Stumbling to his room, he shed his clothes along the way, leaving them in a trail.
He caught a glimpse of himself as he stumbled to a stop in front of the mirror. Whiskey sloshed in his glass and dripped off his skin onto the floor. Hard lines etched his face, but it was the look in his eyes, adrift and lonely, that was the look that spiked his blood with rage.
In a moment of wild abandon, he hurled the glass at the mirror and watched the shards rain onto the gleaming tile.
11
the wounds
PIPER STOOD BEFORE HER BATHROOM mirror examining her ravaged face. She’d told herself he wasn’t worth it, that none of this was worth the way she had carried on the night before. She had a job to do, and if Trevor wanted to sink back into his old ways, that was his business, because she was out of it.
She wanted to exorcise that crush she had. She had sure as hell exorcised it.
In the process, she’d managed to step out of the crush and in to being full blown in love with the boob.
She jumped in the shower, turned the water to extra hot, and tried to scrub away any vestiges of her weekend. With her skin pink and almost raw, she slathered on lotion and went to her closet. She grabbed her red V-neck mini dress and Prada heels and laid them out on her bed. Pulling her hair down from the towel, she wrapped it on top of her head and stuck the pen from her nightstand in the knot to hold it out of her face.
Today she would take the plunge. She’d start the expansion of Exclusively Piper. She hadn’t told Rafe that she’d arrived home early, but that was fine. Might as well surprise him and use the extra time to jump right in. She’d also figure out how to handle the Marla situation.
Ducking out the way they did had been the same as running away in shame. While Trevor might be okay with leaving that image behind, Piper was not. She’d give Marla a call and make an offer. Marla would either forgive Piper for her lie, or not. Either way, Piper wanted to help, and she would extend the offer, for the children.
She held the dress in front of her and studied herself in the full-length mirror. She’d modified it from a wrap dress she had bought and lined the stomach area with an extra panel that flattened the belly and supported her midsection throughout the day. She’d been inspired by the tabloid pictures of celebrity women after they had gone out to lunch and dinner, and then were subjected to speculation as to how far along they were.
The real world could be a shitty, shitty place when it came to making women feel like less than their best. This dress had been designed so Piper could go-to lunch and not worry about what parts of her squeezed out after. At least for the most part. That and holding her frame just the right way helped.
She gazed at herself and the way her legs, strong and shapely, flexed with her twisting from side to side as she examined the look. With her favorite red lace balconette bra, she’d rock the cleavage and the round swells of the top of her breasts to boot.
No one would dare question her attractiveness when she hit them with all her assets.
Her gaze snapped up to meet her own eyes in the mirror. Wasn’t this just what Trevor had said she used her clothes for? She stood there, with the killer wardrobe in front of her, but that messy, knotted bun on her head was very much reminiscent of the girl she had been. Her reflection resembled the tug of war between past and present she hadn’t even been aware she battled.
In high school, the girls tortured her over her underdeveloped body. She had been tall, with no boobs to speak of, and only a delicate flair to her hips. Her body had been perfect for dance. For four years, she’d found acceptance in her pointed shoes and buried the pain inflicted by those girls.
Out of nowhere, a year and a half into college, her body changed. She put on the Freshman Fifteen everyone talked about and those fifteen went to two areas: her chest and hips. Then she put on another ten after that.
Suddenly that comradery slipped away. Dancers whispered about her, laughed at her when they thought she couldn’t hear them, and distanced themselves from her. It was high school all over again, but this time, the rejection came from her own tribe.
Then the inevitable…her dance instructor pulled her aside and told her she needed to do something about her weight or she wouldn’t make the cut. The words had hurt, but desperate not to lose her safe place, she had dieted. She’d taken diet pills, skipped meals, and fueled her body on energy drinks, and nervousness.
She lost fifteen pounds, but not from her hips and chest.
The curves were there to stay.
The worst part of the whole sordid ordeal was that it took standing before this mirror, torn between past and present, before Piper finally realized that she’d spent all that time wanting to be accepted when she hadn’t even accepted herself.
Trevor had been right. She used her body as a challenge. She hated to acknowledge that, not only because it didn’t cast her in the best light, but because it didn’t matter. Trevor carried hefty demons with him, and was in no way capable of seeing what they might have had together.
She could control herself, her own actions, she could adjust her course and find a way to hold on to who she had been and who she needed to be, but she had to stop dressing for everyone else’s happiness, but her own.
What do I really want to wear?
Rain had moved into the area, cascading the city in a cool mist. The temperature, unseasonably cool, had hovered at about sixty-five with a cool breeze making it feel like sixty.
She wanted a big, comfy sweater, leggings, and flats. That’s what she really wanted.
She dug in the back of her closet where she kept her comfortable clothes, or what everyone else would call comfortable clothes. To her they were around the house clothes. She never dressed like this in public.
She stretched on the black leggings and pulled the long, crimson sweater over her head, letting it fall over her curves to where it landed mid-thigh.
She slid on a pair of black leather flats and checked herself out in the mirror. She still had the hour glass shape. The outfit, although comfortable, didn’t hide her assets, it just didn’t highlight them like neon lights in the window of a porn store.
She turned left, then right. She needed to do something with her hair. The messy bun thing had been great in high school, but she had to draw the line somewhere.
She spent another twenty minutes blow drying the waves and letting it fall in its natural pattern. She smoothed a bit of serum over it to keep the frizz at bay. With the laid-back look, she skipped the heavy makeup, too. She used mascara and lip gloss only and called it good. Curious to see what Rafe thought, she grabbed her briefcase and headed to the office.
The nature of her business allowed her a bit of leeway for what time she went in. Her office was nothing more than a small industrial apartment that had enough room for her and Rafe to have desks, art tables, and reams of fabric. To expand, she’d need out of this lease and into another location.
By the time she left home, the worst of the traffic had moved through the city. She hailed a cab and ten minutes later she’d arrived.
Rafe’s head snapped up from where he sat hunched over designs when she opened the door. “Hey, I thought I wouldn’t see you until tomorrow?” He circled around the desk and narrowed his eyes. “What happened to your usual clothes?”
“I got a makeover,” she said, eyeing him.