“Enough for what?” Anders asked.
She hesitated and then: “For him to forgive me.” She was silent for a beat. “But I don’t think I can go through with it.”
“What? Why?”
“People are going to be furious. I’ve gone through every single idea Jacob has, decided which ones I could convince people to accept and which ones would be a flat-out no—like serving alcohol at the One-Eyed Crab. But the truth is, I don’t think it matters. They’re not going to trust him and they’re going to be furious with me for going behind their backs and nothing is going to change—except the only place I love, the people that are my family, will never forgive me.”
Anders looked at her. “I get that I’m new here, but even I can see that everyone loves you. Of course they’ll forgive you.”
Piper pressed her lips together and just shook her head, her eyes filling with tears.
In a quieter voice, Anders said: “And I didn’t know Tom at all, but I don’t have to know him to tell you he already did.”
“Why do you think that?” Piper asked, her voice small. The tears in her eyes escaped down her cheeks, as she remembered that last morning when she was still angry at Tom and refused to get up to walk him to the docks. What if she had? She’d thought it a million times. Would it have changed anything that day? Logically, she knew it probably wouldn’t have, but what she wouldn’t give to have had those last few moments with him.
“Well, you’ve single-handedly humiliated me on a number of occasions and I’ve forgiven you.”
“You have?” She reached up to dry her face with the back of her hand.
Anders nodded. “Piper Parrish, you are eminently forgivable.”
* * *
—
Anders wasn’t prone to pacing, but if a passerby were to look in his window on the second floor of the bed-and-breakfast later that evening, they would have found he struck a comparable resemblance to Baloo, the Andean bear at the Salisbury Zoo that nervously patrolled the length of his enclosure nonstop.
Piper did not have a delusional disorder after all. And though that should have given Anders some form of relief or gladness, he couldn’t help but wonder if it was somehow crazier to go along with a delusion you knew wasn’t real.
But that wasn’t why he was pacing. He thought the movement might work up his nerve to finally confess about the focus of his podcast. It should be easy—easier, anyway. The main obstacle was out of the way. Piper knew Tom wasn’t alive, so the revelation wouldn’t come as a shock to her or be damaging to her psyche in any way.
It would just be damaging to Anders’s relationship with her.
And that was what made his stomach twist in knots every time he thought about confessing.
That and how beautiful Piper looked on the beach that afternoon, bunching her skirt around her tanned thighs. The warmth of the sad smile she offered, just for him, when he said she was eminently forgivable. Hell, even her swollen eyes and red nose were somehow alluring.
He shook his head sharply, and then, finally accepting that wearing a path in the wooden floor wasn’t going to change his circumstances, Anders girded his loins and stormed out of the room, down the stairs, out the back door, and up the stairs to Piper’s front door.
He rapped on it with his knuckles and took a step back, resting his hands on his hips, rolling the words he had practiced over and over in his mind along with a mantra: Just tell the truth, just tell the truth, just tell the truth. But then, she opened the door, and when he saw her standing there with her red nose and wild lion’s mane, words left him completely and he stood mute, his mouth gaping.
“Anders?” Piper said, cocking her head, her big beautiful eyes searching his face. He came back to himself, remembering the sentences he had rehearsed, and opened his mouth.
“I have to tell you something,” he said.
“What is it?” She waited patiently.
Just tell the truth, just tell the truth, just tell the truth.
He opened his mouth. “I think I’m in love with you.”
He snapped his jaw shut abruptly and couldn’t decide who was more shocked—Piper or himself. They were not the words he had practiced.
But it was the truth.
* * *
—
Piper blinked. She’d read enough romance novels to know that as declarations went, this was not the most quixotic. It wasn’t even top ten, really. But still, the profession caused a flutter in her stomach, as light as a dragonfly’s wings, and her heart skipped a beat. Maybe it was his intensely earnest eyes that made her feel like suddenly she was the only person in the entire world, or his sardonic smile, which she had begun to seek out when they were together, or maybe it was because for the past six months, she had experienced a depth of loneliness that was so cavernous, she felt as though, at times, she were swimming in an interminable black hole.
Regardless of the reason, she reached out for a handful of his shirt and pulled him across the threshold, until the length of his body was pressed against hers. Then she tugged him down, and when his face was close enough, she kissed him. Anders—freckle-faced, gangly Anders!—needed no more of an invitation. In one swift motion, a hand wove itself into her hair, gently cupping the back of her scalp, while the other encircled her waist, steering her backward until she was pressed up against the wall. The sharp edge of a wooden frame jabbed her between the shoulder blades and she came back to herself for a moment. “My bugs!” Piper yelled against Anders’s lips. Anders stopped and pulled his head back from her so his wide eyes could meet hers. “Well, that’s definitely something I’ve never heard a woman scream out before.”
Breathing heavily, the rise and fall of her chest matching his, Piper stared at him, taking in his swollen lips, ruddy cheeks, and mussed hair, and then she cracked, her mouth splitting open, laughter erupting from her gut. Smiling, Anders leaned in, as if he could eat the joy right off her face, and pressed his lips to the side of her mouth. Steering her away from the wall and toward the couch, he planted kisses all the way up to her jawbone, until his breath filled her ear with the roar of the ocean, both overwhelming and familiar.
Piper closed her eyes and let herself be swept away.
* * *
—
Later, as they were both drifting off in a tangle of Piper’s bedsheets, Anders propped himself up on his elbow. “Piper.”
“Mm?” she said, without opening her eyes.
“Tell me something.”
“Mm,” she intoned, this time an affirmative statement.
“What on earth is Lady Judy getting all those packages for?”