ChapterThree
Piper
The Next Morning
My neck hurts. Something lumpy and uncomfortable is digging into my side. I can’t move my legs. They’re being weighed down by a heavy, heated object.
I blink my eyes open, and there’s nothing but white. Holy hell—I’ve gone blind.
I blink. No, wait. It’s a T-shirt. A white T-shirt. It’s moving rhythmically up and down.
Oliver.
My neck hurts because it’s propped up on his bicep. The lump digging into my side is the couch. The heavy thing weighing me down is Oliver’s leg slung over mine. We’re facing each other. I’m on the inside, my back to the sofa, and we’re wrapped around each other like longtime lovers.
I’m snuggling with Oliver. Oliver, the billionaire. Oliver, the man who used his private jet to fly across the country and rescue me from my psychotic ex-boyfriend. Oliver, the most fascinating and intriguing person I’ve ever met, who punched Ben in the face for making a derogatory remark about me. The same Oliver who then let me clean his bloody knuckles and assured me in a low voice that he would never let Ben hurt me again—in a tone that allowed no doubt—all right before he manipulated me and my whole family into going into business with him.
Oliver was dead set on acquiring our family property. He purchased all the parcels around Fox Cottages, and when Finley resisted his offers, he sent in his lackeys to try to convince her to sell. But she wouldn’t, despite the fact that she’d fallen behind on property taxes and the whole place was practically crumbling down around her. She couldn’t let it go. We grew up here. It’s all we have left of our father and Aria.
When Oliver’s normal tactics wouldn’t work, he sent in Archer to try to seal the deal. But Archer and Finley fell in love—and then we found a way to keep the property in our family and retain majority ownership. First, we agreed to turn the property into a camp for at-risk youth, and then, I agreed to create four pieces for Oliver’s gallery in SoHo in exchange for an additional one-percent stake in the summer camp.
I get why he wanted the deal so badly. He was hoping to create something like the type of camp where he met Archer when they were kids. According to Archer, Oliver has no family left. He lost everyone when he was just a child, and the camp was the only place he wasn’t miserable. The goal is admirable even if his methods were a bit calculated.
My heart threatens to beat out of my chest with the combination of anxiety and pleasure surging through my system. Surely, it’s loud enough to wake him up. Carefully, I shift my head to bring my gaze to his face. He’s sleeping.
I take the opportunity to catalogue his features while he’s not in motion. I never get the chance to really scrutinize him. Awake, he’s a force of energy, like a supernova, powerful and enigmatic. When he enters a room, the air prickles with intensity.
Not now. His features are softened with sleep, young and serene. There’s no hint of the domineering and intense presence that surrounds him like a cloak when he’s alert.
My sisters think he’s callous and unfeeling, but I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s the artist in me, searching for beauty in the darkness, wanting to believe after Ben that not all men are monsters. It’s the honesty that gets to me the most. Oliver doesn’t pretend to be anything he’s not. He’s not a liar. Ben lied like it was an art form, a requirement for existence, as necessary as water and sunlight.
After meeting his parents, it was easy to understand why he resorted to lying so frequently. He was an only child, his parents both successful, his mother an attorney, his father a real estate mogul. Both of them demanded perfection in all things. It was no wonder he tossed out lies as if they were confetti and every day was New Year’s Eve.
Oliver, for all his eccentricities and surliness, doesn’t pretend to be someone he isn’t or say things to make himself appear superior or in charge. He doesn’t need to. Sometimes, I catch him watching the rest of us, his face dark and wary, like an apex predator that’s discovered something peculiar and doesn’t know whether to attack or run. He tends to sit just far enough away to listen and observe but not quite close enough to truly be a part of the group.
A door opens and closes in the kitchen. Footsteps tread across the linoleum. Taylor. She slept outside in her VW bus, where she lives most of the time.
I shut my eyes. I’ll pretend I’m still asleep. Maybe she’ll stay in the kitchen. Maybe she won’t come into the living room and ruin this moment. Maybe I can lie here and bask in the fact that I actually slept for more than a few hours for the first time since leaving Ben.
Oliver’s breath changes. He inhales slowly, and then the arm on my waist tightens.
Unable to bear it any longer, I have to look. His eyes meet mine, heavy lidded and fuzzy with sleep. His mouth tilts into a semblance of a smile.
Shock slaps me in the face. He never smiles—even though what he’s giving me now couldn’t be described as a full smile but is more like a twitch of the lips. My stomach flips over three times and then fills with hot liquid want.
Oliver is always so pressed and polished and suited up. Here in the gray light of early morning, a line bisects his cheek from where it was resting on the sofa, he has a dusting of stubble on his jaw, and his hair is rumpled.
Damn. He might be the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. We gaze at each other for an interminable moment. I want to be the one he always gives that little half smile to.
Then his gaze sharpens on me, his eyes widen, and he jerks away, thudding onto the floor.
I sit up. “Are you okay?”
Taylor appears in the doorway from the kitchen. “What was that? Piper?”
He pops to his feet like a shabby billionaire jack-in-the-box.
“Um.” Taylor’s gaze darts between the two of us, and she puts a hand on her hip, laughter in her voice. “Do you care to explain this unconventional sleeping arrangement?”
“Excuse me.” Oliver’s voice is smooth and flat, like we’re in a board meeting and not in my childhood living room after he woke up in my arms and promptly fell off the couch. He swipes his overnight bag off the coffee table and disappears down the hall toward the guest bathroom.
Taylor’s brows hit her hairline. Her eyes are full of mischievous joy when they meet mine. “You’ve got some explaining to do.”