I TOLD YOU SO - CHRIS HALLIWELL

TEN

A week had flown by and each day she had spent at least an hour with Matt. Not as a date, but as a friend. After their first date, she had called him and spoke to him about what it would be like moving forward. And just as she had thought, Matt was completely okay with just being friends.

After a couple days, Hayden had started hanging out with the two of them. It had really helped her friendship with the whitelighter grow again, and she had been able to avoid Chris. Not that she was trying to.., but she was.

She couldn't help it. She knew that the more she was around Chris, the more she would fall for him. She couldn't allow herself to fall more than she already had, so she had to be the one to step back. Chris was not allowing it very much though. At first, he had backed off for a couple of days thinking maybe she had needed space, but now he was back to trying to figure her out.

She hadn't given him an explanation as to why she was avoiding him. Instead, she always had a convenient excuse to leave every time he came into the room. Luckily, Hayden had been sticking around most of the time, so he would orb her away on a moment's notice. The downside was that she typically felt ill to her stomach by the evening because of all of the impromptu orbing.

"Piper! I'm ho-" Sage stopped mid sentence when she saw Piper hanging onto the banister and a vortex in the middle of the floor. Sage held onto the doorframe as the wind from the vortex pulled her feet out from under her. "Piper!"

The woman turned her head to see the younger girl slipping. "Sage! Hang on!"

Telling Sage to hang on was easier said than done. The woman had absolutely no upper body strength at all. When she was asked to do pushups in her physical education class, her classmates would laugh at the coach.

"I'm trying!" Sage yelled back to the woman, gripping the frame as tightly as she could. It was now that she regretted not being more athletically inclined.

Despite her efforts, her fingers slipped and she slid across the hardwood floor. She couldn't help the yelp that escaped her lips as she was drawn closer and closer to the vortex. She watched as Piper slipped from the banister, but right as she reached the edge of the vortex, she used her power of combustion to knock the demon backwards. The vortex disappeared, along with the wind surrounding it, and the demon shimmered away.

Sage blew a piece of hair out of her face before glancing over at Piper with a raised eyebrow. "I'd say you don't have to vacuum the floor now."

Piper scoffed out a laugh before pulling herself to her feet and brushed herself off. Sage did the same and glanced around at the mess in the manor. "Looks like I came home just in time for cleanup duty."

"Yes, thank you." Piper sighed, fixing the dining room chairs and table. "He came out of nowhere."

"Are you the only one home?" Sage called as she entered the conservatory where most of the damage had occurred.

Her answer appeared in orbs of blue and white when Chris orbed right in front of her with Phoebe and Paige in tow. She huffed when she ran right into his chest. "You have got to stop doing that."

Chris chuckled before glancing around the manor. "Is he gone?"

"Yeah, Piper blasted him and he left." Sage told them, moving to the side so she could go over to clean up the mess on the floor. "You have perfect timing by the way, Piper!"

Piper thanked her for the compliment as she brought the broom into the room. "It was either blast him or both of us were being swallowed up by the vortex."

"Wait, Sage was here while the demon was?" Chris questioned, his eyes narrowing as he realized.

"Yes, and she distracted him long enough for me to blast him. So thank her and move on." Piper remarked before he could go into his whole overprotective speech again.