“Texas?” he repeated, as if the word itself, not just the location it represented, offended him personally. “Why in Hannah Montana’s name would you want to live there?”

I blanched, feeling the need to defend my life and chosen home. “It’s peaceful. Quiet.”

I didn’t know what time it was. Very late. Or very early, depending on how you looked at it. I was tucked into Sam’s chest and he was playing with tendrils of my hair. We were both naked. Naturally.

And I didn’t care. Not one bit. It was like he’d not only given me multiple orgasms, but everything I worried about, all of that stuff that stifled me from really living, had floated away in that moment regarding the sea.

I was still in that moment. Nothing else existed.

Apart from Sam, and me. And Sam asking me where I was living. And obviously not being impressed by my chosen location.

He scoffed. “Peace, if you hadn’t noticed, is the reason for all wars. Or the pursuit of it. People who are chasing that little rabbit at the dog track, not realizing they’re playing someone else’s game. Until the race is over. Then it’s too late.” He eyed me. “It’s too late because you’re dead. End of the race equals end of life, babe,” he clarified.

I screwed my nose up at him. “I get the metaphor, Sam.”

“You may get the metaphor but do you get it?”

“What?”

“Life?”

I didn’t move from his arms but lifted my head slightly to regard his expression, expecting a smile or twinkling eyes. But this was the other Sam. The naked Sam. Not just physically but emotionally. So I answered as the other Gina, who was also naked in more ways than one. “As much as anyone can. Not that I think anyone can truly ‘get’ it. I like solitude. It’s hardly a death sentence.”

My words came out light, meant as a joke, but they were not taken as one.

“That’s exactly what it is,” he replied solemnly. “Solitude is a prison for the lonely and the damned. Which are you?”

It shocked me. The insightful, almost philosophical statement. The words themselves, and the tone. More appropriately the change in the tone. From playful, almost empty words to somber ones that filled the room.

The shock from this combination caused a pause in my response, though through the course of the night, long pauses seemed to have become my norm. I had been retreating to my high school self, sucking in air and clutching silence like a shield. And back to myself with him, when that shield broke and tattered with his hateful words, yet still the silence remained. But this was different, though. Instead of being the weapon of an insecure girl or a battered woman, it seemed to be an instrument of a content one. Of one slightly confounded at the situation in which she found herself.

And moreover, Sam seemed content to give me my pauses. Like time was just another currency he had to throw around, another perk of being a rock star.

I blinked at him, my shyness urging me to break his gaze, to find solace by curling away from the reflection of myself that I saw. I worried it would be like Medusa seeing her own reflection and that being her destruction.

But I found it.

Courage.

Or maybe he gave it to me.

That was a troubling thought.

One that would have to wait till later.

Even the rich could run out of currency.

“Which one is it, Thumbelina?” he asked softly, calling me the name I’d yet to ask the reason for.

“I don’t think I’m damned,” I said just as softly.

He searched my face. “Going to agree with you on that one. If you’re damned, then there’s not even a scrap of hope for people like me. Not that I want nor need hope.” He paused. “So it’s the second. Beautiful girl like you doesn’t deserve to be lonely. Not that I want to bring him up at this precise moment, but I feel like it’s needed. What about the boyfriend? Ronald?” His tone was teasing yet held an edge.

One that cut through my initial confusion. “Roland,” I corrected.

“That’s what I said,” he huffed.

I smiled nervously. “I’ve got a confession to make,” I told him, darting my eyes away as my shyness and uncertainty returned when confronted with my lie.

“This isn’t your real hair?” he asked, tugging lightly on the strand he’d been toying with. “Well, your wig guy is a genius. You can’t even tell.”

I rolled my eyes and smiled nervously. “I’ll pass on your compliments,” I replied dryly. I sucked in a breath. “Roland isn’t my boyfriend,” I began.

His hand stopped moving. “What, is he your husband?” he asked, his voice cooled down to arctic as he yanked at my left, naked hand to inspect it for telltale jewelry.

I smiled nervously again. “No,” I said quickly. “I’m not married to Roland.” Then I laughed. “I, um, couldn’t be married to him. Because he doesn’t technically… exist,” I said, my face flaming.

Sam was silent for a second, a long one that had me feeling sick and ready to burst out in hives. I cursed myself for my stupidity and for being such a nerd. An honest one at that. Why couldn’t I have just carried on the lie? It wasn’t like he truly would’ve found out. I wasn’t like we were going to last longer than the sunrise, despite the idiotic hope I had been nursing. We had an expiration date. The chubby kindergarten teacher from Texas and the sexy-as-sin rock star who set the world on fire.

“Well, thank Buddha,” he said finally.

In my surprise, I found the courage to meet his eyes. “What?”

“I’m glad he doesn’t exist, because that means I’m not going to fuck up my hands smacking him around for not treating you right. Of course he doesn’t exist. No man has this in his bed and lets it roam around to fucking parties—”

“Weddings,” I corrected.

He waved his hand dismissively. “Wedding, party, same thing. Both have cake, booze, and horny chicks. And guys. So yeah, no man with two balls, two heads and one brain is going to let you walk around a fucking grocery store without him, let alone a party.”

“So you’re not mad?” I asked.

He raised his brows. “Why would I be mad?”

“Because I made up a fake boyfriend based on the gunslinger in one of my favorite Stephen King novels of all time,” I blurted.

He stared at me for a beat, and then his chest vibrated beneath me with the power of his laughter. He kept eye contact the whole time, and somehow it comforted me from being embarrassed. It wasn’t a cruel laugh; he was technically laughing at me, but it still felt nice, intimate. Like a real couple on a Sunday morning, just living life and being happy together.

Natural.

“Why Stephen King?” he asked when he’d gained control of himself.

I frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, if you’re going to pick yourself a book boyfriend, then shouldn’t you have gone with Nicholas Sparks or Nora Roberts? Not the guy who writes about killer clowns.”

I screwed up my nose. “You read Nicholas Sparks?” I asked, teasing.

He screwed up his own nose. “Of course not!” he defended. “The movies are much better.”

I giggled.

“Hence my question. Why didn’t you go with Noah or Landon?”

I smiled and decided not to tease him mercilessly for knowing the names of the heroes of both The Notebook and A Walk to Remember.

I regarded him soberly before explaining, “Because if I wanted to magic someone into existence, it wouldn’t be a run-of-the-mill man who is all hearts and flowers. I want someone from a forgotten age, from a different world,” I said without thinking. “Also because Stephen King is an almighty god and if I relate to anything in my life, it’s him.”

He grinned, but it was the same one he had used before I went into the bathroom. Not exactly amused or cheeky, but something else. Something deeper. “If I’m not mistaken, the dude writes about killer dogs, killer cars, and creepy twins in hallways.”

I nodded. “Among other things. But within the supernatural is the most poignant commentary of natural life I’ve ever read. It’s like exploring the human condition through inhuman situations.”

“But with cars that have minds of their own,” Sam teased.

I hit his shoulder, which was like hitting a brick wall. I was pretty sure I did more damage to my hand than him. “Have you read any of his books?” I challenged.

“I have not. I’m a busy man, you know. I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but I’m kind of famous,” he stage-whispered.

I rolled my eyes. “Fame isn’t an excuse. You’ll read it the same as anyone else. And just like everyone else, you’ll get something different out of it. Maybe a lesson on not being so arrogant,” I teased back.

He rolled me over and I let out a little squeal as he pinned me to the bed.

“Arrogant, huh?” he murmured, voice thick.

“Extremely,” I whispered.

“Hmmm.” He nuzzled my neck. “Well, I think I’ve got my work cut out for me if I’m to change your opinion of me,” he said before he kissed me.

He did indeed have his work cut out for him. And come morning, he would’ve changed my opinion of him. Completely and utterly.

Just not in the way he intended.

* * *

“We should sleep at some point,” I mumbled against Sam’s skin.

We’d just finished round four, or was it five? I’d lost count of the amount of orgasms. My body felt like lead. But it also felt lighter than it ever had. Worshipped.

Sam grunted against my head. “Sleep is for sissies,” he murmured.

I laughed. Truthfully, I didn’t want to go to sleep. Because welcoming oblivion would mean this, whatever this little ripple in time and space was, would end. And the morning would change everything. In the darkness, there was just us and the soundtrack of the ocean, the response of our bodies. There was no other outside world.

The darkness had a way of doing that. Making everything infinite and also tiny at the same time.

So sleep was not looking like a preferable option.

“You know what you said before about solitude being for the lonely or the damned?” I asked after a compatible silence.

“Yeah.”

“Well, if that’s what you think about solitude, then wouldn’t you say the same theory applies to the opposite?” I asked.

He lifted his head slightly. “What do you mean, babe?”

“I mean those who isolate themselves are one of the two, according to you. So I am going to argue that those who surround themselves with people are in the same situation. Being around people all the time, relentlessly, it’s kind of like being constantly alone,” I said.

I’d been chewing over that thought ever since he’d asked me his question. Because it didn’t come from a vacuum. It came from experience, as most things did.

“You talking about me, Thumbelina?” he asked, moving me in his arms so he could make eye contact. His irises were still dark with residual desire, sparkling in the moonlight, pensive as he regarded me.

“Yes,” I admitted, deciding not to dance around the question. I was sure naked honesty was something he was rarely ever presented with. “Peace and chaos are sisters, after all. I would say that the extremity of being known by no one might be the same as being known by everyone. No man is an island, Sam.”

He grinned. “True. But this man can buy one, and that’s technically the same thing.”

His comment was classic Sam, deflecting the truth with humor. But he wasn’t convincing even himself at that moment, so I waited.

“You know what it’s like to be loved by millions of people?” he asked, his eyes dancing with a childish glint. Perhaps if my soul hadn’t been as broken as it was, my heart as jaded and scarred, I would’ve seen that glint and only that. Appreciated the package on the outside.

But it had and I did, so I saw more.

I considered his question, holding his eyes with a courage I didn’t know I possessed.

“Lonely. I would say it’s incredibly lonely to be loved by millions of people,” I said decisively.

He flinched. Not in pain, like my words had caused a physical blow, but in surprise, and if I wasn’t mistaken, appreciation and respect.

He blinked once, twice, before the mirage of intensity disappeared from his face and his lazy smile returned.

But now that I’d seen it, I knew he wasn’t just a rock star—he was an actor too.

“Babe, you’re telling me you think that having the whole world obsessed with you is lonely?” he asked.

I blinked back at him. “I would say it’s most likely the loneliest feeling in the world,” I replied. “Because love can do one of two things, depending on the kind of it. And the kind millions have for you? It’s empty. And selfish. Because they want to take from you, from the person they imagine you to be. They don’t care who you are, only what you represent. They care about the cardboard cutout of you. And not being loved at all is almost as bad as being loved for the idea of you. For the mold. Not for what you are. An original.” I ended the last part on a whisper, as some kind of warped test in a practice of emotional self-flagellation. Alluding to that moment that meant so much to me all those years before to see if it clicked with him, if he held those memories of me anywhere.

His face didn’t betray much but the careful and intense perusal of my own. And my words. His eyes flickered with something for less than a moment, and then it, whatever it was, was gone.

I pretended not to feel hurt and disappointed. But I wasn’t as good an actor as Sam was. Even his Academy Award–winning girlfriend wasn’t.

He let out a long sigh, yanking my body upward so he could find purchase on my mouth. And he didn’t stop kissing me. Not until we’d exhausted our bodies so that we drifted into oblivion without much choice in the matter. My last thought was of the test. And whether his response noted a pass or a fail.

Inconclusive.

Or maybe that was just wishful thinking in the infinite darkness.

* * *

Everything looked different in the soft morning light. In the movies, it illuminated the slender and tanned body of a woman tangled in the sheets with her lover. Her hair splayed artfully over the pillow, glistening in the sunshine like flecks of gold. The fabric of the bedding covering nothing but the bare minimum, the man she was tangled up with covering the rest. The man himself muscled and with ruffled hair, a five o’clock shadow, a presence that gravitated beyond the screen while he clutched the woman tightly, for he knew that he couldn’t let such a creature go.

Creatures were exactly what they were.

Unicorns.

Because the soft light of day didn’t exist. Nor did unicorns, much to my disappointment. No, it was only the cold light of day.

Which was what I was currently enjoying.

I was half in fantasy, half clutched by the claws of reality. The fantasy being that I was, in fact, tangled up with the aforementioned man. The man with tattoos, stark against the crisp white sheet. Exploding life from beyond the fabric, from his naked skin. Even still clutched by the sandman, he radiated it. Movement. Every inch of his body was covered in it. Both of his muscled arms. A huge angel playing a drum set spanning across his broad chest, snaking down his six-pack. His neck was circled with the intricate wings of the angel, script threading delicately through the feathers. I didn’t have the time I craved to make out all of it, but I did read one line.

“Come as you are…”

It struck a chord of recognition within me and at the same time touched a part of me that usually only a great book could do. I shelved it and regained my hungry consumption of the naked and sleeping Sam.

His face didn’t need ink or art because it was art. Not sharp or carved from marble like so many novels liked to describe the ultimate man as. He did have a strong jaw, but the rest of him was soft edges. Subtleties. Ironic, since Sam was the opposite of subtle. And that’s what it added up to. The slightly tanned skin, the shadow of stubble glistening in the light. Long black lashes. Brows that were perfect, not too busy but enough to frame his masculine face. Midnight hair flopped across one of his eyes, having escaped from its famed bun. I liked it messy and wild; it was more… Sam. Unlike the oh-so-famous bun—an unpopular opinion, I was sure.

Heck, it was probably insured for five million dollars.

Everything, on its own maybe, was subtle. But put together, placed in perfectly imperfect harmony, it was Sam. And that was from an outsider’s perspective.

He was hot, sexy, iconic—whatever the masses called him these days.

But when you knew more, when you saw more, you couldn’t define him by that.

He was beautiful. Simple as that.

And as complicated as that.

And then there was me. I wasn’t beautiful. There were times, when I had a great makeup day and my hair decided to cooperate, that I felt it. In that temporary fleeting way that lasted as long as a long-wear lipstick. I never felt ugly.

Just ordinary.

And I was okay with it. At peace.

Until I woke up with a tattooed rock god next to me and wanted to crawl into my own skin and not come out until I’d morphed into some sort of butterfly, or at the very least a Victoria’s Secret model.

My skin didn’t glisten in the sunshine. It looked soft and dimply next to the tight and defined inked muscle mass beside me. The sinewy forearm thrown over my jiggly belly taunting me with its lack of body fat. I was sure my hair was mussed into a wild tangle that was not sexy bed hair, probably erring more on the side of deranged mental patient. I hadn’t taken my makeup off last night, so most of my mascara was likely painting my cheeks, channeling Alice Cooper and not pulling it off nearly as well.

Sam’s eyelashes, the ones I’d been admiring as well as coveting, fluttered. I froze as he blinked once, twice. I felt like a total creep, lying there watching him wake up, but I couldn’t help it. I even grasped the soft, pale skin on my arm to give it a small pinch to make sure I hadn’t just overdosed on tequila and was really drooling and unconscious on the dirty sofa in the Sons of Templar clubhouse. The small lance of pain told me that wasn’t the case.

So I just kept watching Sam wake up.

He regarded me lazily at first, smiling wide in an honest and beautiful type of way. Like he somehow didn’t notice the dimples, the pale skin, the bird nest that was likely my hair and my no doubt horrendous morning breath, which was why I was breathing though my nose.

There were a lot of times a person could lie. I learned that the hard way, like people learn most things. People lied about feelings, about love, happiness, unhappiness—about everything to gain power. Control. Because they were troubled and scarred from whatever the world had done to them to make them need that. Or because those people were just douchebags.

But once you could recognize the lies and liars, it made it easier to spot the truth. And first thing when someone woke up, before their brain could catch up, that was the truth.

It was one of the first signifiers of before, with him. One I’d missed for a long while, one that may have saved me a lot of time and heartbreak. But then again it was the hard way that I’d needed to learn after all.

But I did recognize the hard, cold and indifferent looks eventually.

So Sam’s expression shocked me—in a good way. There was nothing cold or hard or indifferent about the soft, affectionate, almost reverent look Sam was treating me to.

And it felt like that.

A treat. One that was even better than a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup while I was PMS-ing.

And then, much like that Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, it was gone quicker than I imagined or wanted, and I could only taste the memory of the sweetness on my tongue.

It was a strange kind of backward dance with my past. Simon would start with that calculating sociopathic glare, then quickly transition to the affectionate and loving mask, which I eventually ripped off. With Sam, he started off with that genuine warmth, but then I almost got frostbite from the rapid cooling and hardening of his expression.

I swallowed, trying to convince myself I was imagining it, though somehow convincing myself this couldn’t be good because all I was used to was bad. When that’s all you knew, that’s what you came to expect. It’s easy to convince yourself of the worst, so much so that you can manifest it. Expecting good is harder than fitting into the skinny jeans you brought when you thought you’d drop a dress size just to realize the opposite.

So I decided to expect good.

Instead of flinching away from the stare, which was my first instinct, I willed myself to remember the last twelve hours and the utter magnificence in their normalcy and their extraordinariness.

“Hey,” I whispered, my voice like my face: naked, open.

He explored my face in a way that punctured every bit of my exposed skin, both emotional and physical. I had the urge to glance in a mirror to see if the pinpricks from the iciness of that stare drew blood.

“Mornin’, sweetheart,” he murmured. His voice was husky. Sexy. But it was wrong.

Very wrong.

It was empty. Unfamiliar. Polite but detached.

The Sam of last night may have seemed like a stranger at times, especially when he’d forbidden me from coming for what felt like an eternity, when his eyes hard turned so black that midnight had a rival. When he pushed my body to the edges of pleasure and pain. But underneath it, somewhere, was still Sam. My Sam. The teenager. The man. The rock star.

But this was a complete and utter stranger. And worse, that’s how he was treating me. Like I was someone he’d dragged in from the random masses without even bothering to learn my name, let alone where I was from or what genre of books I liked to read.

He effortlessly rolled off the bed in a motion that deposited me roughly onto the soft mattress, still warm from his body even though I expected it to be glacial.

By the time I pushed myself back up onto my elbows to stare at him and hope that I was imagining this, the bathroom door was closing.

I stared at it. Listened to the shower running and the gentle humming of a song I didn’t recognize.

It was nice.

For a second.

Then I remembered the truth that even his husky humming couldn’t mask.

Yanking the sheet up to cover my exposed body, I inspected those seconds, the ones between the mask. What had changed in those seconds? I hadn’t said anything, hadn’t done anything. Everything about me had stayed the same. Despite that, those logical conclusions, my vulnerable brain told me it was me. That I was somehow responsible for it. Or more accurately, my imperfections. That split second of blame, of self-hatred or self-awareness, was familiar in such a way that I wanted to crawl out of my own skin to escape it. But as quickly as it came, I banished it. I had spent enough time blaming the actions of selfish males on my own shortcomings. Such blame had caused a lot of wounds to an already fragile sense of self-worth.

But I knew I needed to save myself. Repair myself. Because in a lot of the great romance novels, men were the saviors of a woman’s life. But in reality, they were more often than not the cause of their destruction.

That’s what love was, in the crux of it. Destruction. We all wanted to be in love. Until we were. And then the only thing worse than being in love with someone was the thought of losing that someone.

So I learned—again, the hard way.

That time, no matter how much it hurt, no matter how much my natural instincts told me to crawl into a ball and cry and ask myself why I wasn’t good enough, pretty enough, funny enough, thin enough—just enough—I fought against that. I would not put this on my shoulders.

Anger blossomed from the hurt that had begun to grow. In situations such as this, anger was the safest thing to promote. It protected against hurt.

For a time, at least.

I glared at the door when the shower turned off. Whatever happened in the bed where I thought all of my dreams had come true, it wasn’t on me.

But because I was a romantic at heart and I still harbored a sliver of hope, I waited. With my arms crossed protectively over the sheet covering my breasts, I waited. For him to come out with the familiar softening features and tell me he was a bear in the morning, then jump on the bed and make sweet, sweet love to me.

But dreams were free.

Reality was infinitely more expensive.

And painful.

Sam emerged from the bathroom, towel slung dangerously low on his waist, exposing the V that the whole world had seen many times, since he wasn’t afraid of exposing the goods. In real life, it was all the more droolworthy, especially with droplets of water trickling down the taut ridges of his inked abs.

His hair was wet too, falling around his shoulders, dripping more water onto his defined pecs. I could’ve snapped a picture of him with my phone right at that moment and it would’ve been a perfect Rolling Stone cover. Though he’d already done one of those. His tongue had been sticking out from between his crossed drumsticks, his eyes dancing with mischief.

These eyes were empty.

I blinked at him as he glanced at me, dismissed me, and went to the exploded Louis Vuitton tote in the corner.

It would’ve been funny under different circumstances. The me from last night would’ve teased him relentlessly for his overpriced and idiotic accessory. But that would’ve only worked on the Sam from last night.

This was not him.

I swallowed roughly. Found some courage. “Uh, Sam?” I said quietly.

“Yeah, darlin’?” he said without turning.

That hit me in a way an endearment wasn’t meant to. Like it was used for mass production, for the girls whose names he didn’t remember in the morning.

“Are you… is, uh, everything okay?” I asked, sitting up, feeling more than a little vulnerable naked as he slipped on a pair of ripped jeans, going commando.

He turned around, shirtless, the top button of the jeans undone enough to see the darkness of his hair. Trimmed neatly but still there.

“Sure, everything is righteous,” he said, voice light. His eyes roamed over me again, a flicker of something appearing before it left too fast to grab. Which was probably good. I didn’t need false hope.

It was like arsenic in those moments.

Of which, unfortunately, I’d experienced many. I’d just never expected it from Sam. From any of the Sams I knew. Even the ones who didn’t know me. I would never have entertained the idea that Sam would treat anyone like this.

That wasn’t him.

Or at least that’s what I’d thought.

“You need me to call you a taxi?” he asked, padding over to the other side of his bed, snatching the black phone off it, focusing on scrolling through with his inked thumb.

“A taxi?” I repeated.

He nodded, not looking up. “Yeah, sweetheart. To get you to your car.”

“My car,” I said slowly. That time it wasn’t a question. That time my voice wasn’t small and confused and hurt. That time my voice did its best to match the chill in his tone.

He glanced up. “Yeah, well I’ve got things to do, and I’m sure you do too. Last night was….” That glimmer came back, then left quicker than before. “Fun. But I’m sure you know the deal, Georgia.”

Georgia.

He didn’t even remember my name.

That cut a lot deeper than last night had.

A lot deeper. Exposing a part of me that I didn’t even really know I had.

A part of me that had courage. Or fury. Like chaos and peace, I understood fury and courage to be sisters, or at the very least cousins. Whichever one it was, it let me yank the white sheets back, still smelling of our lovemaking, to expose my dimpled, naked and pale body to the world—and more precisely Sam—without the embarrassment I would’ve usually been crippled with.

Without a glance at him, I stomped over to the door where my dress lay crumpled, already a skeleton of the night before.

“Yeah, I know the deal,” I snapped, snatching the dress off the floor and yanking it over my head. The fabric protested slightly and I was pretty sure I ripped it, but I kept going, hoping the rip wouldn’t expose anything important, or embarrassing.

I whirled around to where he was watching me, his phone forgotten. “The deal is you’re an asshole.” I snatched my purse off the ground too, haphazardly grabbing the rogue items that had spilled out of it. “Just because you hit drums with sticks, have some shiny trophies and a few more zeros at the end of your bank account than I do doesn’t give you carte blanche to act like this.” I waved my hand up and down his sculpted body in disgust. “To throw away who you were before and treat people like dirt. You’re still Sam Kennedy from high school, who was nice to everyone and wore silver that turned his fingers green. I’m sure not many people see you like that anymore, including yourself. But I did.” I grabbed one shoe while searching for the other, finally locating it before having to pry it from underneath the space between the minibar and the floor. “Did being the operative word. Now I’ll think of you how you’re longing to be treated. Like a rock star. Just another one in the crowd. You were original before. Now you’re just like everybody else. Plastic and unoriginal. Congratu-fucking-lations. You’ve made it, Sammy.”

On that note, I turned around and fumbled with the lock on the door, pretending my clumsiness wasn’t hampering me storming off, then slammed it behind me when I finally got it open.

I didn’t let myself cry until much later.

Until I was at home in my adopted town amongst my things, my shelves, and was safe.

Until Sam was thousands of miles away, most likely not thinking of me.

Most likely in the process of forgetting me. Because now he could truly forget me since he had something to forget. Not that it was important enough for him to do so. I was sure, now that I’d seen what he’d turned into, that scenes like that were just another normal Sunday morning for him.

And I only gave myself a certain number of tears. Then I did what I always did with these memories—I shelved them away to that lonely corner of my mind. But that time I made sure to clear off all the other ones that I’d nurtured up until that morning.