Page 14 of Grateful for You
Mason
At some point, Piper and I made it upstairs to my bedroom. It wasn’t until I glanced up from kissing her and caught the time on the clock on the bedside table that I realized how late it was. We hadn’t finished cooking until almost eleven. And now? I couldn’t get enough of her.
I brushed her wild hair from her face. “You must be exhausted.”
She shook her head. “I’m really not. I feel…alive.”
That single word sent a lightning bolt straight to my heart. When I met Piper, only a few hours ago, she had seemed so wary. Not necessarily skittish… but cautiously aware and maybe a little afraid. It was the polar opposite to the woman lying beside me right now. “Tell me something about you,” I said.
Her face dropped, her expression sagging as she pointed to her bruise. “Something about how this happened?”
I caught her hand in mine, dropping a kiss to her fingertip. The rigid point softened with my touch. “Eventually, when you’re ready, yeah. I want to know about that. But why don’t we start with something easier? For now.” I paused when she didn’t say anything, then tried again. “What do you do for work?”
Her lip trembled, and she caught it quickly between her teeth. “I used to be a real estate agent. I was good, too. Really good.”
“What happened?”
“Myexhappened.” She sniffled and sat up on the bed, crossing her legs. “That’s the thing… I can’t even talk about myself in a general sense without him coming up as part of the topic. There wasn’t a piece of my freaking life that he wasn’t entrenched in. There wasn’t a piece of my life that he didn’t somehow destroy.”
I swallowed and sat up as well, mirroring her position, and placed my palms over her trembling hands. “What did he do?”
“He and I met a year after my dad died, and we were both starting at this really big real estate agency. He wanted to team up, work together on selling homes since we were new, and split the commission. He was a little older than me and so charismatic, it seemed like a good idea. A way to learn from someone with a tad more experience than myself. And then… when he started hitting on me…” She paused, her face twisting. “Are you sure you want to hear all this?”
My stomach roiled, but she needed to talk this out. And whatever Piper needed, I needed too. With gritted teeth, I nodded. “Go on.”
“Our relationship started off great—a whirlwind. And I was so enamored by him, I didn’t see the way he was taking all the credit for our sales. He always seemed to talk me into signing the agreements with me as the junior agent and him as the lead agent… even though I did most of the work and most of the open houses.” She gulped, the delicate line of her throat tightening. “Even his agent tagline was originally mine. And he told me it was too bold, too masculine for a realtor like me. So, he used it instead.”
“What was it?”
She scoffed a laugh and shook her head despite herself. “The market speaks to every seller… you just have to be listening.”
I smiled softly, giving her hands a squeeze. “It’s a good tagline.”
“Yeah… it was. When it came time to hand out promotions, he got one. And I got laid off. But my parting gift was that he asked me to marry him. Everything was fine for a few weeks until he started asking if I was going to diet for the wedding. Asking if I should order a side salad instead of fries.”
My lungs pinched as rage fueled me. Piper wasstunning. And she was stunningbecauseof her body, not despite it. Who the fuck was this guy? I wanted to find him and tear him apart.
A single tear fell from her dark eyes, trailing a path down her cheek. I caught it with my forefinger and nodded for her to continue. My boiling anger wasn’t going to help Piper right now. She needed me to listen… to be here… and that was it. That was my sole job.
“Well, you can imagine how it progressed from there. When he started getting physical, it wasn’t hitting me at first. It started smaller… holding my wrist and yanking me around. Pushing me when he’d had too much to drink and was angry. In a rage, he’d throw things in my general direction. The first time one of those things hit me, he cried. He promised he didn’t mean to do that… but sure enough, it happened again.”
I brushed my knuckle gently over her bruise. “And this?”
She pressed her palm over the bruise, covering it as though I hadn’t seen it a hundred times tonight already. “This was the first time he ever hit me somewhere that the bruise would be visible to others. He was really drunk—not that that’s an excuse—just an example of how sloppy he got. Because he was so calculated with his abuse of me up until last night. And when he threw his cell phone and hit Athena… that was my real wake up call.” She gave a self-deprecating chuckle and shook her head. “That’s stupid, isn’t it?”
“That’s not stupid, Piper. Athena deserves better.Youdeserve better.”
She nodded. Her single tear had long since dried and she sat straighter, spine tall, wearing a confidence that was sexier than any negligee. “I know that. It took a while to learn it, but I know it now. I had to wait until he left for work to pack as quickly as I could and leave. Knowing he was at the office for a few hours was my best bet to get a head start on running.”
“And you think he’s coming after you?”
She nodded. “Oh, I know he is. He’s not the kind of man who watches something that’s his slip through his fingers.”
A single question nagged at my heart. “Why didn’t you call the police?”
Another scoffed laugh. “His best friend is the chief of police. No allegation I made would be taken seriously there.”
I leaned over to my nightstand, pulling out a small can of pepper spray and placing it in her palm. “Keep this with you. Always. It’s police grade pepper spray. It won’t do any lasting damage, but it should buy you enough time to get away.”
