“You never gave me the chance to show you if I was,” Melody adds. She shimmies her shoulders in a proud you-would-have-loved-it way.
Rex takes a seat beside me, one leg on each side of the bench. He slips his arms around my waist and pulls me into him. He’s claiming me for all of the cafeteria to see. Not that anyone else wants me. In reality, he’s letting everyone know he’s off the market.
Of course, it’s this moment that Cooper walks up to the table. Most days he’d sit down without question, but the way things are between us I don’t know what he’s planning. We haven’t talked since work last night and it’s killing me. We’ve never gone this long without speaking. No texts, no notes, nothing. Twenty-four hours with no communication is twenty too long.
Cooper stops at the head of the table and stares at us for a solid five seconds. Each beat of my heart, each breath I take waiting for him to speak is a lifetime of their own. My stomach flips, sending the few bites of my chicken sandwich I had into my throat. His brows pull together. He turns, tossing an untouched tray of food in the nearby trash can, and leaves. Leaves his friends. Leaves the cafeteria.
Leaves me.
“Now I’ve seen everything,” Rachel says, shaking her head.
Rex’s arms fall to his lap when I jump up. I run—literally run—after Cooper. Rex will understand, he has to. I know being in the cafeteria today with me is a big moment for us—whatever we are— but Cooper comes first. Especially if he’s upset.
My fingers grasp the metal bar of the cafeteria door, pushing it open, hitting the wall with a loud whack as I run into the long hallway. “Cooper!”
He stops at the end of the hallway, his hand on the door to the parking lot. He’s not just leaving the cafeteria, he’s leaving school. My heart breaks because it truly feels like he’s leaving me. My protector, my hero in these halls, is giving up on me.
Everyone does eventually.
I’m panting when I reach him. Each breath pained and almost as difficult as with a panic attack. The past few months we’ve drifted apart. He began going out at night, giving me the space I needed. Wanted. But now I worry that the distance I equated with trust is actually the beginning of the end for us. “Where are you going?”
“Does it matter?” He asks, his voice devoid of emotion. “It’s not like you care anymore.”
“What are you talking about, Coop? Of course I care. I love you.”
“No!” He booms. “You don’t love me, Piper, and that’s the problem. I love you. I always have and probably always fucking will. But you, you won’t love me. You can’t love me because I’m a before.”
My face falls. The pit in my stomach that eats my butterflies from time to time swallows me whole. How could I have missed it? All these years, the late night texts after I moved out, the lunch dates in the cafeteria, the looking out for me. I always thought it was brotherly.
“I kissed you and you ran.”
Cooper bolted so fast that night he tripped over the beach chairs we were sitting in. I was left alone, by a dying fire in the Harris backyard, heartbroken and confused. After swallowing a lump of tears, I mustered up the courage to go after him. The plan was to apologize, tell him I was drunk and it was a mistake. I pushed open his bedroom door without knocking and froze. Sarah Archer had her legs around him, her lips against his. I didn’t think I took that much time outside, but apparently, I did. I ran from that room as fast as my legs could take me, tears running down my cheeks and bumped into Logan on my way out who promptly told me not to let the door hit my ass. Shit thing is, the night only got worse from there.
Cooper shrugs. “And I freaked.”
“Enough to swap spit with Sarah?”
“That was a mistake. When you saw us, I threw her off me and ran after you. Kissing her made me realize how much I wanted to be kissing you.”
“You realize how cliché that sounds, right?”
Silence falls between us. Coopers eyes are bloodshot, sleepless from his night on the couch and maybe even brimmed with tears. My heart hurts because for a moment I wish I could have been his. I wish I could be the girl he deserves, but there’s no changing what happened. Even if there was a way to forget the way my heart hurt that night, I can’t forget everything that happened after. I can’t force my body to react to him the way it does with Rex.
Cooper smiles, but it doesn’t reach his ears. “I can’t watch you with him, Piper. I’m glad he makes you better and I’m glad you’re happy. But it kills me that everything that happened to you is my fault.”
“Cooper—”
“No, Piper. If I would have kissed you back, pulled you into my arms, and told you I loved you back then like I should have, Gerald wouldn’t have hurt you. You wouldn’t have tried to overdose in Bane’s apartment. I wouldn’t have found you in a bathtub of blood two days later.”
I’m trembling. The shakes from the pounding of my heart vibrate throughout my body. I suck in a breath and reach for Cooper. His touch burns, fire ignited under my skin in the worst of ways but I take the pain. I swallow the bile and let him hold me as long as he needs. By the time Cooper let’s go, I’m lightheaded. I cough on an inhale from the pressure in my chest.
“I hurt you by holding you,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
19
Piper
Cooper locks up the restaurant as I skip down the steps and into Rex’s arms. It’s been a week since our breakdown in the hallway. To make things easier, I haven’t been home.