Thirty
I’m having the good dream again—the one where Sam loves me and keeps me safe with his heated kisses and gentle caresses. Warm hands cradle my face. Soft lips dance across my closed eyes and my cheeks. My name, breathed softer than air, reaches my ears. Over and over he whispers my name, until I’m forced to drag myself back to consciousness and the realization that I’m lying in a sleeping bag on the cold tent floor.
The sensations don’t fade like they normally do.
“Sarah,” the whisper says again. “Wake up.”
My eyelids flutter open, his name on my lips. Before I can speak, he kisses me. It feels so good, his mouth covering mine, his tongue tracing my lips until I let him in. It feels dream good. On an impulse, I reach for his face expecting empty air.
Hot skin, sharp stubble, coarse wavy hair.
Sam.
I freeze.
He pulls away, grins, and glances over his shoulder at Alex’s empty bag and James, who has rolled another two feet away in his sleep. I snatch the flashlight Sam’s shining on my snoring brother and turn it off, my eyes wide with warnings I hope he understands.
He does.
Silently, Sam unzips my sleeping bag—maybe this is a dream, because that sleeping bag hadn’t been silent when I got into it—grabs Melinda’s shoes, and leads me out of the tent.
“Alex is staying in Kelly’s tent tonight, and your brother’s out for at least a couple more hours with how much he drank,” he informs me. “Which means you and I are going on a date.”
A date? I glance down at my rumpled flannel pants and Alex’s sweatshirt. “Can I at least put on my jeans?”
“They’re still wet. Besides, you won’t need your clothes where we’re going.”
I gape at him.
He laughs.
We spend the next fifteen minutes stumbling through thick ferns, climbing over logs, and avoiding moss infested boulders in silence. Finally, after what feels like forever, I hear water.
“The river?”
“Yep.”
Sam leads me through the last of the trees, down a steep slope to a concrete wall that juts out of the shallow part of the water and runs parallel to the embankment. With only a musty yellow floodlight illuminating the area, I can’t see how far it goes, but there’s definitely something on the other side of it. The roar of rushing water is much louder here than at our secret place.
“You kidnapped me to show me a wall?”
“Absolutely. Now, take off your shoes and roll up your pants.” I do, and he tows me into the shallow water by the hand. We stop at the base of the wall which I now see stands about six feet high. Squatting, he offers his linked hands to give me a boost.
“We’re climbing the wall?” I glance upstream, noting that the wall ends less than twenty feet away in that direction. “Why can’t we go around?”
“You’ll see. Hurry up.”
I gingerly step onto the center of his joined palms. As usual, I forget how strong Sam is. I’m in the air and scrambling onto the top of the wall half a second later. He pulls himself up behind me. It takes everything I have not to drool at how hot he looks doing physical things like climbing six foot walls.
“How’s your balance?”
“You’re just now asking me this?”
Chuckling, he walks effortlessly along the wall into the darkness downstream. “Keep up. If you fall in, I’ll need to be close enough to hear you hit the water.”
“Great. Just…great.”
Fortunately, thanks to years of walking along those bumper curbs in the mall parking lot while James and I avoided going home after school, I have excellent balance. I catch up to him immediately and nearly knock him into the water when he stops suddenly at the end of the wall.
And then I see what he’s looking at.
Below us, four square cement frames sit in a line beside a short waterfall. Water diverted from the stream swirls violently inside each of the six foot by six foot squares, spilling from one into the next until, finally free, it drains back into the stream at the base of the waterfall. They look like stairs made out of water. Or maybe a row of hot tubs that I very much doubt are hot.
“What are they?”
“Fish ladders,” he says, stripping off his t-shirt. “Fish use them to get upstream when the water’s running too fast to jump the falls. They’re great for cooling off.”
I gape at him for what feels like the hundredth time tonight. When he unbuttons his shorts, drops them, and drapes them with his shirt over the edge of the wall, my eyes feel like they’re going to pop from my head. “Naked?”
He stops short of pulling off his boxer briefs and gives me a wicked grin. “Well, I’d planned on keeping my underwear on, but you’re more than welcome to go in naked.”
“But…” I look back to the embankment and the stand of trees where we emerged from the forest. What if someone followed us? “We’re in public.”
After realizing I’m serious, Sam laughs so hard I’m afraid he might fall into the top step of the fish ladder. When he jumps in, I’m afraid he’s done just that.
“Sam!” I shriek, dropping to my knees on the concrete ledge.
He pops up, grinning, and smoothes his wet hair back from his face. “Water feels great,” he calls up to me. “C’mon in!”
Over the dull roar of the whirling water, I hear what sounds like footsteps crunching through the underbrush. Sam sees me peering into the woods and climbs the narrow metal ladder on his side of the wall.
“I thought I heard someone,” I tell him when he’s close enough for me not to shout.
When no mysterious stalkers appear, Sam shrugs. “It was probably an angler. The unlicensed ones come out at night and set up camp further upstream before the wardens start prowling the roads in the morning. They wouldn’t dare fish down by the ladders though, so we’re safe.”
Unconvinced, but even less willing to get caught standing up here, I strip off Alex’s sweatshirt and James’s flannel pants and hurry down the ladder. The water is freezing and deceptively deep, hitting me mid-chest, and I’m not prepared when the strong current sucks me toward the edge. Thank God for Sam or I might’ve fallen into the next one.
Holding me tight to his chest, he backs into the far corner and presses himself against the wall. My senses are on high alert with the cold water lashing at my legs and back contrasting sharply with his hot, smooth skin. When he starts kissing my neck, I almost forget about people following us, my father prowling around the house back at home, and James sleeping soundly in the tent.
Almost.
“I think James suspects,” I say just loud enough for Sam to hear me. “You shouldn’t have taunted him last night—you know how he gets about winning.”
“I told you. I don’t care anymore,” he says. His mouth brushes across my cheek, pausing to nibble on my earlobe. “I want everyone to know you’re mine. The sooner they do, the sooner I can get you out of that house.”
“He’ll kill us.”
“He’ll be seriously pissed off, yes, but he’s not going to kill us.”
I’m not so sure about that. Not with how unstable he’s been lately. He may not kill me, but he’ll definitely try to kill Sam. “Not yet, okay? Promise me.”
He sighs and presses his forehead against mine. Softly, so the words are almost lost to the loud water, he asks, “Do you love me?”
Hearing the fear in his voice, my breath catches. Every night since our walk at Leslie’s, I’ve lain in my bed and asked myself this exact question. My answer has gotten stronger with each day we’ve spent together. Whether he’s keeping me safe or making me laugh when all I want to do is curl into a ball and cry, Sam’s quickly becoming my everything. He’ll never replace James, but Sam is exactly what my brother can never be.
“Yes,” I whisper.
He gives me a sad smile. “Then why are you so desperate to hide that we’re together?”
I don’t know how to explain it so that he understands. Telling everyone will destroy my brother, and the thought of causing James more pain than I already have makes me sick. There has to be a better way for me to get what I want. I’ve been telling myself that if I can hold Sam off a little bit longer, if I can save up enough money to prove to James that he doesn’t need to worry about me all the time anymore, he’ll take the news better.
Maybe.
When I don’t answer, Sam’s arms slacken around my waist and he looks away. For one horrifying second, I think he’s going to break up with me. My blood runs colder than the water swirling around us and I hold onto him even tighter. “I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone.”
He eyes me. “More than James?”
“Yes.” The guilt-ridden truth of what I’m saying floods every cell of my body. I may not want to hurt James, but if I had to choose between Sam and my brother, I’d choose Sam. Several delicate threads of my sanity snap with the realization.
“Really?” Sam blinks, obviously taken aback, making me wonder just how feral I look clinging to him like this.
“Yes,” I say again.
He presses his forehead to mine and gives me the sexy little half-smile I can’t get enough of. “For the record, I love you, too.”
Every part of me melts at his words. As we kiss, first gently, then deeper and more desperate by the second, my bra comes off. Then my panties. The sight of both, sopping wet and drooping from the ladder rungs, jars loose the panicked thoughts I had on the drive up to the lake. Desperate to prove myself wrong, I grab the waistband of his boxer briefs and try to tug them off. If I can just get him naked, I’ll know for sure—
He grabs my hands and places them on his chest. “Please don’t.”
Please don’t? Is the thought of me touching him that repulsive?
I back away, arms folded across my chest, my stinging eyes glued to the swirling water in front of me. “How can you say you love me when you don’t want to be with me again? Was the first time that bad? Or did my scars freak you out?”
Sam gapes at me. “That’s not it at all. I can’t believe you thought—” He takes a deep breath and drags his hands through his wet hair. When he pins with me those intense gray eyes, my knees wobble. “I love you,” he says. “Everything about you. I was afraid you might still be sore, and I didn’t think I’d be able to stop if we got too close. I didn’t want to hurt you.”
The relief that floods my chest is stronger than I expect and my body sags. Pressing my back against the wall to keep myself steady, I stare at the boy who loves me because he wants to, not because he has to.
He wades closer and grasps my shoulders, peering intently at me. “Are you? Still sore, I mean?”
Sniffling, I shake my head. “Haven’t been for days.”
“Thank God.”
I’ll probably regret the scrapes and scratches on my back in the morning, but I love the desperate way Sam crushes me against the concrete wall and shows me just how perfectly we fit together. The intensity in his eyes, how our heated skin slides together in the cold water, the way he gasps my name at the end…I’ll never forget this night as long as I live.
“I called UCLA,” he says afterward, smoothing wet chunks of hair back from my face. “They’re letting me in. When I leave in August, I want you to come with me.”
I rest my head on his shoulder. “They’ll never let me live in the dorms with you. And school…I have to finish school.”
“We’ll get an apartment,” he murmurs in my ear, pulling my legs up around his waist again. “And then I’ll help you get a GED fall term so you can apply to UCLA, too. Say yes.”
I close my eyes and shudder. He’s offering me everything I’ve ever wanted—him, freedom, and a life far away from my father. James will be devastated.
This decision is mine.
“Yes.”