She seemed to relax, snuggling closer to me. “Good, but…how? Tank said...”
A bout of anxiety hit me deep in my stomach, but I brushed it off. I looked down at her green eyes. They were like sea glass, and it felt like they were cutting me with their eagerness for the truth.
“Don’t worry, Piper. I have everything figured out. Let’s just get this shit paid and your brother out of trouble. Then, I’ll worry about Tank and…” My eyes darted away. “And other things.”
Her voice was soft. “Other things like telling Christian about the issues with your dad?”
“Yeah. That.”
She nodded against my chest. I hoped she couldn’t hear the rapid increase of my heart beating.
“Can I ask you something?”
Her soft tone lingered. “Sure.”
“A year ago, you said you did something bad. What was it?”
It’d been bothering me for a while now. After I found out more about her, and Jason, I’d wondered what she was referring to that night so long ago. What exactly did she do?
Piper’s body stilled, so I joked to lighten the mood. “Oh, come on, I thought you and I were into the whole sharing-secrets thing?”
A soft breath brushed over my chest. “You’ll never look at me the same.”
I clicked my tongue as I shook my head. “I can assure you I will. I like all of you, Piper. The good and bad, the broken and whole.”
Her pink lip twitched as she shot me a look. It didn’t last long, though. The small smile faded just before she buried her head into me again. “I did two things that night. Two things my parents would totally disapprove of, which is probably why I did them in the first place.”
I said nothing as she sorted out her thoughts. Instead, I twirled a piece of her hair around my finger and waited.
“It was right after they told me I was being taken out of Wellington Prep and would be attending English Prep. I was so angry. I was angry for a lot of reasons, but the fact that they were running from Jason’s mistakes lit a fire inside of me. They had already kicked him out of the house, shunned him from the family, and then that? I was livid.”
My head moved up and down. “I get that.”
“They forbid me to ever see him again. They told me to call the police if he even stepped foot on our property.”
Damn.
She gulped, and I felt the slight tremble of her body. I pulled her in even closer, wanting to take away her fear. “Hey,” I stopped her. “You don’t have to tell me.”
She shook her head. “I want to.”
Those three words settled right into my chest. She wanted to tell me.
“My brother actually ended up reaching out to me that night. I was going to Andrew’s because he was having a party, and I couldn’t stand to be in the house with my parents. So, I snuck out, and that was when I got a call from an unknown number. It was Jason.” Piper’s voice was so low I could barely hear it over the music from downstairs. “He'd been beaten up—again. I don’t even remember why. Maybe he stole something. Or owed money.” She shrugged. “I ended up going to him, and I helped him get cleaned up. He was in an alley, kind of close to Pike Valley Trailer Park, actually.” A sad laugh erupted from her. “I still remember the smell of the spoiled milk in the dumpster nearby. Seeing my brother that beat up and high at the same time wrecked me. I got him in my car and drove him to his friend’s house. He didn’t hang with the best crowd, but Alec was better than the rest. He got him inside, and we cleaned him up. But then his friend told me he knew who was responsible.”
“He told you who beat Jason up?”
Piper nodded against me again, her body buzzing with anxiety. “Yeah. Tank isn’t the first mess I’ve tried to clean up for Jason.”
Both anger and apprehension were sprouting in my chest, but I kept my body relaxed and appeared unfazed. I didn’t want her to stop talking. My thumb began to stroke her arm.
“So, I went to his place. He didn’t live far from the alley. And maybe he didn’t deserve what I did. Jason probably deserved what he got, but...”
“But what? What did you do?”
Her voice shook. “I took a baseball bat and shattered every window on his car. I was like a wild freaking animal.”
I stopped breathing for a moment. “You…what?”