West

Once I get Piper inside her house, I try to get her to sit in the kitchen and talk to me. She won’t sit, nor will she talk. She goes straight to the fridge and grabs a full bottle of wine. She takes it into her bedroom and climbs right into bed, fully dressed, only stopping long enough to slip off her shoes. Then, she tucks the blanket up to her nose, so only her eyes are showing, burying the back of her head into her feather pillow.

I lean into the side of the dresser and wait for her to say something. She needs to get the words out. Keeping them locked in, replaying everything she saw, isn’t going to make her feel any better.

“How about a bath?” I ask her. “I’ll make the water really hot and—”

“I’m good just like this.”

But she isn’t good. She’s far from it.

I move over to the bed and sit next to her, rubbing her arm through the comforter. “Tell me what to do.”

She slips the bottle under the blanket, and it looks like she’s guzzling some of the wine down. “Nothing. Just go. I’ll be fine.”

“I can’t leave you like this, Piper.”

“Yes, you can,” she mumbles from behind the blanket. “I need some time to think, and I can’t do that when you’re here.”

Thinking won’t make her feel any better. Nothing will. Not after seeing her husband getting it up the ass, especially not after he told her that it wasn’t his first time and that he had been doing it behind her back.

It’s one thing to be unfaithful. She has done the same thing and isn’t any better. But to lie about who he really is? That shit is wrong on so many levels.

“You don’t have to hide from me,” I tell her.

I try to move the blanket away from her face, but she wiggles away from me, sliding toward the middle of the bed.

“Please just go,” she begs. “I can’t do this with you right now.”

I stand and walk to the doorway of her room, turning to take another glance at her. “If you need anything, I can be here in minutes.”

“I won’t.” She holds the wine to her mouth and chugs more.

Fuck, I know that kind of pain. I know how it can eat at you.

I know how it changes your whole world.

“Piper, there’s something I want to tell you.” It’s been a while since I thought about that moment in the hospital. I hate the way reliving it makes me feel, and I know that’s coming through my voice. “Tilly and I lost a baby. She was in her second trimester and miscarried. He—my son, Asher—was the reason we had gotten married. We had his room decorated, clothes in his closet, his goddamn name painted on the wall. And then he was just gone. It was the worst thing I’ve ever gone through. I wanted to know what I had done wrong, what I could have done differently to save him. I blamed myself, even after everyone said I shouldn’t. But, at the time, I couldn’t see past the pain. I just hurt like hell, and that was all I could focus on.”

I close my eyes for just a second, wiping away the picture of his nursery. It’s that image I always go back to. The place where I’d have brought him as soon as we got him home. Where I’d have put him to bed, where I’d have told him about my day on the ice.

“I’m telling you this because I know what it feels like to be blindsided. What happened isn’t your fault, like losing my child wasn’t mine. This isn’t going to be the last thing in your life that causes you pain.”

We both know that isn’t the last thing that hurt me. I’m still trying to heal from the latest hit I’ve taken.

“I’m not going to tell you it gets easier because that won’t help you at all. But I’ll say that, eventually, you’ll stop blaming yourself and stop questioning what you could have done differently. Swinging isn’t what caused this, and we both know that.”

She doesn’t say anything. She just looks at me with wide eyes that are overflowing with emotion.

“I’ll check on you in the morning,” I say. Then, I close the door behind me. I go out through the back of her house and walk along the sand until I reach mine.

Tilly’s in the kitchen, sitting at the table, nursing her own bottle of wine.

“Is he gone?”

She twists the glass in circles, the wine sloshing onto the sides. “Yep. Got himself a hotel room, I think.”

I sit across from her, grabbing the glass from her hand and downing it. “Tonight was fucked.”

When our eyes connect, hers are filled with as much emotion as Piper’s. But Tilly’s aren’t dripping with tears. They’re raging with anger.

“She freaked out over nothing,” she snaps. “And you, Prince Charming, went to her rescue. What kind of shit is that? I don’t get it. She saw a little pegging. Big fucking deal.”

“It is a big fucking deal, Tilly.”

“Enough that you had to walk her home? Tuck her in? Wipe away her tears? Because I know you did all three, and it makes me kinda sick to think about it.”

She’s been dancing around something since we got back from dinner. I have no patience for it. Not after tonight.

“Say it.”

“I just find it amusing that you’re so concerned about her. She’s someone you fuck, West. She’s not your wife. Yet, when she was arguing with her husband on the beach, you inserted yourself into their fight. You’re the one who took her home, and you’re the one who comforted her. Why?”

“I’m not a dick, Tilly. The girl was fucking traumatized. Any guy would have done the same thing if put in that situation. Shit, it’s not like I just met her tonight. We’ve been swinging with them since we moved to Florida.”

She lifts the bottle that sits between us on the table and refills her glass, swallowing half and handing me what’s left. “There has to be something wrong with her. Or maybe she’s just in denial. But I knew he was bi from the second I got him naked.”

“There’s nothing wrong with her.”

Her lip curls, like I told her the plastic surgeon had fucked up her tits. “Why are you sticking up for her?”

“Why? Because you’re blaming her for no reason.” And because I care about Piper. It kills me that my wife finds this so amusing, as though every guy should just take it up the ass and every woman should be okay with it. “This is on him for lying to her. Piper didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You don’t know what happens at their house, what conversations they’ve had. Maybe she’s a judgmental bitch who can’t handle the truth, and he didn’t want to listen to her degrade him.”

She doesn’t know Piper at all.

She works with fucking kids who are autistic. She’s a healer, a nurturer. And, when she found out who I was, she didn’t even confront me about it. She doesn’t have a judgmental bone in her body.

“You know what shocks me?” she continues, not giving me a chance to respond. “That not once did you ask me if I was all right. Not once did you look back on the beach and ask me if I was okay with you taking her home. You still haven’t asked how I’m doing. From the second you got here, it’s been all about her.”

That’s the reason for the anger in her eyes. It has nothing to do with what happened tonight. It has everything to do with the way I handled it.

“It has been all about her,” I agree. “You’re right.” I push the chair back and get up from the table. “But there’s no reason to talk about either of them anymore. It’s over now, and we won’t be swinging with them again.”

“So, should I look for a new couple?”

She’s fucking relentless. Unfazed by any of this. Her pussy is the only thing she thinks about.

And I’m over her cunt.

“No,” I say, moving away from the table. “I’m good.”

“She deserved it,” I hear her mumble under her breath.

I’m almost to my office, and I turn around. “What did you say?”

She glares at me. “She deserved it.”

It.

That word could mean so many things.

I still don’t know why Tilly was showered this morning when I found her in bed. If she had met Cannon or someone else.

The truth is, I don’t fucking care.

My wife has some kind of beef with Piper, and I’m sure the reason is because she sees the way Piper affects me. But Tilly’s trying to goad me, and I’m not taking the bait.

When she doesn’t get an answer, she stands and goes downstairs.

I go into our bedroom, strip off my clothes, and get into bed. I stare at the phone in my hand and type out a text to Piper. But after reading the message—You’re going to be okay—I delete it and put my cell on the nightstand.

Piper’s hurting so badly, and that text wouldn’t have made her feel better. She probably wouldn’t have even looked at it.

And things with Tilly need to come to a head because neither of us can keep living this way.

There are too many goddamn lies.

And they’re only getting worse.