2 #3
“She said… not to tell you.” Piper can barely get the words out, she’s sobbing so hard. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do. I betrayed her.”
She melts into tears while Quill shushes her, his eyes still throwing daggers in my direction.
“Okay, Piper. Okay.” I reach for the only part of her that is free of Quill’s arms—a tiny little space on her upper back—and pat it as reassuringly as possible. “Shh. Don’t cry, sweetie. Please. You didn’t betray your mother. Whoever called you isn’t your mother.”
But a tiny little pinprick of doubt is starting to rise up in me. A crazy pinprick that I try to stifle as much as possible.
She can’t be alive. It’s not possible. After more than eighteen years… it’s too hard. Too painful. If I let that pinprick grow, it will destroy me, for good.
“Piper, you did the right thing,” I soothe her. “That’s proof she’s not your mother. Lia would never have wanted me not to know. She is… was… in love with me.”
And now, I’m thinking like Piper: what is the correct tense? Is her love in the past, now that she’s dead?
This time, when I turn away from them, it’s to hide my sudden, intense emotion.
“I’m going to get to the bottom of this, Piper,” I tell her.
“How?” she sobs.
“I’ll go to Ireland. I’ll find whoever laid the trap and kill them.”
“That’s what she said.” She sniffs loudly. “She said if you found her, you’d kill her. She said you’d never forgive her. She told me you don’t do forgiveness. You once held her captive, intending to kill her. You forgave her, but she doesn’t believe you have it in you to forgive her twice.”
Fuck. It can’t be. It just can’t be her. Can it?
“Is that true, Logan?” Piper asks in a shaky voice.
I shake my head. Even if I wanted to, there’s no way I could answer that question.
“It’s not Lia,” I say instead. “I’m going to find whoever it is and kill them.”
“But what if it is her?” she insists. “You wouldn’t kill her… would you?”
Again, I don’t answer. How can I? It can’t be Lia. Because if it was, that means she spent eighteen years not contacting me. Letting me suffer more than any one man should ever suffer.
Not even the girl who once called me a loser when she saw how hopelessly in love with her I was could be so cruel.
If it is her… I’ll just have to kill her.
And I can’t do that.
Which means it can’t be her.
“Logan.” Piper’s voice gets more insistent. “I’m coming with you to Ireland.”
“Fuck no,” I say, disbelief making me laugh. “I’m sending you back to Oregon, and this time, it’ll be with a team of armed fucking guards so you can’t escape again.”
“Logan!” Piper disengages herself from Quill and wraps her arms around me instead. I freeze, and Quill looks just as surprised as me.
“Logan,” she murmurs again, squeezing me around the middle. After a beat, I return her hug, allowing myself to enjoy the feel of my little Aurora back in my arms. “You won’t kill her, will you?”
Instead of answering, I bury my face in her curls.
“You know, I used to give you piggyback rides,” I tell her, my voice coming out a little choked. “But you’re too big for that now, aren’t you?”
“Logan. Please. You’re not going to kill her. And I’m coming with you to Ireland. Now.”
She pulls away and stomps her foot again, but I’ve already relented. The moment she hugged me, I relented.
“I guess I can’t really trust you anywhere but with me,” I admit. “Not even in a locked house in the middle of nowhere. You’re very good at getting in trouble, sweetie.”
“I’ve never seen anyone better at it than her,” agrees Quill.
“That’s not true,” she pouts. “Quill, tell him how you’ve been teaching me to shoot a gun and…”
“I really fucking hope not,” I cut in. “That’s a recipe for disaster. I just know you’d somehow manage to shoot yourself.”
“Don’t worry, it’s only blanks,” says Quill. “She can’t shoot straight to save her life.”
“What? Quill!” Piper looks furious. “You didn’t tell me that. And that’s not true. I did shoot that tin can…”
“But not the right one, cricket. I had a dozen tin cans lined up, and you shot the second one in the line. You were supposed to shoot the one five cans over.”
“Whatever.” She topples onto the couch Quill had left to comfort her, and he quickly sits beside her, pulling her up and making her sit on his lap instead.
“Quill…” she protests, but he puts a palm over her mouth.
“Be a good girl, Piper, and let the men talk.”
“Fmmphhh you,” she grumbles, but she lets him guide her against his chest all the same, and closes her eyes, snuggling into him.
“We’ll go to Ireland with you,” says Quill quietly, as if he’s the one deciding. “I won’t take my eyes off her. She’ll be fine.”
“She’d better be,” I grunt. “She’d better be, Quill, or I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”
“Mmmph!” protests Piper from behind Quill’s hand.
“If anything happened to her, it’s only because I’d already be dead,” counters Quill.
“Right.” I grab my phone, dialing Everest’s number so he can get us a plane. “Let’s all try not to die. I’ll have enough work as it is…”
I don’t finish my thought, but I know Quill, at least, understands.
…Killing whoever’s pretending to be Lia.