17. Dalton
CHAPTER 17
Dalton
P iper’s been living in our house for eight days. The water heater ended up being her worst-case scenario, and it won’t be fixed for another month. So she’s here. With us. And it’s been eight days.
Eight days where she’s been withdrawn, comparatively.
Sometimes she sleeps in my bed. But she’s always asleep when I get in there, because I’ve been working my ass off trying to make the bay mare less of a mean-spirited animal. By the time she wakes up, I’m already gone, back to working with the animals.
Somehow, we keep losing each other. She comes to take pictures. She eats meals with us. She sleeps. And nothing fucking happens beyond that.
I know that she and Tate and Brent got together. I know she hasn’t asked me for more. And neither have they. And every day that goes by feels like fucking torture.
There’s a little voice in my mind that lives there, more or less perpetually. It sounds a hell of a lot like my uncle, and it only has one message.
No one fucking wants you.
Some days it’s easy to ignore. Some days it’s not. And every day that I know Piper and Brent and Tate aren’t letting me get close to them…
Yeah. It’s fucking hard to ignore.
Today, I decide that I’m just going to sleep out in the barn. Fuck it. If they want to go on without me, they’re fucking welcome to do that. I’m not about to ruin their fucking happy life with my miserable ass.
The sleeping bag is set up in the corner, and I’m inspecting for bugs and shit when I hear someone at the barn door. I look over, surprised to find Piper there. She looks at the sleeping bag, then up at me.
“Um. Is everything okay with the horses?”
I nod.
Piper gives the sleeping bag another pointed look. “So… why are you sleeping out here?”
I shrug. Even on my best days, I’m not good with words. Right now, I have none.
No one fucking wants you .
Ah. I do have some words. They’re just not the best.
Piper’s eyebrows wrinkle, and she bites her lips. I try to ignore how pretty they are. How I know what she tastes like. How I know the noises she makes when she comes…
“Dalton. Why the heck are you sleeping in the barn?”
I want to shrug her off. To lie to her. To do anything except tell her the truth.
We agree to tell the truth.
Goddam it, Tate.
I take a deep breath. “Because you and Tate and Brent don’t want me.”
Piper blinks. “What?”
“You. The three of you. You’ve got a thing going now. It’s okay, and I don’t mind, but still… don’t want to be in the middle of something that’s your thing.”
Piper stares at me. Then, understanding slowly dawns in her eyes.
“Dalton. I… shoot,” she whispers.
I look down at my hands. Here it comes. The conversation that will inevitably lead to the end of this.
It’s not you. It’s me. It’s just that Tate and Brent are so much more expressive. I don’t know what you’re thinking. You never talk. No one wants you, Dalton.
“Dalton. I had my period,” Piper whispers.
I freeze.
“I came out here to find you because I’ve been worried about you. I haven’t been, um… in the mood for anything, and I felt like you were taking that kind of hard. So I came out here to talk and see if something was wrong.”
Blinking, all I can do is stare at her.
Piper’s eyebrows are pinched together with worry. “I thought you were mad at me, and so I didn’t understand what I’d done wrong. I thought it might be that you heard us the other night, and I wanted to explain?—”
“Nothin’ to explain,” I say.
Piper shakes her head.
“I was afraid of this.” Her voice is thick with tears.
The sound of Piper on the verge of crying wakes up every nerve in my body. I stand, moving over to her side as fast as I can. When she looks up at me, her lashes are thick with moisture.
Fuck. Now I made her cry, too? “Piper…”
“I was afraid that you’d feel like I was picking one of you. Like I had a preference. I was working so hard to make sure things were equal, and then they weren’t, and now look at you,” she sniffles. She waves to the sleeping bag. “I literally drove you to sleep in a barn.”
I like sleeping in the barn. “Piper…”
“I’m sorry!” she sobs. She turns, flinging her arms around me. “I’m sorry, Dalton! I ruined this, and I can’t stand that I ruined it!”
I hug her close. Piper smells so fucking good. Like oranges, somehow. She’s always made my mouth water, every time I hold her.
Tugging her close, I breathe in the citrus smell of her.
“Dalton, I’m sorry. I really am. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“You didn’t,” I mumble.
She pulls back, her eyes shining. “Tell the truth.”
Fuck. She caught me there. “I thought you might like them more.”
Goddamn it. That truth fucking hurts.
Piper’s eyes are round. “Dalton. No.”
“You… we… there’s no schedule, and no rules, and?—”
The rest of my words are lost. Taken. By Piper’s lips on mine.
At first, I’m so shocked that she’s kissing me that I don’t know what to do. Then, I figure it the fuck out.
My hands hold her close, tugging her scalp so that I can pull her head back and deepen the kiss. In my arms, Piper moans, and the sound goes straight to my cock.
She pulls back, and I reluctantly let her. Piper smiles, rubbing the tears off of her cheeks. My thumb follows, wiping away the last line of them.
I look at her. “I thought you said no kissing.”
“I did.”
“You kissed me.”
“I did.”
I feel like there’s something I’m missing. “Why?”
“Because Dalton, I think that kissing is probably not the thing that’s going to change our relationship. I almost ruined it by not talking to you. And you need to tell me when you’re feeling like this,” she murmurs. “I know that sometimes it’s hard for you to express how you feel. But I’m not psychic. If you need something from me, or want me to tell you what’s going on… you have to ask me.”
I gulp. “What if I don’t?”
Piper frowns. “Like, what if you forget?”
I nod.
“Then I’ll be here when you remind me.” Piper puts her hands around my neck again, and she pulls me in close. “But you have to tell me, Dalton. I’ll never know unless you do.”
I breathe in Piper’s smell. The voice inside me goes quiet. And in my heart, I feel something else.
Peace.
The sleeping bag gets bundled up. Piper holds my hand as we walk back to the house. And inside, Tate’s made some kind of chicken that smells incredible. I toss the sleeping bag down on the couch, and Brent gives it a look.
“Going camping?” he asks.
I shake my head.
Piper smiles. “Dalton was convinced that he would be better off sleeping in the barn.”
“He does smell like a horse’s ass about thirty percent of the time,” Tate yells from the kitchen.
“Fuck you, Kirkland,” I yell back.
“Not your job, Winchester, but I appreciate the offer.”
Brent raises his hands. “Jesus. Can we have a civil dinner without the two of you hurling insults?”
“I think that might be achievable,” Piper says
Brent smiles at her, and I feel myself smile, too. I still feel… disconnected. Tate and Brent are my family, and I was prepared to walk the fuck away… because of Piper.
I don’t know what to do with that. I’m grateful that she didn’t agree and send me packing to sleep in the barn, but I also don’t know what to do about the fact that my feelings run so deep for her, I was willing to walk away from my brothers over it. That feels unsettling.
As the four of us sit around the dinner table, Tate serves the food, and Piper starts to talk about the preparations for the Harvest Bash in a few months. June is fast slipping away, and when July comes around, she points out we’ll only be a month or so out.
“What we need,” Piper says, looking at the three of us after dinner is done, “is something to go viral.”
I blink. Piper, noticing my confusion, gives me a little nudge. “We need something to really climb the charts. We need to have people notice the farm, and we need it to get a lot of hype before we show off everything we’re offering at the Harvest Bash booth.”
“I thought we’ve been doing that?” Brent grumbles.
Piper shakes her head. “Our regular posts are getting pretty good reach. But we should look at the most recent ones and see which ones are getting the best, even if it’s not quite viral yet.”
All of this is starting to go over my head. I let my mind wander, thinking of different exercises to do with the mare tomorrow.
“Dalton. Did you hear that?”
I freeze. “What?”
Piper’s lips are smiling. “I think you’re the best bet to go viral.”
I look around, but everyone is staring at me. “Me?”
“Yeah. Watching you with the horses is kind of… magical. It’s like you speak the same language. I want to use that for a short video. I’ve already picked out the sound that it would go with, and I think that if we got you to do the horse thing, we’d be able to get a lot of traction toward building momentum at the Harvest Bash.”
In my mind, these words don’t make any sense. However, Piper’s staring at me like she’s waiting for my permission, so I give it to her.
“Okay.”
She grins. “Great! I’ll come get the footage in the morning, when the light is really nice in the back paddock.”
I frown. “How do you know that I’ve been working mostly in the back paddock?”
Piper gives me a look. “Because I follow you out there almost every day?”
“Do you?”
“I don’t always say hi, but I do. Because it’s cool,” she says.
I can’t believe that.
“I follow all of you around. Because you’re all part of this business, but also… you’re good at what you do. It’s sexy.”
My blood starts to heat.
“Sexy?” Brent repeats.
Piper nods. She bites her lip, looking at all three of us.
“I should probably let you know that I kissed Dalton.”
I look away, nervous about what is going to happen.
Tate whistles. “Damn, baby. Breaking all the rules and then some, I see.”
“Shut up, Tate,” Brent grumbles at him.
But Piper just shrugs. “Look, if we want to be friends and do… this, then I kind of figure kissing isn’t the thing that’s going to send us over the edge, you know? Like, when we kissed, it wasn’t the end of the world.”
“Why did you kiss him?” Brent growls.
Piper gives him a sassy look. “Because I wanted to.”
Tate looks like someone just told him his birthday was cancelled. “And you don’t want to kiss me?”
Piper rolls her eyes, the stands. She moves over to Tate, straddling him, and he quickly scoots his chair back to accommodate her. She settles into his lap and tips his head back. The long kiss that she gives Tate makes my body go hard, and blood rushes straight to my cock.
“I want to kiss you, too,” she whispers to Tate.
Then, she moves over to Brent. She doesn’t sit on his lap, presumably because of the still-healing bruised rib, and she puts another kiss… right on his lips. Brent grunts, his hands coming up to pull back her hair. He deepens the kiss, and by the time he’s done, we’re all panting.
Piper stands, looking at the three of us.
“I want you. All of you. No competitions. No games. There’s no world where I could choose just one of you, so I want you to know that I would never choose one of you. No matter what, it’s all of you,” she murmurs.
Then, leaving us in stunned silence, she heads up the stairs.
The sound of her footsteps creaking on the second floor above us makes all three of us look at each other.
Tate’s the one who speaks first. “Should we take bets on whose room she’s in?”
Brent shakes his head. “No. But if I get there first, you fuckers have to wait your turn.”
He practically overturns the table as he gets up.
Tate and I follow, Tate shouting as he goes. Running up the stairs, I grin.
If Piper wants all of us, then she’s about to fucking have us all.