When she is finished, I run her bath water and sit her up as slow as I can. With a gentle hand, I lift my long T-shirt over her head. She didn’t want to be confined so she slept in one of my shirts. This isn’t uncommon for us. I pick her up to carry her to the tub and set her slowly in the warm bath water.

“Shake your head if it’s warm enough, darlin’.”

She signals that it is. When I help her lean backwards against the back of the tub and I am sure she won’t slide down into the water and scream from her ribs, I grab her shampoo and conditioner out of the bag Storm packed for her. If I even tried to use my guy shampoo on her, I’d wake up with my own gun pointed at my head. It would be a prank, but Piper doesn’t joke about her hair. It is one of the things I love about her. Her creamy brunette hair reaches down to the middle of her back.

“The Doc gave me some bubble shit that’s supposed to ease your muscles,” I say and reach up to the sink to grab the bottle. “It is some antibacterial shit.”

I don’t know why the fuck I am talking. She can’t talk back, and her small grunts tell me it aggravates her.

“Okay, baby, let’s get you good and clean.”

***

Chapter Twenty Three

Piper

I say it best, when I say nothing at all

He laughs when I choke on my Jello. It has been a rough few days. I know Sniper is restless and itching for payback. He would not be Sniper if he did not want to exact revenge, but even though I know him and he knows me, we still have not talked about the elephant in the room… our fight before I was kidnapped. The last few hours in the basement, I fought to get back to him, and now I am speechless and have no idea what to do. I watch as he moves around his kitchen. His tall frame towers over his own counters, and his height almost reaches his own ceiling. If he was not my best friend, I would be intimidated by his size.

“About your argument, darlin’. We gotta discuss that shit.” He slams his fist down onto the sink and peers out the window.

Sniper knows I can’t respond to him.

“I know you can’t talk, so stop sayin’ shit in that pretty little head.” He turns to look at me.

I want to yell and say my head isn’t pretty right now. My face is all kinds of fucked up, but he’d flip out and say my face will heal and there is more important shit to worry about. Which he is right, but I do worry about my looks. I have had so much stolen from me and deep down inside, I am dirtied, soiled, and not pretty at all. All I have is my looks on the outside.

He goes to the fridge, grabs a beer, and sits down in front of me. “Now about this shit where you said our friendship wasn’t real and was all fake,” he growls. “You fuckin’ know better. What the fuck were you thinkin’?”

Before I have time to shake my head at him, he holds up his hand for me to wait a moment and gets up to grab a piece of paper and a pen.

“Now, write what the fuck you were thinkin’ on this piece of paper,” he orders as he shoves it to me.

Is he for real? He can’t be serious. This is some sort of joke. He wants to discuss it when I cannot even speak? I push the paper back towards him and shake my head. My feelings will not go down on fucking paper. I am barely holding myself together as it is, and he wants me to put my damn thoughts on paper?

I do not think so.

“Darlin, you’re not gettin’ out of this,” he says as he sits back down. “You have no idea the thoughts runnin’ around in my head when you were missin’ and the way things were left between us like to drove me mad. We fight, we argue, but we never leave things unsaid. I never want us to be that way again, yeah?”

He cannot make me cry right now. This isn’t fair. I am the one who should be calling all the shots, and to be honest, my mental state cannot take a reprimand from the man I love right at this moment.

“Babe… hey, why are you cryin’?” he asks as he moves into the chair beside me, reaches up, and smoothes the hair away from my eyes. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Piper. That isn’t what this is about.”

Then what is he trying to do? Him being upset with me or wanting to fight about what happened before I was taken isn’t something I can deal with or ever want to process. I want to forget we ever went through that and move on to how we are. I need normalcy from him. He doesn’t understand that he will be what keeps me here mentally. He will be the reason that I heal, not anyone else.

“You’re breakin’ me here, darlin’. This was supposed to be a good talk, and I fucked it up, like I always fuck shit up,” he growls and goes to stand. I stop him by reaching for his hand and shaking my head no, and lift my free hand up to gesture him to keep going.

A good talk? I am in desperate need to hear one of those from him.

“It got me thinkin’, ya know? That there is a reason me and you are so fuckin’ close. That our chemistry is there. It isn’t forced. It’s just there. We don’t need to create it, because we already fuckin’ have it.” He smirks at me.

Damn that beautiful, crooked smile he has melts me every time.

Okay. So maybe I do need a piece of paper. I grab it and scribble my question down and pass it over to him. He removes his hand from mine, picks up the pad and reads aloud.

“So, what are you saying?” He reads my note and chuckles, sets the pad back in front of me and gives me all of his attention. “I’m sayin’, I want to give me and you a shot.” He pauses and then continues. “Why the hell not? We get along, I love you, you love me, and our sex is unfuckingbelievable.”