I shook my head. This was what Piper did to me. The girl snuck inside my head and ran circles. She messed with my heart, and the sad thing was, I didn’t even think she knew she was doing it.
My phone went off, and Eric and I both looked down.
Piper: There aren’t any towels in here!
Me: Use your shirt.
“Don’t even think about looking at her tits when she climbs out.”
Eric chuckled. “Relax. What’s yours is yours. I know the bro code.”
My eyes strained to listen to Tank and Hayley. Christian was probably losing his shit knowing Hayley and Tank used to live close to one another. The trailer park was probably the worst thing I’d ever seen in terms of homes. I thought Hayley’s last foster home was shitty, but now I knew that it was an upgrade from where she grew up.
My head snapped up as glass came tumbling out of the window. I gritted my teeth, hoping Tank didn’t hear from his barely standing front porch. Eric and I quickly got to the window, and I stood up on the blocks, reaching in after snatching my own shirt off my back and wrapping it around my hand to brush away the remaining jagged glass. My hands immediately found her rib cage. “I got you,” I whispered, pulling her out inch by inch. The window was small, but so was Piper. My large hands cupped her body, and a sense of relief shot right into my chest. Having her body in my hands did something to me. Something shifted and locked into place.
I would go to hell and back for her.
Her shaky hands grabbed onto my shoulders as her hair swung in between us. As soon as her legs were out the window, I heard her hiss.
“You okay? What happened? Did you get cut?”
Her voice was monotonous. “I’m fine.”
She wasn’t fine.
Once I placed her down onto the ground, I kept one of my hands on her warm skin and placed the other under her chin. The moon and stars shined above us, and when I tipped her head back, I saw the glassy waves. Piper was definitely not fine.
“What happened?”
“Not now, fucking go!” Eric came out of nowhere. I forgot he was even here. I saw the light in the bathroom click on, and I snatched Piper’s hand and rushed us around the side of the trailer. I pushed her body back into the metal siding and caged her in, shielding her from whatever came our way. We were closer to Hayley and Tank now but stuck on the side between the other shitty trailer propped a few feet away. Either way we went, we were fucked.
“You are not fine, Piper,” I whispered softly, keeping her tiny body caged in. Our bare bodies were inches from one another, but I didn’t dare move. In case anyone came around the side, I wanted to make sure she wasn’t seen. Eric was a few feet away, also pinned to the side of the trailer, waiting for the go-ahead to run to our cars.
Piper didn’t say anything to me, but I could sense the tension rolling off her body. She was as tight as a rubber band, ready to snap in half. Slowly, her head dropped into my shoulder, and within seconds, I felt something wet hit my bare chest.
Piper was crying, and it tore me in half.
It felt like someone had taken a knife to my skin.
“Did someone do something to you in there?”
I’d kill every fucking one of them. My temper had raised my body temperature so high I actually started to sweat. Is this what it felt like to be Christian? I was the level-headed one, but right now, I was ready to kill.
Piper’s head shook back and forth slowly as her shoulders trembled. She was breaking. Piper was breaking, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it with us hiding like this.
My eyes raked around our surroundings, and I took the first out I could find. My hand clamped onto Piper’s, and I made a run for it. I whipped us around, and we were behind the next-door trailer within a second. The ground was hard against my shoes, and the pounding of my feet matched the muscle behind my chest. I caught Eric’s eye, and he silently questioned me, but I kept going, dragging Piper behind with me.
For a second, we paused, Piper’s palm nestled right next to mine. I waited a beat, making sure there wasn’t any commotion or following footsteps, and I pulled her with me, jogging behind the trailers, climbing through the tall, unkempt grass, and finally making our way past the dumpsters to get to the front of the trailer park.
If I’d paid attention earlier and glanced at the broken, flickering Pike Valley Trailer Park sign, I might have taken it as an indication that this would be a shitty night. It was ominous looking. A warning of sorts.
Breaking glass, running through a fucking forest of small lawns that hadn’t seen a lawn mower in months, and Piper’s tears. All those things combined were a recipe for a shitty fucking time.
I liked adrenaline rushes, but not when Piper was involved.
Not when I could see the wet streaks on her cheeks glistening with the blue hue of the trailer park sign.
I was certain we only had a few minutes before Hayley, Christian, and Eric walked up, but I was going to take advantage of it.