I was no Belle from Beauty and the Beast. I thought I was, desiring some kind of adventure that took me halfway across the world.

But it wasn’t for me.

I scrubbed the tears away from my face in my hotel bathroom, encouraged by the dim lighting. If I couldn’t see what I’d done to my face, I’d be better off.

My compulsion to pull had intensified, like a raging ocean. Wave after wave of embarrassment and frustration had crested sometime overnight, leaving me with a neat little pile of eyelashes on my pillowcase.

I ran my finger over what remained anyway, feeling sick over how few there were. I tried to remember ever having a full line of lashes, but I couldn’t.

I had to stop touching them, because the urge to pull them was just that much more present. I only had a few left. What was the point, anyway?

Forcing myself to stop touching, I braided the halves of my hair on my head, securing each end in clear elastic. I made them tight, so that I wouldn’t need to pull.

Even though it was dark in the dingy bathroom, I could see what my picking had done. My eyebrows, once sparse but still present, were practically nonexistent. My hair, which had once been thick like my mum’s, was now flat. I tugged at the braid, loosening the chunks until it appeared fuller.

I had to repeatedly adjust my stance due to the walking boot I wore on my leg. “You have a mid-shaft fibula fracture,” the doctor had told me. I’d been encouraged by the fact that I’d fractured the leg bone that wasn’t weight-bearing, but I needed to be in the damn boot they’d fitted me with for two weeks, and then use crutches.

It wasn’t as bad as I thought, but the injury itself had woken me up to my purpose. I’d been grieving the thought of losing my ability to dance, but I’d still be able to. This injury wasn’t the ender, but realizing I’d worried about it at all had been like a lightbulb flashing on.

The doctor had warned me that my muscles would undergo atrophy, so even when the bone was healed in six weeks, my leg wouldn’t be the same as it was before. But I could get it back to what it was with some rehab.

So not only was I embarrassed for having made a big deal about fracturing a bone that was more or less useless, I was embarrassed that I was stuck in my hotel room while Joss and the guys had continued on the trip I was supposed to be on. To the one place I wanted to go, Arches National Park.

I’d miss out on the hot air balloon ride as well—the boot made that too inconvenient.

I looked out the bathroom window of my room, seeing the Salt Lake City airport in the distance, and knew the next four days until my flight home would drag.

I’d been in the hotel room for two days now, watching endless television and stuffing my face. Today, I was going to actually leave my room and go into the city for some adventuring. Which was why I was bothering with putting on a set of false lashes, why I filled in my sparse eyebrows. My eyelids were swollen from the crying and the irritation I’d caused them, but after applying the line of lashes, I felt—and looked—much better. It was a small thing, but it made such a difference to my confidence that it didn’t feel small at all.

The text was the first contact I’d had with anyone all day, feeling incredibly lonely and too much of a whiner to actually speak to my friends back home. I told him I was fine, and set my phone down. I didn’t blame them for going on without me, because what other choice did they have? But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel lonelier than ever.

A knock on the door interrupted me from fanning my lashes and I stared at the shadow figure standing outside my room. I wasn’t expecting anyone. After the doctor had told me my injury wasn’t as bad as I thought, I’d told Ames and Mila not to worry about me. I could make it another four days until it was time for me to return to my home. Besides, it would be much easier to do so without my tail between my legs, like it would be if Mila or Ames had to accompany me home.

“Just a second,” I called and checked my lashes in the mirror. Once I was assured I looked somewhat back to normal, I hobbled my way to the door with the boot and opened it.

And then my breath caught in my throat.

Sam.

He was standing on my hotel room doorstep, arm leaning against the doorway. “Lots,” he said, and before I could stop myself, I flung my entire body into his arms.

He didn’t hesitate and wrapped himself around me as I burrowed my face into his chest. He smelled so good, like home, and he felt like it too.

It was the first time I’d felt at home in a month, and though I’d known I was homesick, I didn’t realize just how badly I was until that moment.

“You’re here,” I said with wonder against his jacket. I didn’t want to let go of him. My hands fisted the fabric and curled him in.

“I’m here.” He ran a hand down my back.

I wanted to sink right into him and not come up for air. I forgot about everything in that moment and just held onto him like he might let go before I was ready.

I was the first to pull away, gliding my hands over his chest. It’d only been a month since I’d seen him, but part of me had thought that maybe I’d imagined most of my feelings for him. Now, touching him, having his hands on me, there was no doubt of my feelings. I was still in love with him, painfully so, and he was here.

“Hi.” I gave him a small smile and he looked me over, a frown around his eyes.

“You okay? Your face is a little puffy.”

I withdrew from him and pressed my cold palms to the skin under my eyes. “I’m fine. Just tired. I’m not sleeping well.” I gave him a smile and stepped back. “Want to come in?”

He stepped through, taking in the state of my hotel room. It wasn’t as tidy as I would have liked, but it didn’t look like a tornado had breezed through either.

“Did you come all this way for me?” I asked, suddenly realizing that Sam was here, in America, in my hotel outside of the Salt Lake City airport. Not back in London, where I expected him to be.

“No, I flew all this way to take in the amenities of this fine establishment.” He ran his hand over the plastic dresser and then looked over at me with one of his easy grins, the kind that made my heart pitter patter. “You’re surprised to see me?”

I shrugged and sat down on the bed behind me. Lifting my boot to the bed, I said, “I wasn’t expecting anyone to come. I told Ames and Mila I was fine.”

“I know. I heard. But I’d already purchased my ticket.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and continued looking around the room. “I would’ve come anyway, though,” he added softly, glancing at me and then at my boot. “How’s the leg?”

It was surreal, to be thousands of miles from home, but with Samson here. I had to blink, to make sure he wasn’t a product of my subconscious.

Regret fluttered through me in remembering how we’d parted and embarrassment chased that, up into my cheeks. It was easy to temporarily forget that night when he’d stood on my bedroom doorstep, but now that he wandered around my room, I could do nothing but watch him and remember all the ways he’d touched me.

“My leg?” I asked. “It’s okay.” I rapped my knuckles on the hard plastic shell. “I can walk on this, but it’s not terribly comfortable.”

“Okay.” He nodded like he’d decided the room was adequate. “I’m hungry. Are you?”

My jaw went slack. This was so unusual. Sam was here, in America, with me. Our last conversation, in London, wasn’t going to be continued—at least not yet. And he was asking if I wanted to eat.

“Uh, sure.”

“What’s good to eat around here?”

I looked blandly at the garbage can in the corner. Boxes from pizza places, Chinese takeaway, and sandwich shops were practically, but neatly, overflowing. “Pizza. Sandwiches. Lo mein?”

“Let me guess,” he said, turning around and taking me in. “You haven’t had a proper meal outside of this room in a while.”

“You’d be right.” I laughed lightly. “I can’t remember the last time I ate something that wasn’t delivered to my door, or cooked over the fire.”

“We can’t have that continue now, can we?” he asked and stepped toward me, holding a hand out. “Let’s go. We’ll get some dinner in, and then you can fill me in on your adventures thus far.”

“Thus far,” I said, placing my hand in his. “This is the end of the line for me.”

“Ehhh,” he replied, tilting his head back and forth as he looked me over. “Not yet. You’re not going to waste the next few days inside this place.”

I bit down on the argument I wanted to have, because I knew it’d be an argument for the sake of arguing. Sam could be pushy. I’d forgotten that. “What are you in the mood for?” I asked, deflecting.

“I saw a waffle and burger place on the ride in.”

I nodded and my stomach responded with an audible growl.

“Need a piggyback?”

“No.” I laughed at its absurdity. “I can manage quite well on my own.”

“As I can see,” he said, swiping a foot at the rubbish bin that held all my delivery garbage. “Let’s go, I’ve got a car.”

I grabbed my purse and stepped outside of the room into the sunlight. Sam walked ahead of me to one side of the car, and opened the door.

“Is this safe? You driving on these roads?”

“Perfectly safe,” he said, and waved a hand for me to sit. “Get in, Lots.”

I paused and rubbed my chin. I wondered how many times I’d been taken aback by how incredibly, terribly beautiful he was. He wasn’t dressed in anything excessive, and his eyes looked a little tired. But with the sun at his back, illuminating his figure in front of me, I was struck by how good he looked. And it wasn’t the kind of beautiful you saw on a stranger walking on the street—this was from a place deeper than what my eyes beheld. He shined with it, and there wasn’t even the smallest piece of him that I found unappealing.

I climbed into his Jeep rental with his assistance, nervous at the prospect of Sam behind the wheel of a car that drove on the opposite side of the road he was accustomed to.

“I can’t believe you rented a car,” I told him. “How long until you leave?”

“I’m staying as long as you are,” he said, buckling in. I noticed he had changed the verb of my question from leave to stay, and I marveled at the impact such a minor word choice could have upon me. “Four days.”

“Well, there’s lots of stuff to do. The group I was with was headed down to this park that’s full of arches. So, if you want to do that, I’m sure you could catch up.”

He pulled onto the main road with such ease that I was a little jealous. Here I was, one month into my American holiday, with one leg already injured from the littlest bit of recklessness, and he was driving a foreign car on foreign soil like it was something he did all the time. “Is that what you want to do?”

I laughed and motioned at the boot wrapped around my leg. “I can’t. My leg.”

“I didn’t ask if you could. I asked if you wanted to.” We were stopped at a red light and I was aware of how much space we occupied now that we weren’t in my hotel room, and were in a Jeep instead.

“It doesn’t matter if I want to or not. It’ll be too difficult to lug this leg around.”

“You’re not going to this park because it’ll be difficult?”

He was pressing my buttons, much as he’d done before in his interrogations the night before I left London. “In case you’ve forgotten, I’ve got a fracture in my leg.”

“I’ve not forgotten. But I recall you telling Ames it was a non-weight bearing bone, which means it’s perfectly fine for you to walk on it, right?”

Irritation lit through me. “That’s not the point.”

“Oh, I know.” He smiled at me in a way that made my stomach dip. “You’re ready to spend the next four days coasting in that room until it’s time to go, right? Well, too bad. We’re leaving that room. Tomorrow.”

“Wh—what?” I sputtered. “Tomorrow?”

“Yeah. We’re going to finish out your trip. Do the stuff you don’t think you can do, in the time we have left to do it.”

It rose my hackles, I couldn’t help it. “I’d rather not push myself to exertion.”

“I’m not saying we’re going to climb a fifteener, Lots. But you didn’t come all this way, enduring that injury, to sit back and wait it out. And I’m not content to sit by for the next few days, doing nothing.”

“You don’t have to. You can go, I’ll wait.”

“Don’t be a coward, Lotte. I know you’re not one.”

I gritted my teeth. “So what if I am? I came to America and realized that I’m happier at home. I came here chasing this idealized vision of being some adventurous twenty-something and it turns out that adventure isn’t for me. So. I’ll be a coward who sits at home and that’s okay. I’ve accepted that I’m tucking tail and running.”

“Hey,” he said softly, reaching his hand over and cupping the back of my head. “Do you hear what you’re saying? You are not a coward, because you tried it. Just because it wasn’t for you doesn’t make you a coward.” He dropped his hand. “But I’m not letting you leave without finishing the things you still should do, since you’re here.”

I groaned. “I don’t want to do them.”

“You’re a liar.” The way the ‘r’ curled on his tongue made me want to kiss him. I was struck blind by the want, and fisted my hands to stop me from doing so. “Besides,” he said, “I want you to.” He pulled into the parking lot and leaned across me. I pushed against the seat back, caught by surprise from his closeness and he opened my door from the inside. “Be careful getting out. It’s a long drop.”

I knew all about long drops. I’d been falling for half of my life.