CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

 

 

SAM

She sits on the couch on the other side of the room. Her hands are bunched into mounds on the couch at her hips, and she glances out the window into the back yard. Summer is pottering somewhere close by. She keeps slamming cupboard doors and humming just to remind us that she’s there.

We’ve been having this same discussion, or lack thereof for the past two weeks. Ash shows up every lunchtime and quietly tiptoes into the room. I barely acknowledged her to start with. I couldn’t get the image of her with that guy out of my head while I was at the hospital. Couldn’t stop the pain that came with how far she would go to push me away after everything we went through. Couldn’t stand to look at her.

Now, I get a headache from clenching my jaw every time she enters the room. I have a million questions I want to ask, and nothing to say to her all at the same time. My chest aches. It hurts anyway. I might not have had a heart attack like my dad did—there was no blockage, no need for surgery—but still, it’s taking time to recover. And her presence is too hard to deal with.

Every now and then our gazes clash. She’ll shift her focus from the window to the vase on the console near the door, and she’ll catch me staring at her. I don’t let her know that I am though, dropping the connection the moment it’s made. Looking at her makes everything harder. Why is she still here? Why does she stay, when I tell her to go?

“Summer says you’re coming home tomorrow?” Her voice is so low I almost don’t catch it at first. Don’t know whether to reply or not.

Her facial muscles tick as she waits for me to respond. I guess she expects it’s unlikely. “Yes.” I clear my throat. “She’s driving me crazy.”

She swings her attention to me, startled. “T-that’s our Summer.”

I’m almost surprised myself. Only it’s been three weeks and I can no longer ignore the fact that she’s still here even when I’ve told her over and over to leave. She keeps coming back. She hasn’t tried to push me to listen to her, just waited patiently. And Ru said she’s been taking on a lot of the restaurant work. Between them they’ve kept Sweet N Soul chugging along. So maybe she’s trying? Or is that wishful thinking because I can’t just stop loving her. I recognize that now. For better or worse she holds my heart in the palm of her hand. “Why are you still here?”

“I told you I would be.” She tugs at her skirt as she crosses her legs and leans forward. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“No, that’s not what I’m asking. You were running away the night I…got sick. You were leaving then. Or pushing me away. You threw yourself at someone else, Ash.”

“That’s not what happened.” She shakes her head, growing pale. “Let me explain, please?”

“Explain how you did the same thing you’ve been doing all our damn lives? Only it was so much worse this time because I thought…I believed you when you said you belonged here with me. I thought things were different and I dropped my guard. Did you want to hurt me so much I couldn’t keep my word to you? Did you want me to give up on you? Is that it?”

She sucks in a sob. Her eyes grow bright, but she doesn’t look away.

“Tell me then,” I demand. I don’t know if I do it for her good, or mine. Is there anything she can say that will help ease the anger and the pain inside me?

She’s quiet. So quiet. Minutes pass. “I don’t know where to start.”

Me either. Not really. What part of this situation will be easier to swallow? What piece of her explanation will keep me from wanting her in my arms again? “Who was he?”

“Luca.” His name drops like a pin, clatters around in my head before settling.

“The creep from the tape? What was he doing here?” Why would she have anything to do with him after what happened?

“He was blackmailing me. I wasn’t with him when you saw us, not in the way you think. I wasn’t trying to push you away. I was trying to fix things.”

That asshole was blackmailing her? “How long? Why?”

“Weeks. That night you saved me from the crowd at Mayhem was the first time he contacted me. He worked out who my father was. Knew he could make some money by releasing the tape and then demanded we pay for his silence on the fact that I’m Robert’s daughter. It would have been so much worse than it was when I was just some nobody on tape. It would have been unstoppable, and he knew Robert would pay to keep it from the public eye.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” The entire time she’s been here she didn’t breathe a word about it. How could she keep something this big from me? Why didn’t she think she could come to me with this?

“You would have tried to fix it. You would have tried to deal with him, or my father, or put your restaurant on the line.” She gets up from the couch and comes to stand next to me. “All my life you’ve bailed me out of trouble. You’ve always looked after me, and I have always let you down. I didn’t want to do that again. You asked me not to disappoint you, and I would’ve done anything not to.”

“You wouldn’t have disappointed me if you told me.” I touch her hand and she startles, gazing down at me. “But you’re right, I would have wanted to fix it. You should have let me.”

“That’s not why I’m staying,” she says as I curl my fingers around hers. “I mean that’s not why I stayed. I didn’t want it to be why I was here. Don’t you understand? I wanted you to know I was staying for you. I wanted you to know that I can stand on my own two feet and still want to be with you. I needed you to be able to take me seriously. If I’d told you before I dealt with it, you would have fixed it. You would have seen the same old Ash that gets into trouble and needs to be rescued, and I don’t want to be that girl anymore. So I kept it from you. I told myself I would fix it before I told you, and it backfired on me.”

“You should have told me from the start.” I tug on her hand, gently leading her closer.

“I should have.”

“And you’re still here…” I say, although she’s made it clear she isn’t planning on going anywhere.

“I am.” She tries to smile. “I’m here.”

“Is there anything I can say that will change your mind?” I ask, staring up at her. God help me, I want her to say no. I want her to fight for our love the way I’ve always fought for her. I want her to say it and mean it the way I’m starting to believe she does.

“No,” she says. “Nothing. Unless…”

“Unless?”

“I love you, you know.” She smiles as tears tremble on her lashes. “Always have. I was just so scared that you would regret loving me, and that I would hurt you irreparably. I couldn’t do that to you. All those years ago when you asked your dad for your grandmother’s ring, I overheard him tell you that you wouldn’t understand love until you found the woman you couldn’t live without.”

“Ash.” I shake my head sadly. “You should have talked to me.”

“I saw what that kind of love did to people, Sam. I saw what losing my mother did to my father. I lived with it. That devastating kind of love that can’t be recovered from. I felt it, and I couldn’t be that for you. I couldn’t. Not if I could help it. I couldn’t be the love that destroyed you. Not willingly. I just couldn’t.”

“You already were.” I catch her around the waist, and she tumbles onto my lap with a yelp. Securing her there with both arms, I press my forehead to hers. “Didn’t you know that? Didn’t you feel that? I tried to protect us both from getting too deep. I tried to tell us both we were wrong for each other, but we weren’t. I told him that too.”

“You did?” She stares at me and there are so many tears now. They tumble unhindered down her face, but they aren’t all sad. There’s hope there too in the light of her eyes. There’s love. There’s a quiet sort of faith I feel from her that makes me believe we can figure it out. “And you didn’t regret it?”

“I couldn’t.” I smile at her gently, shake my head.

“Not even a little bit.” She peers at me as though she expects a different answer.

“Not even when you left me each time. I was hurt. I was angry. I made promises I knew I could never keep. I told myself I was right every time I told you that you were too young for what we wanted. But it didn’t change the fact that you were everything to me. Our time together was everything. I tried to move on. I couldn’t. I tried to let you go. I failed.”

“You didn’t ask me to stay. You didn’t tell me.” She grips my shoulders and shakes me, collapses against my chest. “You never told me. I thought it was better to hurt you a little than cause you that kind of pain. I didn’t know I was anyway.”

“I told you when I let you back into my life, and I’m telling you now,” I stroke her hair back from her face with both hands and cradle her head between my palms. “I won’t do without you again. Do you hear me? If you’re here, Ash, then you’re all the way here. There are no more secrets, and no more running, and no more trying to protect me from the bogeyman. It isn’t your fault your mother died, and that your father couldn’t get past it. It isn’t fair, but it’s not your fault either. And that isn’t our story.”

“What is our story?”

“It’s this right here.” I brush my mouth against hers, taste the salt on her skin. “It’s letting me love you even when you don’t feel like you deserve it. It’s staying even when you think it’ll hurt me. It’s us, not hiding from our feelings, but sharing them. It’s living and breathing, love. You and me. Together. One day at a time. Do you think you can handle that?”

“I’m here,” she whispers. “I belong here with you. Always have. But this time I’m not fighting love, I’m fighting for it. I’m not going anywhere.”

I crush my mouth to hers in a kiss that jumpstarts my heart and seals our souls to each other. Our tongues skid against one another as our bodies meld together. There’s possessiveness in her kiss, and in mine. Love and hope too. And understanding that neither of us will let the other go without a fight ever again. It’s in the urgency with which we deepen the kiss. It’s in the way her hands roam my chest and cling to my shirt while I grip her hips so tightly I leave marks. And when we pull apart it’s in the way she looks at me and asks me to let her take me home now. Our home. Together.