Page 25 of Perfectly Accidental

Chapter Five

A First Degree Burn. Maybe.

“It’s not my fucking job,” I snarled at Mum, but quietly enough that Maddy wouldn’t hear.

“Roman, please,” she hissed back. “She just wants to get to know you.”

I shrugged wildly, already backing away for the door. “Not. My. Fucking. Job.”

Mum looked at me with wide eyes and I knew she’d have some choice words that she wanted to hurl at me, but Maddy walked into the room.

“Uncie Roman?” she asked.

I shook my head at Mum. “Sorry, Mads,” I told her, not looking at her. “I’ve gotta go out.”

“Oh, okay…” she said softly.

I almost caved, but I was close to boiling over and I needed to get out before I did or said something I couldn’t take back. Maddy might have been a Lombardi, but she deserved better than that.

“I’ll see you later,” I huffed before crashing out the back door and jumping in my car.

I found myself heading for the lake at the bottom of the property. For no other reason than that I needed some quiet before I lost myself in the noise of alcohol and some unnamed strange.

As I pulled up to the lakeshore, a figure sat up to look at me and I very nearly threw the ute in reverse to get out of there quick. Then I recognised the figure glaring at me rather more impressively than I’d ever seen before.

“If it isn’t Little Miss Popular herself,” I muttered to myself as I shut off the engine and got out. She was facing back to the lake by the time I walked up to her. “Well, well, Barlow. A pleasant surprise,” I told her.

“Wish I could say the same, Lombardi,” she replied. I heard the annoyance in her voice and still dropped down beside her.

At the thought of annoying the absolute crap out of her with no one else in sight, my mood was already feeling just a little less sour. I told myself it had nothing to do with the fact that she smelled like peaches and warmth, or that she drew me in like the burning flame of just…something that was all her.

“Do you mind?” she asked.

I shrugged as I flicked the hair from my face and tried to work out what she was so heavily invested in out over the water. “Not particularly.”

After her previous words, I’d expected scathing Piper. I’d expected her to hit me with those choice words I knew she’d been thinking over the last few weeks – or, let’s face it, much longer than that. But she said nothing. She just drew her legs up to her chest and hugged them as though, if she made herself as small as possible, she might not exist anymore. The last thing I wanted was for Piper Barlow to not exist anymore.

Time to poke some buttons.

“I’d have thought you had better things to do than sit out here by yourself,” I said lazily. I fingered a stone, turned it in my hand a couple of times, then skimmed it out over the water of the lake.

The ripples reflected the moonlight and there was something almost magical about it. Had I been such a nancy wanker.

After the stone sank, she snapped, “Because I’m a loser now?”

I kept the full force of my humour to myself. “No. Trust you to take everything I say as an insult.”

“I could have gone if I’d wanted.” She sounded unnecessarily defensive. Like she wasn’t just telling me, she was reminding herself.

“Of course you could have,” I agreed. “It’s not like I’m there either.”

“Were you even invited?” There was less contempt in her voice than I’d have liked. It was far too much question.

“I don’t need to be invited, Barlow.”

And I didn’t. I was the guy no one invited, but everyone hoped would turn up anyway. If I was there, it was considered a success. What no one had stopped to consider was that I’d just never pass up free booze and little to no parental supervision. And yet, somehow, for a guy who made it clear he gave zero shits about people in general, my appearance at a party was some kind of bar for coolness. It wasn’t cool. It was a means to an end. Namely my end. Drunk and fucked.

“No, you just show up where you’re not wanted like…” Her tirade petered out to a very unimpressive stop, and I was so desperate to hear more that I honest to God almost laughed.

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