Chapter 39 Piper
Ishould have closed the door.
Should have told him to leave, that we had nothing to talk about, that I was done pretending any of this could work.
Instead, I stepped back and let him in, which was probably the worst decision I'd made all week.
Considering I'd spent Tuesday night eating pad thai while planning imaginary confrontations, that was saying something.
He moved past me into my apartment, bringing the November cold with him, and suddenly the space felt impossibly small.
Too intimate. Him in his uniform, me with flour dust on my shirt from this morning's baking, the chocolate-espresso cake sitting in my fridge like evidence of my own stupidity, the ghost of every conversation we'd ever had hovering between us.
I closed the door. Wrapped my arms around myself like that would somehow hold all the breaking pieces together.
"Piper," he said, and his voice was so careful it made my chest ache.
"You need to leave."
"No." He didn’t sound aggressive, just certain. The kind of certain that used to make me feel safe and now just made me tired. "Not until you tell me what I did wrong."
"You didn't—" I stopped. Pressed my fingers against my eyes hard enough to see spots. "Just go, Liam. Please."
"I can't." He shifted his weight, and I could hear the exhaustion in the movement.
"Things were good. We were good. And then suddenly you won't even look at me.
So either I did something or you're scared, and I need to know which one it is.
" He took a step closer, then seemed to think better of it and stopped.
"Is this about the other night? At the bakery? "
I looked up at that. "What?"
"When I almost kissed you." He ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up in ways that would have been endearing if I wasn't currently trying hard not to fall apart.
"I've been thinking about it all week. I pushed too hard.
Asked for something you weren't ready to give. And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
The apology landed wrong. All of it landed wrong.
"That's not—"
"I'm just happy to be in your life at all, Piper.
Even if it's just coffee a few times a week.
Even if it's just you tolerating me at the hardware store while I stare at paint swatches like an idiot.
" His voice cracked slightly. "I don't want to lose that.
I don't want to lose you again because I couldn't wait, because I wanted too much too soon. "
Something hot and sharp twisted in my chest. He sounded so sincere... so worried. Like he actually believed he was the problem here.
But it also sounded like he was trying to manage me. Manage the situation. Keep all his pieces in play.
"So if I fucked this up," he continued, "if I made things weird, just tell me how to fix it. I'll back off. I'll give you whatever space you need. Just don't disappear on me. Please."
The word "please" did it.
Something in me snapped.
"Stop," I said.
He blinked. "What?"
"Just stop." My voice came out harder than I meant it to. "Stop apologizing. Stop with the concerned routine. Stop acting like you don’t know what’s happening when we both know—"
"I don't know." He looked genuinely confused, which somehow made it worse. "That's why I'm here. Because I don't understand what changed."
"What changed?" The laugh that escaped me was ugly. Bitter. "What changed is that I saw you."
"Saw me?"
"On your birthday." The words felt like they were being pulled out of me with fishhooks. "In the parking lot at the station. With her."
His face went blank. "With who?"
"Don't." I held up a hand. "Don't do that. Don't play dumb. The woman, Liam. The woman you were standing way too close to. The one who touched your arm. The one you were smiling at like—" My throat closed up. "The one who got you a gift."
Understanding started to dawn in his eyes, but I was already moving, already talking, months and months of carefully controlled pain spilling out all at once.
"I baked you a cake." My voice was shaking now. "I spent four hours making your favorite cake. I unblocked your number. I texted you happy birthday like some pathetic—" I pressed my palms against my eyes. "And the whole time you were already with someone else."
"Piper, that's not—"
"Is this what you did with Jenna?" The question came out raw. "Kept me thinking everything was fine while you were seeing her? Coming home, kissing me goodnight, all while you were—"
"No. God, no." He took a step toward me.
I stepped back. "How many this time? Just her? Or am I the idiot again, thinking I'm special when really I'm just convenient?"
"You're not—"
"I almost let you kiss me!" The words came out too loud, echoing off the walls of my small apartment. "I stood there in my bakery and almost let you kiss me, and the whole time you were—what? Juggling? Keeping your options open? Making sure you had a backup plan in case I didn't work out?"
"Piper, stop." His voice was soft but firm, cutting through my spiral. "Just stop for a second and—"
"No. You stop." Tears were streaming down my face and I didn't care anymore.
Didn't care that I was falling apart in front of him, didn't care that I was proving exactly how much he could still hurt me.
"You stop acting like you're the victim here.
Like you're the one who got hurt. You cheated on me, Liam.
For months. While I was planning our wedding.
While I was picking out flowers and addressing invitations and being so stupidly, blindly happy. "
"I know—"
"And I forgave you!" The words ripped out of me.
"Not out loud, not officially, but I did.
I let you back in. I let myself believe that maybe you'd changed, that maybe we could—" My voice broke completely.
"And you're doing it again. You're doing the exact same thing and I'm the idiot who didn't see it coming. "
"I'm not." He moved toward me and this time I didn't step back because there was nowhere left to go.
My back hit the counter and he stopped just short of touching me, his hands hovering near my arms like he was afraid I'd shatter.
"Piper, I swear to God, I'm not seeing anyone.
I'm not doing what you think I'm doing."
"Then who was she?" I looked up at him through tears. I sounded deranged, but I didn’t care. "Who was the woman in the parking lot?"
"That was Allison Jones.”
The name meant nothing to me. "Who?"
"From Channel 7. She's a journalist.” He was talking fast now, urgent. “She did a piece on the station a few months ago, and I looked up her number.” He hesitated. “I… I pitched a story about local businesses thriving despite big chain competition. About Rise & Shine specifically. About you."
I stared at him. My brain couldn't process the words in any order that made sense.
“She didn’t give me a gift,” he continued. “The bag you saw… I brought it for her. Samples from your bakery. Cinnamon rolls, croissants, and those lemon lavender cupcakes that—" He stopped. Reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. "Here. Look."
He held it out to me, hands shaking slightly.
I took it. The screen showed a text thread with a contact labeled “Allison Jones - Channel 7."
The most recent message was from yesterday:
Just tried the samples. AMAZING. My producer is 100% in. I need Piper's number ASAP so we can schedule the shoot!
Yeah, of course. Just... maybe don't mention I'm the one who reached out? I don't want her to think I'm overstepping.
Got it. Anonymous tipster. But seriously, this place is gold. Perfect timing with Small Business Saturday coming up.
I scrolled up with trembling fingers. Saw messages from weeks ago. Him pitching the story. Her asking questions. Logistics about meeting on his birthday. Him confirming he'd bring samples from Rise & Shine.
All of it. Right there. Timestamped and real.
"You were helping me," I said. It wasn’t a question. It was a realization, one that felt like the floor was dropping out from under me.
"I wanted to." His voice was so quiet I almost didn't hear it. "But I didn't want you to feel like I was trying to fix things for you. Or that you owed me anything. I just… Sweet Dreams is hurting your business and I thought maybe this could help. And you'd never have to know it came from me."
The apartment was too quiet. Just us and the truth hanging between us and the ruins of every assumption I'd made.
"I thought..." My voice came out broken. "I thought you were seeing her."
"I know."
"I thought… I thought you were doing it again."
"I know." He took the phone from my shaking hands, set it on the counter. "And I don't blame you for thinking that. After what I did, after how I—" He stopped. "You had every reason to assume the worst."
"I'm sorry." The words came out choked. "God, Liam, I'm so sorry."
"You don't have to—"
"I do." I was crying harder now, but different.
Not angry anymore, just devastated by my own assumptions, by how close I'd come to throwing this away over nothing.
"I baked you a cake. I spent hours making your favorite cake and then I saw you with her and I just—I couldn't do it again. I couldn't be the fool again."
"You're not a fool." His hands finally came up, hovering near my face like he was still afraid to touch me. "You were protecting yourself."
"I was hiding." The admission broke something open in my chest. "I was so scared. I wanted to believe you'd changed but I was terrified that you hadn't, that I was just—"
"I have changed." He said it with such quiet certainty that I had to look up and meet his eyes. "I am changing. Every day. It's not perfect and I'm not perfect but I'm trying, Piper. I'm trying so fucking hard."
His hands were still hovering, still waiting for permission.
I reached up and caught one, pressed it against my cheek. His palm was warm and rough and steady.
"I saw you with her and all I could think was that I'd let myself hope." My voice cracked. "That I'd opened the door and you were going to hurt me again and I wouldn't survive it this time."
"I would never—" He stopped, swallowed hard. "I know I don't get to say that. But Piper, I swear to you, there's no one else."
"I know."
"There hasn't been anyone else since you." His other hand came up to cup my face, both palms cradling me now like I was something precious. "It's only been you. It's always been you."
The words hit me like a physical thing. Like something that could break and mend at the same time.
We were standing so close. Close enough that I could see the gold flecks in his eyes, could feel his breath on my face, could count the days of exhaustion written in the lines around his mouth.
"Liam," I whispered.
"Yeah?"
I didn't have words for what I needed to say. For the hope and terror and want that was tangled up in my chest. So I just reached up, slid my hand around the back of his neck, and pulled him down to me.
He met me halfway.
The kiss was nothing like I remembered. It wasn't soft or gentle or careful.
It was desperate and messy and real. Months of loss and longing compressed into a single moment.
His hands tightened on my face, angling me closer, and I made some sound that might have been his name or might have just been relief.
God, I’d forgotten this. How he tasted like coffee and something else that was just him. How his hands knew exactly where to touch. How my body remembered his even when my brain was still catching up.
We broke apart just long enough to breathe, foreheads pressed together, both of us shaking.
"I'm still scared," I admitted against his mouth.
"Me too." His thumb traced my cheekbone, wiping away tears I didn't know were still falling. "But I'm not going anywhere. Not unless you tell me to."
"Don't go."
"I won't."
I kissed him again. Slower this time but no less desperate. His hands slid from my face to my waist, pulling me flush against him, and I went willingly. Let myself press into the solid warmth of him, let myself want this without the voice in my head screaming warnings.
When we broke apart again, we were both breathing hard. My apartment felt warmer. Charged with something that had been building for months.
"Piper." His voice was rough. Wrecked. "If we're doing this, if we're really doing this, I need you to be sure."
"I'm not sure about anything," I said honestly. "Except that I don't want you to leave."
Heat and tenderness and hunger flashed across his face.
"Then I'm staying."
He kissed me again and this time I didn't think about the past or the fear or the ways this could go wrong.
I just let myself fall.