before we both turn into ghosts ┊p. mclean

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

Piper McLean was trouble.

She had been since the day she figured out how to climb out of her crib, since the day she learned how to throw a punch. She was the kid who never listened to rules, the kid with skinned knees and split knuckles, the kid who talked back to teachers and stole things just to see if someone would notice.

She was eight years old the first time she got arrested.

It wasn't real, not really—not in a recorded way, at least. No paperwork, no mugshot, no long lectures from a judge. Just a sheriff's deputy with tired eyes and a grip too firm for her small wrists, guiding her into the back of a squad car like she was a stray dog that had bitten someone. Which, to be fair, wasn't entirely inaccurate.

Her father hadn't even been there for it. He'd been on set, halfway through filming some bloated war epic where he got to be noble and tragic and say things like we few, we happy few while covered in fake blood. Piper had only ever caught glimpses of him on those sets—between takes, between trailers, between the million other people who got his attention first.

Piper might as well have been invisible.

Her father was famous—too famous, too busy, too caught up in scripts and directors and press tours to pay much attention to the daughter who bore his last name like a brand. Piper didn't want the kind of attention that came in the form of Christmas presents from assistants or the occasional nod of approval from across the dinner table. She wanted his time. His focus. She wanted him to look at her.

So she caused problems.

At school, they called her a "difficult child." In the tabloids, she was a "wild child," a "spoiled Hollywood brat." It was funny, really. People assumed she acted out because she had everything. That was the joke—she had nothing at all.

She knew, even at eight, that the story of her arrest would make it to him faster than she ever could.

The school had called a second time when she'd refused to explain why she'd punched Adam Vasquez in the mouth hard enough to knock out a tooth. Baby tooth, she clarified. He was gonna lose it anyway. They hadn't been impressed.

So now she was here, arms crossed, scowling at the wire mesh between the front seat and the back, waiting for her father to show up and say something.

He took him hours to show. When he did it was an army of agents, maybe some lawyers and his normal line up of assistants behind him.

By the time Tristan McLean arrived at the sheriff's station, Piper had already memorized the pattern of scuff marks on the holding room floor. He looked perfect, as always—effortlessly handsome, the kind of man whose hair never seemed to move out of place, even in the wind. She looked like him. People told her that all the time. You've got your daddy's eyes. Like that was supposed to mean something.

He thanked the officers. Smiled. Shook hands. Had his lawyers handle the whole thing like it was a business meeting, like Piper wasn't sitting there with bloody knuckles and dried tears on her face.

When they finally got into the car, she stared straight ahead. He was still covered in grime, no doubt from earlier filming. He seemed out of place compared to the plush seats of the limo they sat in. Neither of them spoke.

Then, he sighed, without looking up from his phone, "Again, Pipes?"

That—more than anything—set her off.

She turned, fuming. "Again? What do you mean, again? It's not like I do this all the time."

He gave her a pointed look.