Tears filled her eyes and she stayed quiet. The seconds ticked by. Reckoning—this was a reckoning.
“And then he screamed for a good two minutes about how I’d let a girl beat me.”
Amy rolled her eyes and I felt a smile spread across my face.
“That’s not the worst of it. He grabbed my arm—hard enough to leave a two-week bruise—and then sputtered that I was a disappointment because I’d let a cunt beat me.”
All Amy did was blink.
“I’m sorry,” I sputtered, realizing how foolish it was to just blurt that out. The image of Dad’s words and face was so branded in me, and it was that moment—that f**king moment when he said that damn word—that changed my entire life.
One word.
One single word.
“He said that?” she gasped.
“Yes. Reverend Hinton called the girl I’d fallen in love with a—yes.”
“See you next Tuesday,” she muttered.
“No, he said the whole word,” I explained. “Because that’s when I turned into some sort of Hulk state. It set something off in me. No one calls you that and gets away with it.”
She smiled, her lips shaking and eyes filled with tears.
“No one, Amy. No one.” This time I didn’t try to keep the growl out of my voice. “Not even my f**king father.”
Through a ragged breath, I choked out: “Especially not my father.”
Amy
My apartment had been so crowded that the breath of so many occupants warmed the air still, even though it was just me and Sam now. Yet his story chilled me. The broken fingers, his father’s self-abuse to spin a story, the minister spewing words about me that were unspeakable—it all made me ache inside for poor Sam and all he’d endured.
“Before we talk about anything else, let me say that when you saw me with that woman tonight, it wasn’t what you thought. I swear, Amy, she came on to me and her boyfriend shoved me against the way and Liam saw it all—”
“I believe you.”
“You do?
I love you. The text said I love you. Everyone in the group knew he was a stripper, and I could imagine a drunk, horny woman wanting Sam, because right now, I wanted Sam, too.
Except I wanted all of him. Not just his body.
I love you.
“Why didn’t you trust me enough to tell me?”
A kick to the stomach couldn’t have has as much impact as my words. His face screwed up in pain. “Because I’m stupid.”
I shot him an oh, please look.
“No, I really am. I can’t seem to get anything right with you.”
“I don’t need everything to be right.” The air crackled with energy, sparks flying between us. “I need you to be real.”
Placing his palms together, like a little kid praying, he put his hands in front of his lips and closed his eyes. Disconcerting, though—he was still wearing that damn cop uniform and it made the whole conversation tilt a bit, surreal and weird.
“Ask away.”
“The whole truth?”
“Nothing but.”
“Get ready for the cross examination of your life.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You’ve been completely on your own this entire time?”
“Once I graduated high school, yes. I mean, the Connors and the Rosses have helped me here and there when I needed a place to crash, like for Spring Break, but otherwise...” His voice trailed off. He looked sick, like someone had gut punched him.
I knew that feeling. Telling the truth when you’ve been taught to craft lies made you feel ill. Crazy, right? Backwards and inside out it all was, but that’s reality when you’ve lived with parents whose entire sense of being revolves around convincing their kids that the surface lie matters more than the deep truth.
“Sam, why didn’t you call or text me? Or answer my emails?”
“At first I just was injured and trying to figure out what to do. Amy, it was like I lived in a constant state of panic, and I didn’t know how to talk to you. I had broken hands, no home, no money, and—I figured you would just reject me once the rumors got out that I was some maniac who attacked my dad, so....”
A memory. Prom night. My mom saying it was a “good thing” after all that I didn’t end up with “someone like that.” Oh, God.
She knew.
Except she didn’t know. She knew the cover story and ran with it.
“And then the one time I did call you, you didn’t call back.”
The what? “The one time what?”
“I lost my phone service—dad cut it off—and so the only number I knew was your home number. So I called and your mom answered. She said she’d give you the message. And when you never called, I....” He shrugged.
A vortex of disbelief surrounded me and began to spin, making the room off kilter. “My mom what?”
His face changed, a resigned sigh pouring forth from that beautiful, soulful mouth. “She never told you, did she? I always wondered...”
“Sam, if you had called I would have run the Ironman triathlon to get to a phone and call back if I’d known!”
“All these years, I thought—” we said in unison.
“So you didn’t?” we said again.
Sam put his hands on my shoulders and bent down so we were eye to eye.
“You wanted me after all?” he whispered.
A huge lump in my throat made it impossible to answer, so I just nodded.
“Really?” Incredulity stretched his voice as if he were a teen again, a pained sound of longing in there.
“God, Sam, yes.” A flash of prom night, of crying in Liam’s arms, and of turning to him for comfort and love that was a pale substitute for what—it turned out—Sam wanted, too, made a giant ball of fury build inside me.
Ready to be thrown straight at my mother.
“Let me be clear,” I said, reaching for his face. My palms brushed against his strong jaw and the light stubble of a man’s beard. “I thought you were ignoring me and never wanted to see me again because of the debate. If I had known you called, I would have seen you. I loved you then,” I said, my voice breaking. And I love you now. The words were on my lips when he interrupted.
“And Liam?” he asked.
Screech. That put a halt to all the love talk. Closing my eyes, I swallowed hard. “What about Beth? And Brent? And other girls you’ve been with? What do our pasts have to do with now? When I am in bed, alone, and lonely, it’s you I think about. Every.Single.Moment. Our kisses, your touch, the way you made me feel—it’s made every sexual encounter I’ve had seem like child’s play. A kiss or a caress from you is one thousand times greater than making love with anyone else. It’s always been you.”
A fierceness filled his eyes, and his hands tightened on my shoulders. “It’s like you’re reading my heart,” he rasped. “I’ve tried so hard to get over you,” he added. “Tried to forget how you tapped into my core and made me feel whole. You got me, Amy. No one gets me.” He laughed bitterly. “No one. And so now you’re telling me that I’ve spent more than four years thinking you rejected me and you’ve spent all these years thinking the same and we tried to fill the emptiness with other people.”
Time stood still.
We just stared into each other’s eyes, knowing.
“You’re right. You’re so right. I don’t care about who we’ve been with. I care only about who you’re going to be with for the rest of your life, Amy.”
And then he was kissing me and once again, time tesseracted and folded, as if those years were blended into right now, as if we had been together forever and would be together forever.
Just like that, the macrobeats and the microbeats lined up and the cacophony that plagued us both turned into a symphonic joy only we could hear.
The rush of blood pounding through me, the softness of his lips on mine, the feel of his arms around me, tightening as his tongue explored, impassioned lips closing over my lower lip to play and connect—it all felt so natural.
This was who I was. This was where I was meant to be. Sam was mine and I was his and my tiny apartment felt like the entire world as the rush of desire consumed us both. I reached for his shirt to take it off and...couldn’t.
My hands sought out the hem of his shirt, until I remembered he was still wearing his fake cop’s uniform. Reaching for the seams on either side of his neck, I pulled—hard—and then his entire outfit peeled off in one strange tearing sound. He stood before me wearing only a lovely, very tight G-string.
“Occupational hazard,” he muttered, kissing me fiercely.
“Let me get some ones to tuck in there.”
He burst out laughing, lips against my cheek, and then our wobbly legs fought against us as we discarded the only remaining layer between us, a frantic need for skin and heat and lust so great we both felt it take over the space between us as clothing was discarded, Sam’s hands on my waist as he peeled every boundary between us off and tossed it aside like it was nothing.
Our bodies shimmered in the dark, the sliver of moon giving a gentle reminder of what light could do, the shadows and curves of our flesh like a sculptor’s relief map of sensuality. He looked so beautiful, and made me feel so real, our eyes locked, each second deepening the flow of love between us. Layer by layer, life as I knew it separated, replaced by a raw sense that awakened within.
“Tell me what you want,” he whispered, a foot away from me, his eyes roaming over my exposed body the way I’d always wanted a man to see me.
“I want you to love me as much as I love you.”
“Too easy,” he murmured, moving fast, hot hands on my waist, lips on my shoulder, teasing out a shudder of desire and joy. “I’ve been doing that for years.”
“Then show me how you love me,” I ventured, bold with him. His skin was so tantalizing, my curves against his hardness, our limbs and hands finding spaces and folds that fit together as if carved to interlock without fail.
“Too easy, too,” he sighed, the sound turning guttural and primal in the back of his throat. My breath caught in my throat as his mouth found the hollow at my collarbone, his fingers stroking a nipple, the sensation filling me with a wet yearning that could only be filled by him.
Now.
It was finally perfect.
Without words, we dropped to the bed, his hands exploring my body, my cli**x ready in anticipation of Sam’s attention. Greedy hands—mine—soaked his body in, the freedom to roam more sensual than the actual caresses, my mind unwinding and relenting, all fears and worries dashed away by access to this delightful play.
A few kisses, wet and wild with the need to express years of want, and then his mouth traveled down my br**sts, over my belly, and then exactly where I needed to be appreciated most.
I stopped him with my hands against each side of his face, and he tipped his head up, eyes dark and filled with a timeless lust that seemed to be spun, wholesale, from the emotions that hovered in the air.
“Thank you.” A tearful chuckle came out of me as he stroked my thigh, light traces on the inside making me shudder.