Chapter 22 Caleb
CALEB
Calling James Taylor over feels counterintuitive. I’d rather not have that bastard invading my personal space if I can help it. But if there’s a chance we can have this mess all wrapped up by this afternoon before the kids finish school, I’m taking that chance.
Piper drums her fingers on the table. The silence feels dividing, especially after I told her about my family home and everything.
“Taylor will pass on this information about my father to the authorities.” She finds my eyes. “Are you sure there’s no way to keep him out of this for now?”
“You can tell Taylor about the acetone, but with no sources, he’s unlikely to believe you.”
“He knows about the break-in.”
“Exactly. But only you know who broke in.” I lean forward and capture her uneasy eyes. “Think about Ellie and Sonny. You’ve paid the price for your father repeatedly. You deserve more than him, Hart. You have a good soul and he’s using it to his advantage.”
My hand moves across the table on its own accord, wanting to lace with hers. But I stop myself halfway before I get too carried away. Having sex and being in a relationship are two different things that I need to learn to separate with her.
“This is about you and Sonny, and for the future you want to build together.”
That strikes a chord someplace deep. I retract the hand, and my last sentence rings loud in the quietness between us.
There always used to be a future between me and Piper, but I was childless back then.
I was allowed to dream and be optimistic, and having no responsibilities meant that I could fall head over heels and dedicate everything to the person who made me feel most alive.
“Yeah,” she whispers. “You’re right. Sonny comes first.”
The knock at the door startles us both, even though we’ve been expecting James’s visit.
Piper takes off from her chair. I make sure to follow behind her, like a guard.
“I didn’t burn down my house,” she declares before he even has chance to make it through the door. “That evidence you’re searching for? I have it.”
James looks unfazed, and there’s also a hint of disappointment in his eyes.
“My father has been living in Boston and has acquired a few enemies over the years.” She takes a long breath. It can’t be easy for her to hand in her own parent.
A parent is a parent. I can empathize with that.
“You may speak with him, if you like,” she continues.
“Are we talking about the father you have had no contact with over the past nine years?”
“Yes.”
I place my hand on Piper’s hip and she inhales a sharp breath. I was on the fence about the idea, but she needs to know that I have her back.
As friends.
Mind, the hand is only an inch away from touching her waist—the one I used to love snaking my hands around.
James scrutinizes her, unconvinced. “You mean to tell me that an enemy of your father’s burned down the house?”
“His enemies in Boston think I’ve been living with him.
The man broke into the property the day before the fire—you told me that there were signs of a break-in, remember?
” Desperation creeps into her voice, but she manages to dissolve it with a sigh.
“There was a bottle of acetone, unscrewed, balanced on a pile of documents in my kitchen.”
“As I take it, some of those documents were detailing late mortgage payments.”
When will it be time for me to knock the bastard out?
James continues, “A bottle of acetone alone cannot start the fire. Ask your friend here.” He extends his horrible gaze over to me.
“There needs to be a trigger, and we’re still working on that trigger, Ms. Hart.
” He looks down at me pointedly from his nose.
“Please tell me the truth. Did you, or did you not, start the fire?”
Piper inhales another breath and sticks her hand on her hip, so I’m forced to remove mine. “Yes.”
I tense up.
She did not just say that.
“I wanted a payout, but it was not my intention to start a fire. Besides,” she continues, “nothing would’ve happened if it wasn’t for that spilled acetone.”
James is no longer interested in the rest of it. He consults his pad, jots something down in shorthand, and is on his way. “Thank you for the truth, Ms. Hart.”
He’s not thankful for the truth. It’s the money he’s thanking her for.
Although, I watch James Taylor plod down my lawn and know that money isn’t the only motivation that made him escalate this case to a full investigation. This kind of thing is personal. It always is with fires.
Only, James is taking it a step too far by targeting a woman who only ever wanted to provide for her son.
My hands clench into fists, and then I’m over there, inches away from issuing that punch I’ve been resisting giving him.
“Caleb!” Piper takes off after me.
James is lucky that her touch is enough to freeze my world. The bastard gets away unscathed, for now. But he will be paying the price soon enough.
Birds twitter around us, the beating of wings reminding us that the sun is still shining, and that we’re both here, alive and well, despite the circumstances.
“He’s not gonna take your word for it, Hart. We both know how determined he is.”
Something breaks in her jaw, unleashing tears from her eyes. They spill parallel to each other from both of her eyes, and my stomach flips.
“Nobody’s convicting or charging anyone,” I tell her.
“I confessed, Caleb. You just said that he’s not gonna take anyone’s word for it.”
“We’ll figure something out.” My hand can’t help but touch her again. This time it’s in her hair, stroking through locks that feel even softer than before.
It’s an incredibly intimate moment, but I don’t know how else to comfort her. That’s my problem when it comes to Piper. All I know is how to be her lover. I’ve never known it a different way, and part of me refuses to ever even try.
“You’re staying in my house.”
The energy shifts around us. Every cloud has a silver lining, and this particular lining is uplifting—Piper and Sonny get to stay at mine a while longer.
The small smile on her face indicates that she also feels the same uplifted way.
There are many ways she could respond to me, “okay” and “thanks” being just a few. But the smile extends on her beautiful face, lifting the apples of her cheeks as she says, “Good.”
Planting a reassuring kiss to her lips feels natural, but I refrain for now and take us both inside. “On another note, I’m going to pick up the kids.”
“At lunchtime?”
“Until we have your father and his stalker handled, I need Ellie and Sonny to be where I can see them.”
I grab my keys from the bowl and head out, but not before planting an accidental kiss to Piper’s forehead—a force of habit from before. We lock eyes for a fraction of a second, but I force myself out of the door before the lingering becomes dangerous.
Shit.
I jump into the car and speed away.