heart, never…” I realize all this shit I’m spouting, she doesn’t need to hear this. And I don’t need to be saying it, what the hell am I? I’m not that weak, pathetic asshole anymore, I’m different, now.
I slide down from the stool and head outside, breathing in large gulps of fresh air. Those memories, they’d stifled me way more than I’d expected, out here I feel like I can breathe again.
“What happened, Logan? After she left?”
I turn around. She’s leaning against the doorpost, arms crossed against her chest, the light evening breeze gently blowing the hem of her short summer dress up around her thighs. Thighs I still want to lie between, I still need this woman, as an escape. And I think she needs me for exactly that reason, too.
“I joined up. Went and fought for my country, channeled my anger and frustration in a direction that could actually do some good. Because if I’d stayed there I would’ve hurt some fucker, I swear, Piper, I would’ve…” I turn my head away from her and take another deep breath, I need to calm down. I need to leave this shit alone, I need to stop thinking about my fucking past before it drags me the hell back down.
I feel her touch my face, gently guide my head back around to look at her and this is crazy, it’s so fucked up. What the hell’s going on here?
“I’m sorry, Logan. That she did that to you.”
She keeps her hand pressed against my cheek, and I cover it with mine, our fingers sliding together. “I saw some real bad shit out there, Piper. I saw men die in ways so horrific… I saw things that changed me, and I needed to see all that, to put my own pain into some kind of perspective; to become this man I am now, to become colder and harder and…”
“You aren’t cold. And you aren’t hard, you’re just damaged. And we’re all damaged, Logan. In some way.”
I grip her fingers tighter as her eyes bore into mine. “I need to be cold, Piper. I need to distance myself from all the crap that can hurt me…”
“And you don’t think I need that, too? We all need to distance ourselves from something, but you’re talking about never loving someone again, Logan. I’m talking about forgetting what my father’s bastard lieutenant did to me, of course I want to forget that, I need to forget that. But distancing yourself from loving someone again? Why would you want to do that?”
I let go of her hand and step back slightly, digging my hands into my pockets. “We don’t live in a world full of hearts and flowers and dancing fucking unicorns, Piper. This world, this life I chose to come back to, it’s tough and it’s real and I need that, OK?”
“You chose the Death Knights because you couldn’t face falling in love again?”
She’s making everything sound so fucking simplistic, and it’s irritating. “I chose this club because they take men like me and they turn them into people who don’t get hurt.”
“You really think that, huh?”
“You know nothing, Piper. You know fuck all about this world and what it takes to survive…”
“I know more than you think, Logan. I know men like you become a part of this shit so you can hide from all the crap you just can’t face. You think you’re tough, but men like you, you’re weak…”
I’ve got hold of her wrist, shoved her back against the wall before she can finish the sentence, and I silence her with a kiss that she responds to in a heartbeat. In seconds she’s got her legs wrapped around me, and I’m pounding into her, each and every thrust harder and more brutal but she’s taking it, she isn’t fighting me. I’m taking it all out on her, but she knows that, she invited it, and she’s clawing at my back, her fingers scraping my skin so she’s taking her shit out on me, too. And when we come we come together, a rushed almost violent explosion that sweeps across our bodies, telling us one thing we both already knew before I took her again – we’ve crossed a line we can’t ever come back from. We’ve crossed a line. And I don’t fucking care…
Vanni
“She all right?”
I throw my cut down on the couch and head straight to the fridge, reaching for a cold beer.
“She’s asleep.”
I look over at Logan, propped up against the wall, a weary look on his face. Why the fuck’s he tired? All he’s been doing all night is sitting on his ass keeping check on my wife.
“Everything OK?”
He drops his gaze and drags a hand back over his head. “Everything’s fine.”
“Good.” I take a long draft of beer and wait until he raises his gaze; until his eyes meet mine. “We finished the job, by the way. We made sure those Devil Hounds got the message.”
“Anyone get hurt?”
“Not on our side. Bullet took a graze to the shoulder but Della’s seeing to that. He’s taken worse, usually from her.”
His mouth twists up into a knowing smirk, hell, we all know what Bullet’s old lady’s capable of. She’d scare the shit outta anyone, given half the chance.
“Anyway, they’re not gonna give us any more trouble. They know what’ll happen if they try any more shit. They can stay, they can have their club, I’m not gonna take that from them. They just gotta learn where the boundaries lie, is all. I’m giving them a second chance, but they fuck with me one more time… They know.”
“Sorry I missed all the fun.”
“I needed you here.”
“Yeah. I guess… Does that mean you’ll be heading back to Nevada?”
“You trying to get rid of me?” I take another draft of beer, watching his expression, but it doesn’t change.
“I just figured you’d have business to sort out back home, that’s all.”
“I’m sending my men back to Nevada, to make sure things stay running smoothly there. I’m putting Chase in charge for a while. Thought I’d stay in California for a few more days, make sure everything remains nice and calm here. I don’t want to get back home only to find out those fuckers ignored every lesson I just taught ‘em.”
“Can I go now?”
“You in a hurry, son?”
“You’re back now, Vanni, you don’t need me anymore tonight, right?”
“Got something you need to get back to?”
“I got plenty of shit I could’ve been doing while I was here.”
I finish the last of my beer and throw the bottle into the trash, my eyes following him as he heads for the door.
“Logan?”
He turns around and looks at me, but he’s smart enough not to show how pissed he is at not being able to make his escape just yet, even though I can tell that’s exactly how he’s feeling right now.
“It’s time. To let everyone else know, about Piper. About what happens next.”
He drops his head for a beat or two before raising it, his eyes back on mine. “You really want to do that?”
“He wants her dead, Logan. That fucked up bastard wants my wife dead, and I’m not happy about that. So he needs to have a message sent, too. You understand me?”
“You got any plans yet on how we’re gonna send that message, exactly?”
“I never go into anything with my eyes shut, son.”
“I’m assuming you got those eyes on Frankie Cabbetto, huh?”
“I got people watching him, yeah. And when I get word that we need to start fighting, we fight. And we win. ‘Cause we can’t lose that fight, Logan. I can’t lose Piper.”
“We’ve all got your back on this one, Vanni. You’ll have this chapter’s full support, you know that.”
“Yeah. I know that. Go on, get outta here. And Logan? Thanks. For making sure Piper’s OK.”
He throws me a slight smile before he leaves, closing the door behind him.
I lean back against the wall and close my eyes, taking a deep breath, it feels like the first real breath I’ve taken properly since I got back home. And I’m done, I’m fucking exhausted, I just need to sleep now. ‘Cause I don’t know how long we got ‘til our next fight begins.