Page 17 of The Ones We Fight For

A choked sob escaped her throat, and she leaned forward to hug him. Walker kept his breathing steady and looked up at the ceiling to make sure gravity wouldn’t let the tears building in his eyes fall as he squeezed her back. “I can help you with all the things you’ve been doing lately.” Piper let go, giving Walker a small, forced smile.

“What will help me is if you focus on healing yourself.” Walker shook his head, recentering himself. “Don’t worry about me. I need you to one, never give Harden the time of day again—actually, no, I’m your guardian now, and I’m telling you that you are not allowed to see him again. If you pass him in the hallways at school, your only form of communication with him will be a middle finger, you got me?”

“Okay,” Piper snorted.

“Two,” Walker held up a second finger. “You are going to therapy. I will set up an appointment for you, which, given the date of Carter’s, will be a month out because apparently this country’s obsession with instant gratification does not extend to useful things. You know what, now that I’m thinking about it, I think I’ll make therapy mandatory for all of you.”

“Are you going to go?” Piper inquired with a tilt of her head.

“I don’t have time, and I’m fine. Do as I say, not as I do.” Walker pointed at Piper, then lifted three of his fingers. “Next is your punishment, which… I am not sure what that should be. Any ideas?”

Piper gaped at him. “You’re asking me how I think I should be punished?”

“Yes,” Walker decided. “You come up with something fair, and I will approve it. I get veto power if I think it’s underwhelming.”

Piper tapped her finger against her lips in thought, tilting her head back and forth. Walker waited patiently, hoping that whatever she came up with would be better than the blank slate in his head. The only thing he could think of was taking her phone away, but then he wouldn’t be able to get ahold of her and she wouldn’t be able to get ahold of her siblings, which would cause his anxiety to skyrocket.

“I think…” Piper finally spoke, slowly at first. “I’m grounded, for one, in addition to never seeing Harden—”

“Can we give him a rude nickname or something?” Walker interrupted. “May I suggest ‘dickwad’ or ‘fuckwit?’”

Piper burst into laughter, falling back onto her pillows. He was happy that she found something amusing, even though he was dead serious about the nickname. It was the first time he had heard her laugh since her parents passed, and it gave him a modicum of pride that he had been the one to bring back her happy-go-lucky attitude.

Smiling back at her, he shrugged and doubled down. “What? Do you want to combine them? Does dickwit or fuckwad sound better?”

It had the desired effect. Walker watched his niece crumple into a heap of laughter, and he couldn’t help but let out a laugh of his own. It wasn’t even that he thought giving a teenage asshole a clever nickname was funny, but rather that everything else he was dealing with was so overwhelming, laughter was the only way to live with it. When the hilarity died down, he coughed loudly to clear his throat and wiped at his watering eyes.

“So, the punishment?” Walker motioned for Piper to continue.

“Right.” Piper sat up and took a deep breath. “In additional to never seeing that dickwit again—”

“Ah, good choice.” Walker grinned in approval.

“Thank you.” Piper bowed her head dramatically in a sitting curtsey before straightening her spine. “I think I’m grounded from going out with anyone other than family. And… I have to do everyone’s laundry for three weeks?”

“Yes to the grounding, no to the laundry,” Walker said immediately. “How about instead of that, you go grocery shopping with me and cook the food for the next two weeks?”

And dear God, please do not go near my laundry.

“That sounds like more of a reward considering the chicken parm incident,” Piper snarked.

“Okay, it wasn’t that burnt,” Walker protested. “You also have to clean the bathrooms, and if you continue to dress the way you have been dressing I will have something to say about it.” Piper opened her mouth like a stunned fish, and Walker held up his hand in a stop position to cut off whatever she was about to say. “And no, I don’t care if you think I’m a hypocrite. You are sixteen and you need to be acting and dressing like you’re sixteen. Your dad probably would have had my head for letting you leave the house in whatever the hell you were wearing yesterday. Not to mention, you haven’t looked even remotely comfortable lately, Piper. You used to wear dresses and knit sweaters every day. It feels very off for everything to change so drastically. You can go back to dressing however you want when you’re out of this house because you’ll be an adult, but for now, you need to cool it on the fishnets and weird wrap shirt thing that was barely a shirt before I start getting calls from the school about it.”

“I didn’t realize that you noticed.” Piper sighed. “I’ll go back to my ‘I’m a valedictorian who gets no action’ attire. Harden just said I was dressing too… never mind.”

“No action,” Walker repeated. “That’s exactly what I like tohear. And it's probably best that you didn't finish that sentence. I'm not above murdering Dickwit, especially if he suggested you dress differently than you normally do. He’s going to start dressing with his underwear halfway up his asshole if he ever suggests that again.”

“Okay,” Piper chuckled, but nodded in agreement before gingerly massaging her temples with her fingers, obviously taken aback by how much it hurt to move. “Can I… sleep a little more?”

“I guess I can let you sleep for a few more hours. Set your alarm for nine-thirty and be ready by ten. And when you get up, take a shower and change your sheets. You smell like you bathed in beer and vomit.” Walker waved his hand in front of his nose and stood up from the bed, grabbing the empty glass to refill it in Piper’s bathroom before he left her to her own devices.

“Hey, Walker?” Piper called out as he was halfway through the doorway.

“Yeah?” He looked back over his shoulder.

“Thank you.”

“It’s just water, but you’re welcome.”

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