Chapter 5 Piper
PIPER
I'm frozen.
Literally frozen, my body still trembling, my heart pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat.
What did I just do?
What the hell did I just do?
Callum shifts beside me, his weight leaving the bed, and panic slams into me. This was a mistake. This was the biggest mistake of my entire life.
Except my body is still buzzing. And some traitorous part of my brain is replaying every second.
No. Stop. This cannot be happening.
He pulls the sweatshirt away from my eyes, leaning in like he's going to kiss me again. I bat his hand away and scramble out from under him, my legs tangling in the blanket.
“Don't. Don't touch me.” I'm on my feet now, grabbing for my clothes scattered across the floor. My sweatpants. My boots.
My hands are shaking so badly I can barely grip the fabric.
Because that's the problem, isn't it? I want him to touch me. Even now, even as I'm running, I want his hands on me again. I want to feel that way again.
And it terrifies me.
“That was a mistake.” The words tumble out, harsh and panicked. “That will never happen again.”
Liar. My body screams it even as my mouth says the opposite.
“I'm leaving.” I say.
“You're not leaving.” Callum's pulling on his clothes now, following me as I stumble toward the living room.
I grab my coat from the floor. Everything is blurry and my chest is too tight and I can't breathe in here. I can't stop feeling the way his hands felt on my body. Can't stop wanting him again.
“Piper, stop.” He catches my arm and I wrench it away.
“Don't!”
“You are not leaving.”
“You can throw me over your shoulder a million times and I will still leave!”
He moves between me and the door. “Where are you gonna go? It's a storm out there. You’ll freeze to death.”
“I don't care! It's better than being here with you!”
But the horrible, awful truth is that there's nowhere I'd rather be than with him, and that makes me a terrible person. A terrible friend.
“Calm down,” Callum says, his voice dropping into a reasonable tone.
“Calm down? We just had sex! You’re my best friend's brother! And she hates you!”
She hates him and I just… God, what did I just do to her? What kind of friend am I?
The kind who can't stop thinking about doing it again.
“You told me to do it. You said 'fuck it, just do it'.”
“Don't.” I point at him, my hand shaking. “Don't you dare put this on me.”
“I'm not putting anything on anyone. I'm saying we both…”
“No.” I shake my head. “No, this was a mistake. A huge, terrible mistake. And I need to leave before I…”
Before I do it again. Before I confess that I'm drawn to him in a way that makes me want to forget everything—my loyalty, my morals—just to feel that way one more time.
I reach for the doorknob. Callum grabs my hand.
I wrench it away so violently I nearly fall. “Don't touch me!”
Because if he touches me, I'll stay. And if I stay, I'm lost.
“Piper!”
But I'm already out the door.
The storm is still raging, maybe worse than before. I stumble off the porch, heading… I’m not sure where. My car is buried. Definitely not drivable.
“Piper!” Callum's voice behind me, and then his footsteps. “Stop!”
“Stop following me!”
“Then stop being an idiot!”
My foot catches on something, I don't know what, and I'm falling.
I hit the ground hard, the impact knocking the air from my lungs. Pain explodes through my head.
And then everything goes soft and blurry.
I hear Callum shouting my name, feel his hands on me, but it's all distant. Like I'm underwater.
Something cold is pressed against my forehead.
I blink my eyes open slowly. My head throbs in a way that makes me want to close my eyes again and disappear back into the darkness.
I'm not outside anymore. I'm in bed. In the cabin. Under the covers.
“Hey, don't move.” Callum's voice, soft and close. “Stay still. You took a nasty fall out there. Hit your head pretty bad.”
I turn toward his voice and instantly regret it. Pain spikes through my skull and I wince, sucking in a sharp breath.
“Easy.” His hand is on my shoulder, keeping me from moving too fast. “Just breathe. You're okay.”
Am I? Nothing feels okay. My head is pounding, my body aches.
I look down, noticing the baggy sweatpants. An oversized hoodie that definitely isn't mine. Both dry and warm.
“You changed my clothes.”
“You were soaked from the snow,” he says.
He sits on the edge of the bed, and now that my vision is clearing, I can see the worry etched into his face. “Hypothermia's no joke. Had to get you out of those wet things.”
Heat floods my face despite the ice pack against my forehead. “Oh, great. Taking advantage while I was unconscious.”
“I was taking care of you.”
The words are sharp, but there's something underneath. Something that sounds like hurt.
I close my eyes, immediately feeling guilty. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean…”
“It's fine.” But his voice says it's not fine.
We sit in silence for a moment, the only sound the wind still howling outside. The storm hasn't let up. Of course it hasn't.
Callum shifts, reaching for something on the nightstand. “Here. Drink this.”
He hands me a mug of tea, helping me sit up carefully when I struggle to do it myself. His hand stays on my back, steadying me, and I hate how good and safe it feels.
I take a sip. Chamomile, still a bit warm, sweet with honey. Perfect.
“You need to stay awake for a bit,” he says, settling back on the edge of the bed. “Make sure you don't have a concussion. Can you tell me your name?”
“Piper.”
“Full name.”
“Piper Elizabeth Dawson.”
“Good. What day is it?”
“Friday. How long was I out?”
“About twenty minutes. Scared the shit out of me.”
I glance at him and see genuine fear in his expression. Not arrogance. Not control. Just raw, unfiltered concern. Like I’m not just some game to him.
That can't be right.
“I worked as an EMT for a bit,” he continues, answering the question I haven't asked yet. “So I know what to look for. Your pupils look normal. You're coherent. But you need to take it easy. Lots of rest.”
“You were an EMT?”
“Yeah. Less than a year though. Then it was back to the ranch.”
I take another sip of tea, studying him. He must have carried me back inside. Changed me. Made tea. Put ice on my head.
Taken care of me.
“I didn't always want to be in the family business,” he says quietly, staring at the mug in my hands instead of meeting my eyes. “I really wanted to be a firefighter.”
“What stopped you?”
He laughs. “My father. The ranch. Generations of legacy that I was supposed to carry on whether I wanted to or not.”
“Did you want to?”
“No. But what I wanted never really mattered. Dad made that clear from the time I could walk. I was the oldest. The son. It was my responsibility to take over. To run the ranch while Mackenzie got to do the easy part.”
There's bitterness there now. Old resentment.
“What's the easy part?”
“Not being there.” He shakes his head. “She got to leave. Go to college. But me? I was stuck. Do you know what running a ranch is like?”
I shake my head, immediately regretting the movement when pain flares.
“It's brutal,” he continues. “Up before dawn, working until you can't see straight.
Fixing fences, moving cattle, dealing with sick animals and broken equipment and weather that can destroy a whole season in one night.
It's dangerous and exhausting and there's never enough money.
Never. We were barely scraping by, year after year, and Dad just kept saying, ‘This is how it's always been done, son.’”
He stands, pacing now, the words tumbling out like he's been holding them in for too long.
“Mackenzie would come home for holidays and complain about how hard her classes were, and I wanted to scream. Because at least she got to choose. At least she had options. But me? I was trapped in this legacy I never asked for.”
He stops pacing, stares out the window at the storm.
“I met this guy at a livestock auction. Smooth talker, expensive suit. Said he was looking to invest in family ranches, help them modernize. New equipment, better irrigation systems, commercial expansion. Everything we needed to finally turn a real profit.”
My stomach sinks. I know where this is going.
“He made it sound so easy. So smart. A partnership where we'd still own the land but he'd provide the capital to upgrade everything. I thought…” He turns back to me, and I can see the shame in his eyes.
“I thought I was saving us. Thought I was finally going to prove I could do more than just follow in my father's footsteps.”
“What happened?”
“It was a scam. Not completely, that's what made it so good.
The contract was legal, technically. But buried in all that legal language were clauses that gave him control over huge sections of our grazing land.
And once he had that, we realized he didn't want to help the ranch. He wanted to destroy it. We nearly lost everything because I was too arrogant and too desperate to listen to my family and do my due diligence.”
“But you didn't lose the ranch.”
“No. But it cost us, as I’m sure my sister told you. Lawyers, court battles, finally selling off the north pasture just to buy our way out of that contract. A hundred and fifty acres of prime grazing land… gone. Because of me.”
He sits back down on the bed, elbows on his knees, head in his hands.
“I feel like a piece of shit because of it. Every day. I got cocky, didn't listen to my family, thought I knew better. And I destroyed something that wasn't even mine to destroy.”
I want to reach for him and tell him it's okay. But I don't know if it is.
“But also…” He looks up at me. “They were my family. I thought they were supposed to be there for me. And how easy was it for them to cut me out? My father told me to leave and never come back. Mackenzie looked at me like I was garbage. Not one of them even tried to understand that I was just trying to help. That I was drowning under all that pressure and made a mistake.”
“I'm sorry.” And I mean it. “I didn't know the whole story.”
“Of course you didn't. Because my sister would poison you with her side first.”
We sit in silence for a moment. This is not the selfish asshole who destroyed his family and walked away without looking back.
This is someone who made a mistake. A big one, yes. But someone who's been paying for it ever since.
“What about you?” Callum asks suddenly, his eyes finding mine.
“What about me?”
“Didn't you always want to be an artist? Sketching, drawing, all that?”
I blink, surprised. “How did you know?”
“I remember coming to one of your art shows. Mackenzie dragged me. But you were good. Really good. Not that I know shit about art, but for what it's worth, I loved it. You had this sketch of a half-collapsed greenhouse, glass shattered, vines crawling in through the roof… it was strange and beautiful. I couldn’t stop staring at it.”
Warmth creeps up my spine. “You remember that?”
“Yeah. So you're still drawing?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it's not realistic. At least that's what my dad says. You can't make a living as an artist. You need a real career. Something stable.”
“And what do you do now?”
“Marketing for a tech company. Everything a responsible adult is supposed to want.”
“Do you hate it?”
The question catches me off guard. “I... I don't know. I guess I just do it. It's fine.”
“Fine.” He repeats the word like it's poison. “That's a shit way to live, darlin’.”
“Says the man who ran from his legacy.”
“Exactly. Says the man who knows what it's like to live for someone else's expectations until you can't breathe anymore. Life's too short to do shit that's just 'fine.'”
The words tug at my soul. Because he's right. I've spent so long being what everyone else needs that I don't even know what I want anymore.
Except I do know.
I want to create. I want to draw. I want to feel alive instead of just going through the motions.
I want…
No. I can't finish that thought.
“Why don't I run you another bath? Not one that I'll interrupt this time.”
Despite everything, I almost smile. “That sounds good.”
“Stay here. I'll get it ready.”
He disappears into the bathroom, and I hear the water running. I sit here in his bed, wearing his clothes, drinking his tea, and wonder what the hell is happening to me.
A few minutes later, he comes back. “Water's ready. Take your time. I'll be out here if you need anything.”
“Thanks.”
I move carefully, my head still throbbing but manageable. I make it to the bathroom without falling over, which feels like a victory.
The tub is full, steam rising, and I sink into it with a sigh.
There's a soft knock on the door.
“I thought you weren't interrupting,” I call out.
The door opens a crack and Callum's voice comes through. “Only wanted to show you something.”
A sketchbook appears through the gap, followed by a set of pencils. Then Callum's face, carefully not looking at the tub.
“Not sure whose this is, but it's in the cabin. I think maybe my mom went through an art phase.”
He opens the sketchbook and I see it - a half-finished, terrible drawing of what I think are supposed to be mountains.
“Oh yeah,” he says, smiling. “She tends to start hobbies and quickly abandon them.”
We both laugh, and it feels good. Like we're just two people instead of this complicated mess we've become.
“I'll leave it out here if you want to use it,” he says.
“Thanks.”
He closes the door, and I'm alone again.
What the hell is happening? We had angry, passionate sex. Then he rescued me. Then he spilled his heart out. Told me to follow my dreams. Made me tea. Brought me art supplies while I’m naked in his bathtub.
I'm falling for him.
My best friend’s brother.
And I definitely, absolutely, cannot let that be true.
But as I sink deeper into the water, I know it's too late.
Everything has changed.
And there's no going back now.