Twenty-three
Sam’s house is exactly the kind of place I’ve always dreamed about living in. Surrounded by a perfectly manicured hedge of red rhododendrons, and painted the warmest shade of yellow I’ve ever seen a house painted, it looks like it belongs on the cover of Cozy Cottage Living. There’s even a picket fence.
“Are you coming?” he asks from the porch.
I clutch the small bag of groceries I offered to carry to my chest. Perfection like this is bound to be breakable. I’m afraid to get too close and have everything I’ve imagined inside crumble before my eyes. “Maybe we should drive out to the river instead.”
Sam sighs, sets his armload of grocery bags on the porch swing, and walks back down to where I’m standing frozen on the sidewalk next to his car. “Sarah,” he murmurs, leaning close. “I want to be with you somewhere other than in the middle of a forest or in the front seat of my car. They’re…limiting.”
His warm breath caresses my neck and makes me shudder and tingle. If by “somewhere” he means his bed or even a couch…he has no idea how dangerous this is for me. How little control I have where he’s concerned. How badly I want to give him what every boy wants. If I do, maybe he’ll forgive me for not telling my brother. Maybe we can stay together. Maybe the weekend looming in front of us won’t feel like a death sentence because he’ll have something to remember me by until Monday.
He reaches for my elbow and leads me up the walkway to the porch, in the door, and into the tiny foyer, where I stop dead in my tracks.
There are flowers everywhere. Hundreds of them. But unlike the magic she created in the florist shop, Sam’s mom has transformed their house into a mausoleum.
My eyes immediately begin to water and I choke on the thick perfume of flowers past their prime that has settled over the room like mist. Slightly drooping dahlias and lilies sit in vases on every table, oil and pastel paintings of roses line the walls, and cast iron vines snake across the archway into the kitchen. The couch and loveseat are floral, the kitchen wallpaper is made of tiny lavender and yellow pansies, and the rug under the oak dining room table is a dusky red and green flower and leaf pattern. Any leftover table space is occupied by a bowl of dried flower petals and pinecones.
As if a house stuffed with dying flowers needs potpourri.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” I gasp, “but how can you stand living here?”
He shrugs. “Every time the shop gets another shipment, we get all the leftovers. My mom has this thing with perfectly good flowers being thrown away when they’ve still got ‘life’ left in them, so don’t be surprised if she tries to send you home with some.”
Trying not to sneeze, I finger one of the doilies on the entry table—floral lace, of course—and wonder what our house would look like full of flowers. Probably still a shrine to the boxing career my father refuses to leave behind. The thought of title belts decorated in floral garlands and wildflowers sticking out of his old boxing gloves makes me smile a little. Maybe I’ll take Liz up on her leftover flowers.
“My room is far less offensive,” Sam says, a nervous smile on his face. “Unless you’d rather hang out in the rotting garden?” He gestures to the nearest vase of wilted flowers.
“I want to see your room,” I say. And I do. I can’t imagine what his bedroom looks like. Not the emo-punk darkness I used to expect, that’s for sure. Despite his intensity, Sam’s far too hopeful for that. “But aren’t you going to give me the grand tour first?”
He looks so disappointed, I almost laugh.
“Fine, fine,” he grumbles. He points to the room with the couches. “Living room. The kitchen and dining room are behind you. Bathroom’s on the way to my room. Got it?”
This time I do laugh. “That’s it?”
He glowers at me, which only makes me laugh harder. While he deposits all the groceries in the kitchen, I wander into the living room, eagerly taking everything in. This is the part of Sam I’ve always wondered about, the part I didn’t have a chance to eavesdrop on when he hung out with my brother.
I wasn’t counting on how sad seeing this side of him would make me. Where my house is a shrine to boxing, everything in Sam’s house is dedicated to his father. The mausoleum feel suddenly makes sense.
On the end tables scattered around the room, framed pictures of a man that looks strikingly similar to Sam sit beside more flowery decorations. There is a five-by-seven picture of Sam as a toddler curled up on his father’s lap next to a bowl of potpourri. A round frame rimmed with shiny brass daisies surrounds Sam as a little boy, sitting on his father’s shoulders. A collage frame with four pictures of Sam and his father in various baseball jerseys sits next to a thin vase of neon blue irises. In the last baseball picture, Sam looks like he’s around twelve. His father, smiling as always, has his arm around Sam’s shoulders.
It’s the most recent picture of the two of them together in the room.
Everywhere I turn, I see another picture of this man, Joe Donavon, who is every bit as handsome as Sam in an older, chiseled sort of way. I let my eyes skim the framed set of medals and pins, a picture of his father wearing a bulky tan and cream-colored camouflage vest, helmet, and sunglasses, with a rifle slung over his back, and candid pictures of Sam’s mother and father together looking pretty close to our age. The two largest pictures hang over the brick fireplace. One is of Sam’s parents and Sam as a little kid—the kind of picture I used to wish hung on the wall in my house, though I’d wished for different parents. The other is of his father in a military uniform with a flag in the background. His steel-gray eyes, even more stunning paired with the uniform, stare back at me, searching and intense, so like his son’s.
On the mantle below the two pictures is a box holding an American flag folded into a neat triangle and a gold medal the shape of a star commemorating his death.
Behind me, Sam takes a slow, uneven breath.
“How did it happen?” I ask softly.
“His helicopter got shot down in Afghanistan. They were trying to get some of their guys out in the middle of a pretty nasty fight. They almost made it, I guess. He got the helicopter up and was on the way out when it happened.”
I relax into Sam when he pulls my back to his chest and rests his chin on the top of my head. “He’s so handsome,” I say. “You look just like him.”
“My mom says the same thing.” He kisses my hair and gently turns me around to face him. The sadness in his eyes is like a knife to the chest. “So can we go to my room now, or do I have to show you the backyard and garage, too?”
“We can go to your room.”
He reaches for my hand and leads me down the short hallway. “I used to make up excuses for why you’d have to come over with James. They were all pretty lame.”
“I’m here now.”
“Yes, you are.”
We’re at his door, which has a small dry-erase board nailed to the front. “Off at 8. Be good!” is scrawled diagonally across it in red marker. I hadn’t noticed at the florist shop, but even his mother’s handwriting is flowery.
“Be good, huh?” I give him the flirty smile I’ve been practicing.
“Mmm-hmm.” The heat in his eyes burns my skin. He slips his arms around my waist and kisses a path from my ear to my throat. “We’re very good together.”
I agree. Not that I can tell him this, because I’m about to pass out from how good what he’s doing feels. All of the sadness from a few moments ago quickly melts away. Thank God he’s fumbling for the doorknob behind him or else I’m going to tackle him to the floor right here in the hallway.
We stumble through his door mid-kiss. Already, I’m thinking about how hard it’s going to be to keep my clothes on and whether I actually want to this time. Before today, our touching has been tentative exploration at best—backhanded caresses, palms sliding beneath shirts, fingertips skimming the most private of places. I can tell he’s holding back, maybe even trying to get me used to the idea of being touched. He doesn’t know how badly I need this. How much I’ve come to crave his hands on my body, loving instead of hurting.
I don’t want him to hold back anymore.
My hands go to the hem of his red t-shirt and tug it upward. He breaks our kiss to yank it over his head. The fabric hits the wood floor with an anticlimactic swish but I hardly notice, and not just because Sam is standing shirtless in front of me for the first time. The flowers in the living room seem trivial compared to what surrounds me now.
Scanning his room, taking in what’s been so carefully placed inside of it, I realize just how little I know about the boy I’ve been in love with half my life.
Against the far wall, a full-sized mattress perches atop a massive frame made out of the same oak as his floor. There is a steeply slanted desk under the window with an ancient laptop sitting on top of it and a bar stool tucked beneath.
On the wall opposite the bed, a short oak bookshelf houses Calculus and Physics textbooks with little orange “USED” tags on the bindings, a snow globe filled with petrified wood, several rolls of paper, and a ton of what look like architectural magazines. A corkboard with pictures, assorted notes, and a few letters tacked to it hangs above the bookshelf.
The immaculate condition of his room isn’t a surprise, but the four enormous blue prints tacked to the wall in lieu of posters, and the dozens of intricate pencil drawings of buildings and bridges and houses covering the rest of his walls are.
I step around Sam and examine the nearest blueprint. It’s a house, I think. Bigger than mine and definitely bigger than his, with a huge master suite and several smaller bedrooms and bathrooms set like spokes coming off a long hallway. There are marks for windows on every exterior wall—dozens of windows. The small, hand-printed details are just large enough for me to read that the huge living room has vaulted ceilings and the kitchen counters are made of granite.
“My future house,” he says, sheepishly. “If I can ever afford to build it, that is.”
I drift over to the corkboard, admiring several of the sketches along the way. I recognize the picture of Sam, Alex, and my brother standing on a boulder in the middle of a clearing because an identical one sits on the dresser in my bedroom. Last summer, as a graduation present for Sam and James, the three of them went camping deep in the woods. Real Survivorman stuff. I remember pleading with James to let me go with them, and for a few days, I thought he might relent. Puppy dog eyes always slay my brother’s resolve.
Things had been quiet around our house for much of that month, though, so he decided it’d be safer for me to stay home than share a tent with three teenage guys. I have a scar that runs from my belly button, across my chest, and around the back one of my shoulders from that weekend—the unfortunate result of me trying to run away from my father. He caught me, tore open my shirt, and taught me a lesson with his leather belt when I screamed for help.
That was the last time James left me alone.
Next to the picture, a stark piece of university letterhead catches my attention.
Dear Mr. Donavon,
Congratulations! It is our great pleasure to offer you admission to…
“You were accepted to UCLA?” I practically shout, whirling around to face him. “Sam—why are you in Granite Falls loading freight?!”
Sam shrugs and looks out his window instead of at me. “I couldn’t afford the tuition. Plus, with my dad gone, my mom needs me.”
“But this means you’re super smart,” I say, jabbing my finger at the letter. “Your mom will understand. Go apply for a bunch of scholarships and tell them you change your mind! I’ll talk to James. Maybe if we go down there with you after I graduate, we can share an apartment and save you money on room and board.”
His glare, a harsh mixture of fire and ice, stops me cold. “Would this be before or after you tell him about us? Because I sure as hell won’t let you share a room with your brother if we get an apartment together, Sarah.”
My mouth falls open. Daydreams of us wandering the streets of sunny Los Angeles blur and fade until all that’s left is an incredibly hot, pissed off boy standing by his bed, looking vulnerable in the face of unrealized dreams.
I’m across the room, in his arms, and pressing my lips to his before either of us says another word. Sam always tastes so good—like icy mint toothpaste. My hands skim his stomach, feel their way across his hard chest to his shoulders, and fist the dark waves of his hair at the base of his neck.
When he tosses me onto the wide bed and lies on top of me, my ability to think shatters.
For the next couple of minutes, he barely lets me breathe. I pluck at the clingy fabric of my shirt, wishing I’d worn something loose like flannel pants instead of my cute, but way-too-tight-for-kissing-a-hot-boy jeans. Neither have stopped Sam from touching me, though.
Feeling every inch of his back beneath my palms, knowing how much he’s loving my touch, makes me crazy. I can’t feel enough, taste enough. My fingertips dig into his shoulders, pulling him closer, deeper. I imagine how pale my hands must look against all that tanned skin—
Wait.
A grin I can’t contain spreads across my face. “Roll over, please.”
“What…now?” He frowns. “I kind of like what we’ve got going this way.”
When he tries to kiss me again, I laugh and push on his chest. “It’ll just be for a second, I promise.”
“Fine, fine.” Still grumbling, he untangles his body from mine and flops onto his stomach next to me. “Is there a massage involved? Because I might forgive you if there is.”
I roll onto my side and let my fingers trail from the small of his back up his spine to the place my gaze has already settled. I wasn’t imagining it that night in the forest. Sam Donavon has a tattoo, and holy crap, is it sexy.
I trace the front blades of what I can only assume is his father’s helicopter, captured in perfect, miniature detail on Sam’s shoulder blade. My fingertips circle the gun sticking out of the side door, touch the tiny man wearing a helmet inside the cockpit, and trace the letters of his father’s name and the date he died beneath, which look like they’ve been burned into his skin.
Sam shudders and presses his face into the mattress.
“This is beautiful,” I say. “I think your dad would’ve loved it.”
He doesn’t say anything for a long time. Long enough for me to worry I’ve invaded his privacy and he’s trying to compose himself so he doesn’t lash out at me. I scoot away, hoping I haven’t screwed everything up, and hug my knees to my chest.
I’m in his arms and pinned beneath his body before I can process that he’s moved.
“I think he would’ve loved you,” he whispers.
The next few minutes are lost to kisses so sweet, I want to cry for the little boy who lost his father. But the sweetness doesn’t last. Ever so slowly, the need flaring between us builds until we’re both panting and plucking at my clothes. I squirm beneath him, desperate to be closer, and my shirt rides up. When I finally feel my stomach press against his, I choke on a desperate sob.
Sam curses. “Do you trust me?”
I blink up at him, lost in a lips-swollen-from-kissing haze. “Yes.”
He kisses me once, gently, relief and desperation obvious in his smoky eyes.
When his hands find the hem of my shirt, I turn away. I can’t handle seeing the look on his face as he peels the pale blue material upward, exposing one scar after another, inch by horrifying inch. My flaws. He curses softly each time another is revealed and I feel him wincing, which is bad enough.
“Arch your back,” he says in a pained voice. I do, and the shirt moves past my white cotton bra, and comes off completely in one gentle tug.
For several long moments, neither of us moves or speaks. I keep my head turned to the side, my eyes squeezed shut, and bite my bottom lip against the emotions threatening to escape. I can feel his eyes on my body, feel them lingering on each mark I bear. When he traces the largest scar, the one I got while he and my brother were camping, from my waist to my shoulder with his fingertip, I lose it. Tears, silent and hot, slip down my cheeks onto his soft flannel bedspread.
Rather than say anything, Sam kisses the same path his finger traced in reverse, stopping to nuzzle and kiss the smaller scars he passes along the way. My body is trembling like a rubber-band stretched too tight by the time he reaches my stomach and pauses with his fingers on the button of my jeans, waiting for permission.
Part of me still wants to grab my shirt and run out of his bedroom. The other part wants him to strip my painfully twisted jeans from my legs and throw them onto the floor. I don’t know if I can do it. He seems to be handling the scars he’s already uncovered well enough, but taking off the rest of my clothes—showing him all of me—would be giving away a piece of myself. The last piece I have to give. The only piece I’ve managed to keep safe.
Sam watches me carefully. There’s no impatience in his eyes. No irritation when he realizes my answer—no—is pressing against my closed lips.
He starts to pull away. The warmth of his hand disappears from my skin and I can’t handle the gaping emptiness it leaves behind.
I grab his hand.
That last piece of myself… I want it to belong to him.
“Yes,” I whisper.
I’m pretty sure the scars on my legs aren’t as bad as my chest, so when he peels my jeans away and curses again, I think it’s a good thing. He’s gazing down at me with a mixture of heat, awe, and only a teeny bit of horror. I watch his eyes trace paths along my legs and arms, across my stomach to my chest, and back up to my face. My body flushes with embarrassment.
“I’m too skinny, I know. You don’t have to say it.”
Frowning, he sits back on his heels. “Yeah, but that’s not what I was thinking. Not at all.” He traces my bellybutton with his fingertip. “I was thinking you’re beautiful. I can’t believe I wasted five years caring what your brother thought when I could’ve had this.”
I smile. “Five years ago, I was twelve.”
“Still.” He lets his finger trail lower and I gasp. “Beautiful.”
James is the only person who tells me I’m beautiful. While it feels nice when he says it, he’s my brother and family is supposed to say stuff like that. Hearing it from Sam…it’s like a drug. He’s like a drug. I drag him down to me.
“We should probably slow down,” he blurts out a few minutes later.
We’re stretched across his bed diagonally, legs tangled and bodies glued together. By this point, my bra has joined the pile of clothes on the floor and I’ve gone for the button of Sam’s shorts twice before he’s stolen my ability to focus with one of his deep kisses. I don’t want to slow down. It’s like I’m on the verge of something that doesn’t make sense to me at all, but I really want it to. Desperate, I push him onto his back and touch him through his pants.
When he groans, I know I’m playing with fire. He doesn’t have to say it—the spark in his eyes is hotter than Hell, which is where I’m sure I’m headed after what I’m about to do. With shaking hands, I work the button of his khaki shorts through its buttonhole, and draw down the zipper. His breathing quickens when I slide my hand inside and tentatively touch what I’ve come so close to exposing.
“Oh, shit,” he gasps.
The more I touch him, the more desperate he becomes, until his body trembles like a moth beneath my fingers. And I love every second of it. Feeling reckless and alive and in control of something for the first time in my life, I climb on top of Sam. The stricken look on his face makes me laugh.
“I’ve got condoms,” he says in a strangled voice. Like he’s trying really hard not to lose control. “I swear I didn’t plan this, but if you really want to…”
Do I want to? With every item of clothing we’ve peeled from my body, I’ve shed another part of the life I’m so desperate to forget. I told myself I’d already given Sam the last piece of myself I had to give, but that’s not true. I have another piece. One I’d assumed would be taken from me against my will. “I want you to be my first.”
I expect him to jump me the second the words leave my mouth, but Sam only stares at me. Emotions that I can’t comprehend flash across his face as his fingers trail from my cheek to my neck, then down my side to my hip. Nothing feels rushed. Not even the way he removes the last of our clothes.
Though he goes slow, it still stings more than I expect. He freaks out every time I whimper, and I have to beg him not to stop more than once, but there’s no way to keep my tears from leaking onto his bedspread. How could I possibly explain what I’m feeling? Sam Donavon is taking my virginity, not my father. I want to laugh and cry and run around the room and none of it—not a single emotion—makes any sense to me.
Until fifteen minutes ago, Sam felt like something I’d never be able to hold onto. Like cupping my hands under a faucet and watching the water slip through my fingers. Now, it feels like maybe being with him could be permanent. At least for a little while.
Afterward, Sam pulls me against his chest and smoothes my hair away from my forehead.
“Do you regret it?” he asks, a tinge of worry in his voice.
Listening to the steady thrum-thrum-thrum of his heart, I realize he has no idea what he’s given me. What he’s saved me from. If I get my way, he’ll never know.
“I’m glad it was you,” I tell him.
His shaky smile turns warmer than summer sunshine. This incredibly smart and selfless boy, with his strong arms, enormous heart, and addictive kisses, wants me.
If ever there was something too good to be true, this is it.