Chapter Seven

RILEY

“It feels different, this way, somehow.”

Riley glanced over at Piper. “How so?”

Piper shrugged those lean, pale shoulders, glistening in the spring heat. Dawn was breaking, the sky blue and black and orange behind the stylish row of suburban houses lining scenic Sycamore Street. “Walking, you know? We always sprinted this part of the run, as I recall.”

“You recall correctly,” Riley said haltingly, struggling to form coherent words above the simmering of anticipation in her clenched gut. “But in your delicate condition, a walk home seemed the best remedy, don’t you think?”

Piper snorted. Riley shivered at the sound, so sly and sultry and coy. “I guess. It’s just weird being here, in general. On this street. In this town. Walking. Here. With…you.”

Riley noted the pregnant pause, nodding in reply. “I definitely didn’t expect to see you yesterday morning, that’s for sure.”

“Not gonna lie,” Piper murmured. “I was hoping you were over your little running obsession by now.”

Riley shrugged. “I thought I’d be too. I tried to stop, after high school. I certainly had enough on my plate, that’s for sure. Between getting Gramps home care and working full time, I was getting my steps in just living life, but something about running every morning, running the same path we used to, I needed it. After you left…”

Piper slid her shoulder alongside Riley’s, startling her in the best of ways. “Funny, Riles. I never took you for the sentimental type.”

They were at her house now. Standing by the mailbox, lingering in the morning heat, both of them sporting a sheen of perspiration from the lazy, meandering, reminiscing walk back from Jasper’s Java. “I guess, until you, I never had anything to be sentimental about?”

Piper glanced gently down at her, pausing at the mailbox. “Speaking of…” Her voice was tentative, even as she nodded at her grandfather’s old house. “It’s been a while since you’ve invited me over.”

Riley snorted with almost liquid lust. “Is that your way of asking if you can come inside?”

“Guess so. It’s been a while.”

“Since what?” Riley asked over her shoulder, leading their way up the driveway and past her sleek new ride, a gift to herself on her last birthday.

“Since I’ve invited myself over to a girl’s house?”

Riley paused, her hand on the doorknob, cool and reassuring under her fingertips. “Girl’s house, huh?”

Piper nodded down at her, the two of them standing so close on the same welcome mat they might as well have been in each other’s arms. “Mostly, lately, yeah.”

Riley turned the doorknob at last, hoping Piper wouldn’t see the sudden tremor in her tentative grip. The door slid open easily.

“You don’t lock it?” Piper mused, slipping past in a rush of warm, sweaty skin and a surprisingly feminine burst of caramel-smelling perfume tinged with the slightest hint of honey.

“In Jasper?”

“Aren’t you afraid of someone breaking in while you’re out?”

Riley shut the door gently behind them, the click resounding ominously through the sunken living room just beyond the tiled foyer. “There’s only one thing I’ve ever been afraid of, Piper. Don’t you know that by now?”

Piper gave her a knowing shrug. “And what’s that?”

“Being alone with you, dummy.”