salute [h.s]

oh, are you an expert on my sister now?

"Just trying to keep you focused," she said back as she shuffled right out of his lap. He reached for her with a disappointed whine in the back of his throat, trying to grab her back. She was having no part of it and chose to lean over his desk, palms flat to the wood, as she surveyed what he had done. It took everything in him not to touch her arse when it was presented to him so nicely. "What have you got?"

"I wrote a recap of the year, which is that one sentence at the beginning, and then just sort of talked about general things. You know, my health and the places I'd travelled to and you —"

"Me?" she asked incredulously as she glanced over her shoulder.

"What do you mean, me? Of course I talked about you," Harry informed her, wondering why she was confused in the first place. "You're my girlfriend, petal."

"I don't know," she said as she squirmed a bit, obviously uncomfortable. "It's just that you never see Gemma and you hardly have the chance to talk. I don't know why you'd waste any time talking about me."

"Because I love you," Harry said quite plainly. "And I want to talk about you."

Piper's face flushed red, like she was embarrassed, and Harry couldn't for the life of him understand why. "Piper, we've been dating for a year. I'd hope you'd know how important you were to me by now."

"I do," she insisted but it didn't sound quite as confident as he was used to hearing from her. He was a little surprised to be honest. Sure, when they'd first started out, he'd been really tight lipped about how he felt but so had she and he hadn't doubted for one second that she loved him. So why would she doubt his love for her?

He placed a hand gently on her lower back, rubbing it in a circular motion before sliding it over to rest over her right hip. It hovered over an old scar, nearly a year old at this point. He'd never forget it though. It had been one of the scariest nights of his life. "In case you've recently suffered from memory loss which is the only reason I can think that you'd be confused here," he said to her, meeting her brown eyes with an earnest stare, "let me remind you of something very critical. I love you. I need you. You're important to me. And I'm not going anywhere so get used to me telling my sister all about you. And my mum."

"You talk to your mum about me?"

"Every phone call," Harry told her which, granted, were not often but whenever they did talk, Piper was always part of the conversation. "Usually its her asking about you. It's been a long time since I've had a girlfriend to call home about in the first place. She's thrilled."

"I'd like to meet her one day," Piper said and then seemed to realize just what she'd admitted to. Immediately her lips curled in and she grimaced. "I mean, um, never mind."

Harry knew why she was acting all squirrelly. They didn't talk about his family very often because Harry had taken great measures to distance himself from his mum and stepdad, and his sister and her family, to keep them protected. He hadn't seen anyone in his immediate family in person for going on five years. Piper knew about what he did, about him keeping them separate, and she did her best to respect that. She didn't bring them up, always leaving it to him to talk about them if he wanted to. She never pushed him for information. On top of that, she'd made sure that Harry felt like a part of her own family. Sydney felt like a second mother to him. He was cordial with Mimi and he barely tolerated Andrew, just like Piper. They had become a surrogate family.

"I'd like you to meet her one day too," Harry told Piper, his voice softening. He felt a wave of happiness flood over him when Piper smiled just the littlest bit. "I think you would get along with her. She's quite like your mum, just a little less sneaky."