Chapter Seventeen
You Okay?
Eleven days later…
“You okay, babe?”
I turned my head from watching Sam standing in my yard, talking to my brother Kyle to Paula who was standing beside me, holding my plastic cup refreshed with lemonade, part of the many refreshments my mother brought to see us through the day.
It was early afternoon of my yard sale and after we finished up, Dad, Kyle and Sam were going to haul anything left to the Goodwill. Then we were going to Paula and Rudy’s for a barbeque. Then Sam and I were driving to Indianapolis, staying the night at the Hyatt and getting on a plane headed to North Carolina late the next morning.
Not that there would be much to go to the Goodwill. Firstly, an everything must go sale stated pretty clearly that the person having it wanted everything to go and not many people were adverse to a bargain. Secondly, everyone in America knew I was with Sam, which included everyone in Indiana so practically everyone in Indiana showed up.
We had our first person arrive at five thirty in the morning.
Sam didn’t even open the door. But he and Memphis got out of bed and walked to it then I heard him shout, “Come back on time. Eight o’clock. No sooner.”
Memphis yapped her concurrence.
Then Sam wrote a note, put it on the door and came back to bed. It didn’t stop a few people from knocking but he didn’t get up again. At seven thirty, my posse showed and we started dragging stuff out to the yard. The minute we did, all the doors on the cars lining the road in front of my house and down the side streets opened and they descended en masse.
Half the stuff was gone by nine o’clock.
Another quarter of it was gone by ten thirty.
Now it was two in the afternoon and only the dregs were left. I’d been so busy, I’d barely noticed if Sam was inundated by admirers (though I did notice many occasions he was chatting with people but just like him, he seemed to take this in stride). My house was empty save for Sam and my suitcases. I’d hired professional cleaners to come in on Monday and I’d given Mom power of attorney to close on the house for me, something that was happening on Thursday.
It had happened.
All that was Cooter and I was gone except for the dregs sitting on my lawn. I’d sifted through everything and there was nothing left. I’d even sold nearly all of my clothes except ones I’d bought in the months after he died and when I was on vacation.
I felt relief about this and it ran deep. I also felt a shimmer of elation. It was done. I could move on. Any memories I had were no longer physical, they were only in my head and those would fade.
That said, it was only a shimmer of elation because the answer to Paula’s question was no, I was not okay.
And I was not okay because Sam had broken his promise.
At first, I’d been patient and given him time. We were busy sorting through the stuff in the house, renting a small storage unit for anything I intended to keep and going on approximately three billion, four hundred and twenty-seven viewings with Paula (none of them fruitful, alas). Then there was hauling stuff to the storage unit, dinners at Mom and Dad’s, Paula and Rudy’s, Missy’s, Teri’s or meeting them at restaurants. There was also finding and hiring a cleaning firm. And working with Teri to arrange travel to North Carolina. And also Sam’s workouts and frequent telephone conversations with his crew of badasses and Ozzie.
But after awhile, the hard work was done and it was mostly waiting for the yard sale to happen sprinkled with an occasional (fruitless) viewing.
When we had time on our hands, Sam filled it. He did this by telling me he wanted to visit the places he’d frequented when he’d lived in Indianapolis.
I’d been surprised. I knew he lived in Indy for several years but I didn’t know he held any nostalgia for it.
This was because he hadn’t told me.
So we went to Eagle Creek Park where Sam said he would go and run, he liked it and he missed it though, luckily, he didn’t run when we went there but we did walk for over an hour. We drove around the Circle. We went to an Italian restaurant called Patrizio’s where, the minute Sam walked in, the owner (the aforementioned Patrizio) greeted him like a long lost son. Interspersed with his many duties running a popular but kind of hole in the wall restaurant, Patrizio hung at our table and I learned more about Sam from Patrizio than I did from Sam. But, again, all of it was fun, reminiscing, nothing meaty, nothing profound.
In other words, in our time in Indiana we did a lot, we were together almost constantly but what we did not do was talk as Sam promised we would.
He was no less attentive, no less gentlemanly, no less Sam which meant he was no less guarded.
And that was what it was. I’d figured it out. And I’d figured it out not after the first time I gently attempted to steer our conversation to him, his intensity about me and where that was coming from, his history, his heart and had been just as gently rebuffed. Nor did I figure it out after the second time I, a little less gently, tried to approach him and was again gently rebuffed.
No, it was the last time, last night, after we’d had sex, were cuddling and murmuring about nothing important when I’d tried to move it to stuff that was important and was not gently rebuffed.
And I did this by cautiously and gently (I thought) asking about his brother Ben.
“Don’t, Kia. Yeah?” Sam had said, his until then soft murmur suddenly holding an edge.
“Don’t?” I asked carefully.
“Don’t,” Sam confirmed.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t push it.”
I pulled in breath then asked, “Push what?”
Sam didn’t answer.
No.
What he did was lift up and twist, coldly dislodging me from where I was lounging on his chest. Then he turned off the light. Then he settled in bed with his back to me.
Yes, that was what he did. He gave me nothing and then he completely shut me out.
After the shock wore off (and this took awhile), I rolled to my back, cuddled Memphis and stared at the ceiling, feeling a pain stabbing close to my heart.
Because I knew at that moment that it wasn’t about us being new, getting to know each other, feeling each other out. It wasn’t about things being intense, our feelings for each other and all the stuff swirling around me. And it wasn’t that we were jetlagged, busy and there were a million things on our minds.
It was that Sam did not intend to share and I couldn’t figure this out. He was demonstrative, affectionate and communicative. He listened, I knew, he always paid attention. He cared what I said about practically everything even if I was waxing on about how awesome pasta was at Patrizio’s.
He just wasn’t letting me in.
The one time I put up what Sam called “a wall” he got seriously ticked and tore it right down. But turnabout was obviously not fair play with Sam Cooper.
He’d broken his promise.
And that hurt.
I looked from Paula back to Sam and suddenly I felt my head start to throb dully.
I was in unchartered territory.
Of the things Sam had shared, he’d made it clear he didn’t want me gabbing to my girlfriends about him though this was mostly about how he was in bed.
I didn’t know if it was okay to do what every girl in the world did and that was pick apart her relationship with her boyfriend. I didn’t want to piss off Sam especially not now, when I felt things were at a fragile juncture.
It didn’t seem fair if the rules of dating a famous hot guy included the fact you couldn’t seek advice from your girlfriends, especially in the beginning and seriously especially at a fragile juncture.
“Babe?” Paula prompted and I looked back at her. But before I could speak, she handed me my lemonade and declared, “You know, this is good.”
My mind on Sam, I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“What’s good?”
“This,” she swept her arm out to the yard, my eyes followed it and when they did I saw Teri and Missy heading our way. “This is good,” she went on. “Letting that dickhead go. Exorcising him from your life, all of it, all of him. It’s good.”
“It is, you know,” Missy told me when she and Teri stopped close.
“I know,” I replied, looking amongst my friends.
Paula was petite, had dark, thick, curly hair, gray eyes and she was a little plump but she worked it. Teri was tall like me, way rounder than me but she also worked it. She had ash blonde, wispy hair she spent a fortune on having cut so it didn’t look so wispy. Missy was also tall, but she was blue-eyed, dark-haired and reed thin by design. She worked out daily at the gym, getting up at five o’clock in the morning on weekdays to do it. Since Rich died, it was another of her obsessions. She dropped fifteen pounds she didn’t need to lose due to grief and kept it off due to an obsession with fitness that took her mind off what she lost.
They were my friends, my posse, my best buds. But I had kept them distant from me for years as I lived in hell. They were friends who would have helped me, friends who stood beside me even though I didn’t let them in and still, even learning that lesson, I was undecided about sharing about Sam.
And I didn’t know how to feel about this either.
On the one hand, I was falling in love with Sam and if he could grow to trust me, I could grow to trust that maybe the same thing was happening for him too. And I didn’t want to do anything that might harm that.
On the other hand, with Cooter, I’d chosen the way wrong man for me, blinded by false glory and I didn’t want to do that again. Sam was not Cooter, I knew this. And for years I’d given a certain amount of headspace to what signs I might have missed from Cooter, red flags that, if I’d been older, more mature, I would have caught. There weren’t many but they were there. And what had happened last night with Sam completely shutting me out, I thought, was a red flag.
And my girls could confirm this. Or not. But at the very least talking to them would mean letting it out and getting different viewpoints because the one I had wasn’t so fun.
I didn’t know what to do.
“You should be doing a happy jig,” Teri told me. “But you look like someone ran over Memphis.”
This took me out of my thoughts and I gasped at the very thought of my baby being run over. So did Paula. So did Missy. My two girls loved Memphis. Teri was partial to bigger dogs and ones Cooter hadn’t adored.
“Don’t say that!” Paula snapped.
“Jeez, don’t be so touchy. I’m just saying what she looks like not that I want anyone to run over Memphis,” Teri returned.
“Ohmigod! You just said it again!” Paula cried.
“Seriously?” Teri fired back.
“Okay, I love your brother but oh… my… God.” This came from behind me, it came from Gitte and the last word was breathy.
I looked over my shoulder to see she’d approached. She and Kyle had left the day after they ascertained Sam had my safety in hand. That said, I knew Kyle called Dad and Sam frequently to make sure everything was okay. They’d driven up last night, arriving late, to help me with my yard sale and to party with the gang after all that was my life with Cooter was carted away.
Now, her blue eyes were big and they were staring across the yard.
“Holy shit,” Teri whispered.
“Freaking, freakity, freak, freak,” Paula breathed at the same time.
“Wow,” Missy murmured reverently.
I followed their eyes and blinked. But after my blink, they didn’t disappear like the dreamlike visions their utter perfection proclaimed them to be. They were still there, walking across the yard toward Sam and Kyle.
Two men. Both tall. Both dark. Both seriously freaking fit. And both gorgeous. One was maybe five ten at the outside, years older than the other but this did not detract from his absolutely lusciousness.
“Who are those freaking guys?” Paula asked on a whisper.
“I have no idea,” I answered, with my girl posse still gratefully drinking in the talent. In other words, I had not torn my eyes away from the two men.
They made it to Sam, there were smiles, chin jerks, head nods, handshakes and so much hot guy hormone floating in the air around them it was a wonder every female in a two block radius didn’t instantly become pregnant.
Kyle was introduced. Then Sam’s head turned, his eyes flowed through me then to the street where he gave another chin jerk. I followed his gaze and saw a man, short, bulky, negative body fat seeing as he had so much muscle his muscle was competing with his other muscle to control his frame, sandy blond hair close-cropped to his head and wearing a jacket even though it was eight-two degrees with seventy-five percent humidity got out of his vehicle and leaned to the side.
Bodyguard.
Jeez, I’d been so busy selling my life with Cooter and freaking out about what happened last night with Sam that I hadn’t even noticed him.
I looked back Sam’s way to see him leading the hot guy crew toward the front door.
“We’ll be a minute, honey,” he called to me as he approached the door.
My eyes went from him to hot guy number one then older hot guy number two, both of whom were looking at me with small, polite (but hot) smiles on their (hot) faces then back to Sam.
They were his hunters. I knew it.
I shifted to start toward him and began, “I’ll –”
“No,” Sam cut me off, I stopped moving and saw he had too, his eyes on me. “Later.”
I stared at him and that was it. Sam said later, he meant later. And I knew this because he immediately opened my front door and him and his crew (and Kyle) disappeared behind it without another word.
That was when I stared at the closed door unsure if I should stomp inside and demand to be let in on what was happening in my life. Or whether I should burst into tears because I was frustrated and further, it couldn’t be denied, Sam had hurt me last night. He’d actually hurt me. Something I never thought Sam would do. Or whether I should scream at the top of my lungs to get rid of some of the tension that was bunching my shoulders, up my neck and throbbing in my head
I was unable to come to a decision before Teri, who clearly was so mesmerized she didn’t hear my earlier answer, asked, “Do you know those guys?”
In the intervening days since my arrival home I’d let my girls in on what Vanessa and Cooter did as well as what Sam was doing about it so I answered, “I think they’re Sam’s friends who are dealing with my hit man issue.”
Four sets of female eyes went to my front door.
Then Teri muttered, “I wouldn’t mind my life, or other parts of me, being in their hands. Either one of them.”
“I bet neither of those guys would have a problem with Sam’s cardboard cutout being in the room while he gave you the business,” Paula noted.
“There you go. Finally, a solution to that problem,” Missy put in. “You need a badass. That way you can keep your cutout of Sam and still get yourself regular orgasms.”
Teri looked at Missy. “The only badass in town was Milo and he’s not in town anymore because he’s at the penitentiary and I didn’t know he was a badass until he blew half a man’s head off.”
“I have to admit, Heartmeadow is kind of a badass wasteland,” Missy muttered.
“Tell me about it,” Teri muttered back.
“Rudy’s a badass,” Paula threw out and we all looked at her but said not a word. “He is!” she asserted, correctly reading our looks. “He’d never let anything happen to me.”
“Uh, girl, I don’t know if you were here just now but those two dudes are like Sam. That is to say they could disarm Milo on a rampage and then break him in two after which they’d successfully lead a mission to dismantle a terrorist sect intent on ending American society as we know it. You’re right, Rudy would never let anything happen to you but we just were introduced to visions of pure badass and, love him to bits, but for the first time in my life seeing the real thing, Rudy is no badass,” Teri stated.
“Uh… excuse me?” a female yard sale patron joined our huddle, thankfully before Paula could attempt (unsuccessfully) to defend Rudy’s badassness. “This box says five dollars. Does that mean everything in it?”
I nodded. “Sure does.”
“Will you accept three?” the patron asked.
I opened my mouth to answer in the affirmative but Paula got there before me. “Woman, from what I can see, what’s in that box is worth fifty dollars. You’re getting it for five and you wanna pay three?”
“Paula,” I whispered.
“It’s a yard sale,” the patron retorted. “You’re supposed to haggle.”
“It’s an everything must go because your dead husband was a serious dickhead sale and that means you pay the price my girl spent her time writing on the box and walk away happy you got yourself one freaking huge-ass bargain,” Paula returned.
“You don’t have to curse,” the patron shot back.
“Honey, you just got here but it’s been pandemonium seein’ as everything that’s been carted away was the definition of huge-ass bargain. And her dead husband wanted her dead. There is no other word for a man like that but dickhead,” Paula parried and the patron looked at me.
“Yeah, I read that. That’s just awful. Though, you done real good for yourself, hooking up with Coop. And you’re climbing the best dressed list. I saw you in your bikini on that beach on that island and you looked real good.”
I stared. Then I breathed, “What?”
“You were on a beach in a white bikini and you were tan, just like now. They had a special summer edition of beach babes on youwearitwell.com and you landed the number four slot,” the woman told me.
“You’re moving up,” Gitte muttered. “Told you.”
Gitte sounded happy.
I was freaked.
The patron kept the information flowing, “Same bikini, different picture, you were wearin’ like, a short, see-through sarong, holding hands with Coop walking up the beach on bodiesbygod.com and you got on last week’s edition, number six on the Curvy Girls list.”
Oh. My. God!
People were taking pictures of me. Of us! And I was in a bikini! And I didn’t even know it!
Sure, it happened before but that was Tilda. Tilda was rude and rabid. Tilda doing it wasn’t a surprise.
This was.
I had no idea.
The throb in my head became less dull and I checked myself from glancing around frantically as paranoia set in that right that very moment someone was taking a photo of me that would eventually be posted somewhere I didn’t know it would be.
“I need an aspirin,” I muttered.
“I got aspirin in my purse in the house. I’ll go get you one,” Missy offered then headed toward the house.
“So, will you take three dollars for this box?” the woman brought matters back in hand.
Again, before I could answer, Paula did. “No.”
“But –” she started.
“Seriously? Not only is it a bargain, you’re buying it from Coop’s girlfriend. You can tell all your friends that and that you spoke to her too. That makes it a serious bargain,” Paula returned.
“Hadn’t thought of that,” the woman muttered.
“Five dollars,” Paula stated firmly, holding out her hand palm up.
The woman glanced at the box then at me then at the house where I was certain she’d seen Sam disappear. Then she went for her purse.
I left Paula to it, wandered away and sat in the grass. I was sipping my lemonade and still controlling the urge to survey my surroundings to make certain no one was aiming a camera (or other more deadly technology) at me when Gitte lithely fell to the grass beside me.
Then she asked Paula’s question.
“You okay?”
I pulled in a breath then turned my head to look at her.
“I have a headache.”
She nodded and looked across the yard at the half a dozen people milling about and pawing through stuff.
“Kyle is…” she started quietly then trailed off.
When she didn’t say more, I leaned into her, bumping her with my shoulder and she looked at me.
“Kyle is what?”
“He cried when Cooter died.”
I blinked.
Whoa. Shocker.
Then I asked, “He did?”
“Yeah,” she answered. “A lot.”
I didn’t know what to make of this.
“I –” I started.
“Relieved,” she whispered, I then knew what to make of it and I snapped my mouth shut. “If it had gone on much longer, Kia, he would have been Milo Cloverfield. I know it.”
Oh God.
I closed my eyes.
What I had done to my family.
Oh God, what I had done.
“He likes Sam,” she said and I opened my eyes. “He likes him very much. And not because he’s wealthy, not because he’s famous but because he cares about you in a healthy way.”
There it was, my opening to throw out what was worrying me and pick it apart with Gitte. Gitte wasn’t only strong, she was cool, she was smart and she had the ability to say it like it was without hurting your feelings. She, too, had more than once brought up the topic of Cooter and she, too, had been shut down by me on said topic.
But she could and probably would talk to Kyle about anything I shared with her. And Kyle had Sam on speed dial. And further, Kyle could let something slip; it wouldn’t be the first time. Heck, half the times I got in trouble when I was a kid was because Kyle had a big mouth.
No.
Gitte was out.
“I’m glad,” I told her.
“He’s still relieved,” she told me. “We both are.” She looked to the yard again and shared, “I think half of why he was so intent on driving up was that he was concerned you were with another man, even one like Sam who he admired.” Her eyes came back to me. “But anyone can be something for the public and something else privately. We were both very happy to know Sam is who Sam really is.”
Yep. I had done a number on my family.
“He is,” I assured her even though I wasn’t feeling so assured. Still, one thing I did know was that he was far better than Cooter. Far, far better.
“You need to believe in this,” she told me softly.
“Sorry?”
“In you. In Sam.” She smiled at me. “I see good things.”
I did too.
Until last night.
She continued, “You don’t believe in it, do you?”
“We’ve known each other a month.”
“You go to bed beside him; he goes to bed beside you. How long has that been going on?”
I pressed my lips together and tried to calculate it.
Then I gave up and admitted, “Well, most of that month.”
Gitte smiled again. “I believe this.”
“Sam didn’t waste a lot of time,” I pointed out the obvious.
Her smile got bigger. “I believe this too. You, an American on vacation in Italy, he wouldn’t wish to let you slip through his fingers.”
I pressed my lips together.
“Or,” she kept going, “it’s clear he didn’t wish to let you slip through his fingers because here you both are.”
“Yep,” I looked away, “here we both are.”
She took my hand and I looked back as she whispered, “Believe, Kiakee.”
I stared into her eyes. Then I nodded.
Celeste and Thomas. Luci. Now Gitte. They all wanted me to believe.
Maybe they saw something I did not. Maybe Sam just needed more time.
Maybe I should just let my mental bullshit go and believe.
We’d only been together a month. Only a month. And he’d been screwed over repeatedly.
I needed to cut him some slack and believe.
So to my nod, I added a smile.
She smiled back and let my hand go.
I took a sip of lemonade and in my head whispered, fearless.
I said it, I wanted to feel it and I tried. But my headache was not going away.
Whatever.
It was just a headache. Eventually it would fade.
Onward.
I made a decision.
“All right, sweetie, let’s call an end to this. Load up the dregs in Dad’s truck, get to Paula and Rudy’s and start the party.”
“Sounds good to me,” Gitte muttered, rolling gracefully to her feet, I followed and moved toward the remaining boxes.
* * * * *
“You okay?”
Sam and I (and Memphis) were in our room at the Hyatt and he’d just tipped the bellman for bringing up our bags on a trolley.
I’d let Memphis out of her doggie carrier. She was exploring.
I was staring out the window at the amazing view of the Capitol and the lights of Indy and I didn’t look at him when I answered, “I can’t shake this headache.”
This was true. Missy had given me aspirin and a couple of hours later Paula had given me ibuprofen. Neither worked.
And I had a feeling I knew why.
Deciding to believe in Sam and in us, being the dork I was, lasted around five minutes and started to melt away when Sam walked out of the house with Lee and Tanner.
I was right. Those men were his hunters, Lee Nightingale and Tanner Layne. He introduced them to me, my family, my friends and then they helped load up the remaining boxes of stuff in Dad’s truck. Then they politely declined invites to Paula’s barbeque doing so with hot guy smiles that left all the females staring (and Teri nearly drooling) and took off.
Since there wasn’t a lot of stuff, Sam and Kyle didn’t have to haul any in Sam’s rental SUV or Kyle’s car, only Dad had to make the trip. So Sam loaded up our suitcases, I grabbed Memphis and we went right to Paula and Rudy’s. My car was already stowed in Mom and Dad’s back shed so I went with Sam.
In the SUV, I’d asked, “So, what was with the powwow?”
Sam’s reply?
“Later, baby.”
It was said gentle, sweet but still, it upset me. As far as I knew, he hadn’t had a face-to-face with them since we got there but I wouldn’t really know since he never told me anything. They’d talked on the phone often but one thing I did know was they had not approached the house. Not to mention, it wasn’t one of them, it was both.
This made me think they had something important to say.
And when Dad got to Paula and Rudy’s, I knew they did because Sam left it for approximately two point five minutes before he negotiated a private huddle with Dad and Kyle, sans me.
I’d let it go in the car because my head was hurting even more and I had to keep a lock on my reaction because I didn’t want to get emotional however that emotional might be, either losing it and snapping at him or losing it and getting teary.
After the huddle, even with my head still throbbing, I’d picked my moment and caught Sam when we could be alone.
“Is something up that I should know?” I asked.
Again gentle and sweet, he lifted his hand, cupped my jaw, his head dipped close and he whispered, “Now’s not the time, honey. Later.”
Then he’d kissed my nose, his hand fell away and then he moved away.
The good news was, he didn’t seem wired and worried. Neither did my Dad and Kyle. In fact, studying my father and brother, they seemed more at-ease then they’d been for ages.
So, clearly, nothing dire had happened.
The bad news was, if it was nothing bad, I didn’t get why Sam wouldn’t tell me.
As I stared out the window, I felt Sam fit his body to the back of mine and his arms went around me. Then I felt his jaw settle at the side of my head.
“Important day for you,” he muttered.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“It’s done,” he stated.
“Yeah,” I repeated.
His arms gave me a squeeze and didn’t let go. He was quiet. So was I.
I waited for him to say something. We had time. It wasn’t early, it wasn’t late. It was just us. Until we had to be at the airport to check in our bags and Memphis for our flight which didn’t leave until eleven, we had nothing to do but be.
He didn’t say anything.
Neither did I.
But I felt my head start pounding.
Before I could figure out what to say, Sam spoke.
“Get ready for bed, relax. I’m gonna take Memphis down and give her a walk. Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’s her leash?”
“In my overnight bag.”
His jaw went away and his lips swept my neck. Then he let me go.
I turned and watched him dig through my bag and nab the leash. Memphis went mental at seeing it, Sam clipped it on and then he gave me a smile and chin lift (Memphis gave me a yap) and he was out the door.
I turned back to the window but I closed my eyes against the view.
Everything Sam danced across the backs of my eyelids. All of it, except what happened last night, was beautiful.
I opened my eyes and stared at a view I knew cost more than the average room, something else Sam gave to me since he was paying for it, like everything else.
And seeing that view, knowing he knew I had a headache so he was taking care of my dog, surmising that he was giving me quiet time to reflect on my “important day”, thinking of all that was him and that very day getting rid of everything that had anything to do with the hell I’d lived in my years of Cooter, I could not believe I wanted more.
But I couldn’t help it.
I did.
When it came to Sam, I wanted everything.
And I was beginning to fear he wasn’t going to give it to me.