Page 149 of Tangled Kisses
“She wanted to marry you,” Piper adds faintly. “She told me she’d give you the four damn kids you wanted so bad. You know she never wanted kids until she met you.”
The words cut so deep I can barely breathe.
“She—she never told me that,” I rasp, my voice raw.
“It’s true,” Piper whispers. “She adored you. Hell, that morning, we were joking about her drinking wine before you knocked her up. Does that sound like a woman who doesn’t want you?”
Images flash through my mind like a slideshow I can’t turn off—her soft laugh as she slid into my lap, the shy smile she gave me the night we danced in the kitchen, the way she reached for my hand when she thought no one was looking.
The kiss on my cheek before she walked away forever.
She was too calm.
Too controlled.
Not Reese.
Definitely not my girl.
Piper grips my arm. “Tell me what happened. The last time you talked to her.”
I blink through the haze in my head, forcing the words out like they’re made of concrete. “She was cold. Not angry. Not crying. Just monotone. Like she’d flipped a switch.”
I swallow hard, my voice breaking. “She said it had been fun. But now it was over. And then, she left. Withhim. Told me to stay away from them.”
My knees give, and I drop onto the couch, hands shaking as I try to hold on to something—anything—that makes this make sense.
Piper sits next to me, giving me a shake. “Griffin—think. Do you believe she’d clean out her savings for a man she didn’t care about?”
Her words slice through me, and I flash back to that moment in the ballroom—the flicker in her eyes before she looked away. Bright, desperate, terrified. For a heartbeat, I’d thought it was aimed at me. At the fury I’d unleashed on her fiancé.
But what if it wasn’t?
“She kept saying it was what she wanted,” I murmur, the memory rubbing rough against my heart.
“Or that’s what he told her to say.”
“Jesus Christ. What is going on?”
Piper crouches in front of me, her hands braced on my knees. “It’s okay. We’re going to get her back, Griffin.”
I rake my fingers over my scalp, my heart pounding. “I—I need to go. Catch the first flight to New York. I don’t need to shower. I’ll just go like this?—”
“Griffin,” Piper cuts in, standing. “You reek. They won’t let you anywhere near a plane like that. Go shower. I’ll make a few calls.”
I nod, stumbling toward the bathroom. “Okay. I’ll be fast.”
The water scalds me back to life, but it doesn’t wash away the panic twisting my insides.
I’ve rinsed off the stink of a hundred nights with strangers, but this feels different. This isn’t sweat or smoke or sex I’m washing off—it’s Reese’s absence, burned into my skin. And no matter how hard I scrub, it won’t come clean. I should already be on a plane to New York. I should already be pounding on doors, dragging her back.
Instead, I’m standing here, wasting time wondering about the truth in her words.
Wondering if I have it in me to shatter my heart a second time.
When I step out, dressed but barely cognizant, Piper’s holding my phone out toward me. “It keeps going off,” she says. “Someone named Pearl?”
“Shit,” I mutter, grabbing it from her hand. “That’s my sister.”
