I follow him down the crowded paved path of students on their way to various classes. It doesn’t take me long to formulate a response because I know in my heart I do. “I fell in love with having a plan. I’d always been organized. My friends teased me about liking school and focusing on grades and trying to be on top of things, but my future was one thing that always seemed uncertain. In a horrible way, Danny gave me one. Just not the one I thought he’d give me.”
“He gave you Ainsley.”
I lick my bottom lip before drawing it into my mouth, heart easing with tenderness over the small strawberry blonde in my head. “He gave me somebody to love.”
Staring at the salted ground as we walk toward the administration building with his office housed inside, I struggle to swallow past the lump in my throat when I repeat those words to myself.
Danny couldn’t love me.
He knew it. I knew it.
But he gave me somebody who could.
Tears well in my eyes that hurt to hold back. Before I can stop it, one rolls down my cheek and lands on the ground. Carter murmurs something before tugging me toward the building.
We’re silent until we get to his office. He unlocks the door and gently guides me in. Not one person looked at us the entire way—not caring, unknowing.
And when the door closes behind me…
“Piper,” he whispers, drawing me into his body in a tight hug. I find myself melting into his warmth, burying my now-damp face into his shirt and winding my arms around his torso. His cheek rests on the top of my head.
“I’m n-not sad. I’m…” What am I? I shake my head and stay in the position we’re in, needing this. Needing him to hug me and remain silent and just be warmth in a cold season. When my thoughts are collected, I move my face enough to speak without jumbling my words into his chest. “I’m happy that I have her, but that means it was at his expense, his life, Carter. It took him dying for me to feel such an impenetrable love for another human. And I hate myself for it.”
“Hey—” His hold tightens on my body, one of his arms sliding just enough to hook around the small of my waist and pull me harder against his body. “—you do not need to hate yourself over that. You have no reason to be guilty or any other bad thing just because you love his daughter. He gave you a gift because he trusted you with it. Danny knew what he was doing when he gave you that responsibility.”
But did he? Did he know my future was never planned? Or that there were days I could barely function on my own. I was isolated. I hated going out. I considered college a period of stalling that way I didn’t have to live life yet.
The more I think, the more I realize he did. Carter is right. Danny knew exactly what he was doing when he put my name down on that piece of paper that changed my life forever.
I didn’t resent him.
Not for not loving me.
Not for giving me Ainsley.
Things happened for a reason.
When I peel myself away and blink up at him with sore, watery eyes, his expression is soft as he studies me. One of his hands comes up, his thumb brushing at my wet cheek, as he leans forward and presses a light kiss to my opposite one.
My heart stops.
My breath holds.
And when he draws back and smiles with his palm cupping the cheek, I know I’ll be okay because I have him in some way, some form, and some fashion. “I’ll always be here if you need to talk, Piper. You know that, right?”
Thump, thump, thump.
My lips part. “I know.”
In this very moment, with little room between us, I feel the shift. He looks at me in a new light. Not like the teen he used to know, or as his best friend’s little sister. And definitely not as his student.
Chapter Twenty-One
It’s well past midnight when I creep downstairs, with tired eyes and a headache, unable to fall back asleep. After popping a couple pills and laying in my bed with no luck, all I wanted was a cold glass of water and background noise.
Curling up in a ball on the couch, I rest my head on the piled-up pillows