Almost Just Friends (Wildstone #4)(89)

“No. I don’t care. You’ve surpassed the statute of limitations and I’m done.”

“Piper,” Cam said, his voice quiet and calm, although interestingly enough, his eyes weren’t either. “Before you go to battle, please at least hear everyone out. Because if you speak now without knowing everything, you might say something you shouldn’t. I know far more about this than I want to. The last thing I said to Rowan was pretty much ‘fuck you,’ and now he’s gone and I can’t take it back. He died with those words in his ears.”

Piper understood that, but she couldn’t function with the anger and betrayal flowing through her veins. “There’s not going to be a battle. I’m done.”

He looked at her for a beat, gave a single nod and left through the front door.

Okay, so he was done too, she supposed, and it felt like her heart cracked in half. Letting out a breath, she eyed her siblings, realizing Cam had been right about one thing. “I need a time-out before we do this.”

Winnie pushed to her feet. “I know I should’ve told you everything, but I got scared. And I felt like shit because I knew you’d think that my problems were about to become your problems, like always. And I didn’t want that. Not this time. Not after all you’ve done for me.”

“For us,” Gavin corrected. “Piper, I know we fucked this all up, but I swear, our intentions were the opposite. Please tell me you can get to the place where you believe that.”

Piper realized she was holding her breath, and slowly let it out. “I’m going to take my time-out now.”

They looked at each other and then nodded and walked away, leaving her alone.

Huh. That was one of the first times they’d ever done something she’d asked without having to nag. Okay, then. She wasn’t sure what to do with herself and her newfound knowledge that everyone she knew and loved had betrayed her. She turned and stared out the window at the lake, but found no peace. She knew she needed to talk to Cam. She was still furious, but . . . God. That look in his eyes when he’d talked about Rowan, and it being too late to take back the things he’d said.

She wasn’t the only one hurting, and dammit, that was hard to ignore. She went outside to look for him, but he was gone, and so was the boat.

Clearly she hadn’t been the only one in need of a time-out.

Hoping she’d find him at the tire swing, she headed that way on foot. She wasn’t a runner. She hated running. It was actually her personal idea of hell, but her feet seemed to forget that, because she was suddenly sprinting down to the lake and moving along the path around it at a pace that had her heart bursting out of her chest.

Or maybe that was just the emotions of the day. But when she got to the tire swing, there was no Cam.

So she kept going. After what was probably only half a mile, she got a kink in her side that hurt like hell and slowed her to a walk, but she still didn’t stop. She had no idea how long it took her, but she didn’t really start thinking again until she got to the hidden cove where she and Cam had moored that day, the one that seemed so long ago now.

She went to the rocky shore, where she sat, with her back to the stones, knees bent, staring out at the water.

It was cloudy. Fitting. The sky matched her mood, dark and turbulent.

With a sigh, she pulled the journal from her pocket and began to write down her feelings. Gavin had kept his secret because he’d wanted to wait until the right moment to tell her. Fine. Winnie had kept her secret/secrets because . . . well, because she was Winnie and she marched to her own beat, no drummer. Piper understood both of them, she got them, she accepted them. She also loved them deeply, which was the only reason they could hurt her at all. Her siblings’ needs had changed. They needed comfort and home, and she’d not understood that—which was on her. She stopped writing. Because there was no list for this, for a way to deal with it.

She wasn’t in control. Not even a little bit.

Because then there was Cam. She’d thought, mistakenly of course, that he was . . . well, hers. Her own little safe haven from the storm that was her life. Okay, yes, when he’d asked for more she’d freaked out a little bit. Or a lot. That was her bad. She’d needed time.

But it was mortifying to know that while she was angsting over whether she could give him all of her including the good, the bad, and the ugly . . . he’d already known it all, and more. He’d known what she hadn’t.

And he’d left her in the dark.

Everyone had known everything and she, the oldest, the only one who’d ever tried to keep them all together, hadn’t known a thing.

Her phone buzzed. She intended to let it go to voice mail, but it was Jenna. The one person who’d have her back in all this. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself,” Jenna said. “I’m at the house and your siblings are looking like someone killed the cat. Which isn’t true, because the she-devil is yelling at me for food. Where are you?”

“Taking a time-out.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

Piper told her everything, including the fact that she felt betrayed by everyone going behind her back.

“Okay, so let me get this straight,” Jenna said. “In the end, Gavin and Winnie managed to figure out how to get you the money to go back to school and still keep the property.”