“Not exactly. It’s just that it’s hard to be on the same page when you are so wildly different from each other.” Piper sighed pensively. “But I have tried...”
“Who are we talking about?” Beth demanded. “I didn’t realize you were dating anyone. Although I did see you with Brian Cooper at Harley’s wedding.”
“I was dating him,” Piper admitted. “We called it quits before I came back to Royal.”
“Why? Is he like Keith? If so, it’s good that you kicked him to the curb.” Beth’s tone sharpened. “Keith had so much influence over Mom, he was changing her. And not for the better.”
“Was he? It’s hard to think of our mother letting anyone have that much influence over her,” Harley mused.
“He did,” Piper said. “It was hard to talk to her about it because she was so defensive.”
“Definitely,” Beth agreed. “But what’s the deal with Brian?”
“He’s not like Keith,” Piper said. In fact, he was nothing like any other man she’d met. He seemed to get her and to understand that she wasn’t marching to the same drum as everyone else.
“So what’s the problem then?” Harley interjected.
“He’s eleven years younger than me.”
“So? I know you don’t care about that,” Beth retorted. “What’s this really about?”
Piper looked at her nieces and fought to find the strength to tell them. She’d always felt so much an outsider in her own family but right now she could use someone to talk to. Someone who would understand where she was coming from. Beth was nine years younger than she was and Harley was 17 years younger so she hadn’t shared much of her broken engagement with them. They’d been so young at the time. “You’re right, it’s not the age difference. It’s a lot more to do with my baggage. I’ve had a really bad breakup once before, and I promised myself I wouldn’t go through that again.”
“But why end things with Brian?” Harley asked, confused.
“He’s Keith’s nephew, for one. Your mom isn’t going to be a huge fan of me dating him.”
“Like you care what Mom says,” Beth quipped.
“I do. I mean, she can be overbearing at times, but I don’t want to ever hurt her,” Piper admitted.
“If you like him, Mom will understand,” Beth said.
Did she like him? Of course she did. That’s why she broke things off with him. And another reason why she’d come home to Royal.
She remembered the way he’d hired her to decorate his building and then left her alone to curate the pieces that she’d use. He was a man who hired experts and then stepped back and let them run with it.
Maybe that was why it had been so hard to leave Dallas the night of the gala. She hadn’t wanted to leave him. Truth was, she liked so many things about him. But he was young and eventually he was going to bring up kids and she couldn’t have them. Didn’t want to have to admit that to him. So she’d left before she had to.
“He sounds great, Piper,” Harley murmured. “But you haven’t answered my earlier question. What’s really going on?”
“I don’t know how to put it into words,” she said at last. “It’s just not going to work out.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that.” Beth sighed. “Sounds like he was making your happy for a little while.”
“I’m sorry too,” Harley said. “But there is more to relationships than just making someone happy.”
Her nieces were very smart, and she felt so lucky to have them in her life. Piper changed the subject to Thanksgiving and how nice it was to have Harley back this year. She let the conversation drift around her and when she left her nieces to head back to Ava’s she realized she needed to do this more. Talking to them had made her realize that there were other complications in life than just her own fears.
Was it her fear that was holding her back? Or was she justified to feel that Brian might cause her to forget all the safety measures she’d put in place? Her life worked because she kept that wild, passionate side of hers hidden away. Letting it out wasn’t something she was sure she could do.
It gave her something to think about as she drove home past the Texas Cattleman’s Club where all of the Wingates had been members for as long as Piper could remember—well, the women hadn’t been admitted until the early 2000s—but she knew that her family no longer felt welcome at the club since their assets had been seized and their home put into foreclosure.
As hard as it was to face gossip in Dallas, at least she’d been removed from this sort of day-to-day thing. She wasn’t sure how she could handle that. Stopping at an intersection, she had an epiphany of sorts while waiting for the light to turn green. She realized she was trying to distract herself from the fact that she still missed Brian.
Piper sighed. It would be nice if parting ways with a man meant that she stopped thinking and caring about him. She knew that her actions were going to be for the best in the long run, but right now she ached. For, despite everything, she couldn’t stop yearning for him...which made her feel like a soppy young woman instead of the wise goddess she was trying so hard to be.
But she just shook her head and felt the weight of her gold orb earrings brushing against her neck. She knew that no matter what she wanted to project, inside she was still that twenty-four-year-old with a broken engagement when she thought about forever with any man. Her relationships after Ron and before Brian had all ended by her own hand.
Maybe it was time to stop trying to keep from being hurt again by ending things with Brian until he found the broken thing inside of her that had made Ron leave? But if she did that she’d have to put her heart on the line and she wasn’t sure she had the strength to do that. Being a goddess and standing on her own above everyone else was one thing but trusting Brian not to hurt her...that was something bigger. At Harley’s reception she’d wanted to have a partner, but she realized now she’d gotten more than she’d bargained for with Brian.
Ten
Piper had typed a text to Brian just to chat and deleted it about eighty-five times. She missed him, but she knew that she should just leave it be. So why couldn’t she? Added to the fact that he was Keith’s nephew, she knew that it should be enough to convince her to stop thinking about him, but she hadn’t.
She’d even woken up in the middle of the night, her body craving his. Only to be filled with dismay to find the empty space next to her. Given that they’d only slept together a handful of times, her intense longing for him wasn’t rational. But then, she knew that matters of the heart rarely were.