Ruin Me (46 page)

“What’s your point, Shawn?”

“My
point
, Piper Lynch…” he says, “is that shit might be all fucked up right now, but tomorrow is a new day. An
interesting
change may be on the horizon, one that will make things better — just when you think it can’t possibly get any worse.”

I roll my eyes. “As poignant as that sounds, I don’t think cookies and milk will solve my problems.”

“They won’t hurt.” He looks around. “Now I’m hungry.”

I take another drink of water and stare off into the dark trees ahead. Change and I have never had a great relationship. Change made my parents get divorced. Change brought the idiot jock from my school home and stuck him in the bedroom across the hall. Change made my mother abandon me.

Change is a fucking asshole.

Change made my parents happier than I’ve ever seen them before. Change brought my mother and I back together. Change made me fall in love with that idiot jock across the hall. Change…

Ugh.

“Come on,” Shawn says as he stands up from the bench. “Let’s go find something to eat.”

“Okay,” I say, welcoming the chance to stop thinking about this for a little while. I push myself off the bench and grip the handle on my suitcase. “Sounds good,” I say.

“Then, we can find a room to settle in for the night.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Shawn…”

“No funny business, I swear,” he says, holding up a hand. “I just figured we’d hang out — unless you actually
want
to see Mandy or Kai again right now. I sure as hell don’t.”

I cringe. “Yeah, not really.”

He gestures for me to give him my suitcase. “Let me carry that,” he says.

Usually, I’d stare him down, but I don’t bother arguing with him. My feet hurt and I feel more tired than I’ve ever been in my life. “Thanks,” I tell him as I pass it off.

“Don’t mention it,” he says. “They have chocolate chip cookies in France, right?”

I laugh. “I know a place nearby.”

Chapter 44

Kai

Piper
fucking
Lynch.

I always wondered when this day would come.

I wasn’t exactly planning on it, but I had a feeling something wasn’t right between us. I wanted to ignore it, and holy shit, I sure did try. Maybe it was the constant family pressure or even the expectations we put on each other. I don’t know. We tried the honesty thing and it didn’t work. We tried lying to each other and that sure as hell didn’t work either.

I blame the passion. That fucking desire I have to always and forever be
inside
of her. It’s gotten me into more trouble than I ever thought humanly possible. It even struck me the moment Mandy let it slip that she was pregnant. My first thought was to kiss her and celebrate. I’m not sure why — most likely an inherent, instinctual reaction.

I am
man
. I spread
seed.
Fire
bad.
Tree
pretty.

But that didn’t last a second before the reality set in. My girlfriend is pregnant — sorry,
ex-girlfriend
. My stepsister is carrying my child. All the hopes and dreams I had for myself shot out the window like a loose bat in the house. Broken glass everywhere. Panic ensues. Everyone’s freaking out, hoping the flying rat doesn’t land in their hair and give them rabies. I can forget about grad school. Every penny I have is going straight into a savings account because this bastard’s future is officially more important than mine.

Fucking hell. I’m a horrible person.

A knock strikes the door and I sit up on the hotel bed. The clock on the bedside table reads seven. I hear the voices of people passing by on the Parisian street below while the city lights illuminate the late-evening skyline. I pull myself off the bed and drag my feet to the door to pull it open.

“Well, that was interesting.”

I roll my eyes. “I
really
don’t want to talk to you right now, Mandy…”

She steps inside the room, easily sliding past me. “I figured as much,” she mutters.

I close the door and trudge back over to the bed to throw myself back down onto it.

“Wow, you really went all out on this trip, didn’t you?” she asks as she looks around the room.

“Yep.” The Paris hotel room is rather similar to the London one but slightly bigger with a much better view of the city featuring an unobscured view of the Eiffel
fucking
Tower. I had planned on sitting out on the balcony with Piper later, naked and sweating. Oh, well. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather be alone right now.” I speak to the ceiling with a dead tone as she wanders around the bed.

“Well, I don’t.” I feel her plop down onto the bed next to me.

“How did you know I was here?” I ask.

She shrugs. “I followed you from the train station.”

“Any idea where Piper is?”

“Nope,” she says. “She took off like a bat out of hell as soon as the train stopped.”

Fuck.

Hello, feeling of utter helpless panic.

It’s been ages since you’ve made yourself known to me. It’s almost nostalgic, to be honest. For the last few years, I knew exactly where Piper Lynch was in the world, mostly because she was either right beside or would have been right beside me within the hour. Right now, she’s somewhere in Paris (I’m assuming) and I have no idea when I’ll see her again — if ever. She has a knack for disappearing as soon as the shit hits the fan.

And here I am, so fucking wrecked that I can’t even bring myself to get up and go look for her.

“How long have you known?” I ask, the words slipping through my teeth before I can stop them.

“Known what?”

“You know what.”

“Oh.” Mandy sighs. “I don’t know — like three days.”

I shake my head. “She tells you before she tells me…”

“Hate to break it to you, girlfriend,” she says, “but running shit by your best friend first is actually a
really
common practice. Don’t sit there and pretend like you never ran things by Shawn before bringing it up to Piper.”

“Nothing like
this
,” I argue. “She should have told me first. The
second
she found out, she should have come to me.”

“She didn’t want to tell you, Kai, because she thought it would tear you two apart.”

I look at her. “What?”

“I told her she was wrong. I told her you two were stronger than that and it would bring you closer together. Clearly,
I was wrong
.”

“Was that your master plan then?” I ask her. “Let the secret slip out to bring Piper and me closer together? A little hypocritical for someone that fucking flipped her shit at the idea of us tricking you and Shawn back together.”

“I guess I
may
have overreacted.”

“Yes, you did. And for the record, we didn’t fucking do that.”

“I know… I was just being a bitch, like you said.”

I sigh. “It doesn’t matter anyway… She was right. It did tear us apart.”

“Yeah, why exactly did it do that again?”

“I panicked.”

“Well, duh.”

“I don’t want to be a father.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t.”

She chuckles. “That’s not vague or anything.”

I sit up on my elbows. “Okay, then. Why don’t you want to be with Shawn?” I ask her.

“Because he’s an immature man-child that refuses to grow up and look after himself, forcing me to pick up his slack and I don’t want to be his mother for the next fifty years.”

“Wow.” I sit back. “That’s really specific.”

“I’ve had longer to digest it,” she says. “Kai, you
just
found out. Maybe you should wait twenty-four hours before you implode.”

“More time won’t change anything.”

“Time changes everything.”

“Not this.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I have it on pretty high authority that she probably feels the same way.” Mandy sits up and leans against the headboard. “You should go talk to her.”

“No, thanks,” I mutter. “I’d rather just find a flight and go home.”

“Remind me…” she bites. “Which one of you runs off when things don’t go their way? You or her? It’s getting more difficult every day to keep that straight.”

I glare at her out of the corner of my eye. “What was that about you being a bitch again?”

“Once I start, it’s hard to stop,” she smirks at me for a moment before her smile slowly drops from her cheeks. “Sorry I told Shawn about… well, you know.”

“Oh, yeah…” I push myself up to rest against the headboard. “I’d almost forgotten.”

“Think you two will be okay?” she asks.

“Doubt it. He was right. I knew better.”

She giggles, her voice high and fun. “Like we would have taken no for an answer. You were doomed from the start. He knows that.”

“Still.” My phone vibrates in my pocket. I reach in and grab it. “Speak of the devil,” I mutter, reading Shawn’s name on the screen.

“Answer it,” Mandy says.

“I’d rather not…” I toss it to the bed.

She grabs it. “Communication is the first step to healing all wounds.”

“That’s not a real phrase.”

Her eyes narrow as she answers the phone. She immediately thrusts it forward and slaps it against my face.

“Kai?” I hear him say.

I take the phone from Mandy and hold it to my ear. “Hey.”

“Kai— you need to get down here now.” Shawn talks fast, his voice out of breath.

“Get down where?”

“I don’t know, some hospital. It’s Piper.”

I sit up straighter. “Piper’s in a hospital?” Mandy’s eyes go wide with fear and panic grips my chest. “Why? What happened?”

“I’m not sure. One minute we were talking, and the next, she was on her back — and not in the good way. I’ll find out the address and text it to you.”

“Okay…”

Shawn hangs up, but I sit still for several moments while my brain goes wild.

Piper’s in the hospital. She’s pregnant with my baby.

My baby is in the hospital.

“Kai!”

A fist connects with my shoulder and I wince in pain. “What?” I spit, jerking up to look at Mandy.

“Hello!” she shouts. “What the fuck happened? What’s wrong with Piper?”

“I don’t know, he wasn’t specific—”

“Did something happen to the—”

“I don’t know.”

She falls silent and slides off the bed. “Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s go,” she says.

The phone vibrates in my hand. It slips from my fingers onto the bed and I pick it up again to read the hospital’s address in Shawn’s text message.

Mandy snatches the phone away from me. “I’ll navigate. You try to get your shit together. Can you do that?” she asks.

I nod. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Good,” she says. “Now, take a deep breath and get your ass up. Piper needs you.”

Piper needs me.

But I need her more.

***

“Wait… you want to follow Piper to Europe?”

I nod across the table of the nearly deserted diner. “Yeah.”

“And you don’t see this backfiring at all?”

“It’s perfect, Shawn,” I say. I hold up the xeroxed pages of her itinerary. “We know
exactly
where she’s going to be and when. All we have to do is intercept her, you distract Mandy, and I’ll seal the deal.”

“I don’t think it’s going to be as simple as you think, Kai,” he says. “Piper’s not going to be happy with us crashing her trip. What makes you think she’ll sleep with you once she figures it out?”

“You let me worry about that,” I say, slapping the pages back down onto the table. “You worry about Mandy Black.”