“Baby –” I started.
“Love you, man. Tell my wife I love her.”
“Sam –”
“Felicia, broken. Luci, broken. I didn’t want to break you.”
Oh God!
I went up on my toes as my hands slid up to his neck, fingers curling around and digging deep.
“Honey, let me –”
“He had that in his death. Ben, no doubt, no f**kin’ doubt thought about Felicia in his final moments. I can take that. Fuck, I buy it, I want that, my last thoughts on this earth to be of you. But they didn’t know. They had no f**kin’ clue what they left behind. I knew. I lived that shit twice. And I was not going to do that to you.”
“Please, Sam. I –”
“I love you, Kia.”
My breath left me and I stared. I wasn’t breathing but my eyes were still forming tears and they were falling.
Sam’s thumbs slipped through them but his eyes didn’t leave mine when he semi-repeated, “I love you, baby.”
“Sam,” I breathed then said no more. I had no words to say. I couldn’t even think.
I could only feel.
And what I felt felt f**king great.
“You cannot leave me,” he whispered, his hands tightening on my face and he repeated, “You cannot leave me.”
“Okay,” I whispered back, my hands tightening too.
He either didn’t hear me or decided to ignore me because he continued.
“You walked into that dining room, baby, and you know, the minute I saw you, I wanted to f**k you. Two days later, I saw you outside havin’ a drink and even before you looked at me with tears in your eyes, just when I saw you sittin’ there, I was annoyed, thought you were playin’ games, and I didn’t care. Just you sittin’ there I knew it was you.”
He knew it was me.
Me.
I closed my eyes.
“Look at me,” Sam ordered quietly and I opened them. “Weeks after that, Kia, I saw you standing in my kitchen writing a grocery list, doing nothing, just writing a grocery list. But you’d just made me laugh and, just like you, you made me do it hard. That shit with Gordo, with Luci, losin’ Ben, Felicia tryin’ to off herself, that shit’s too much, it wears you down. I hadn’t laughed like that in months, not since Gordo died and in that moment, you in the kitchen, I realized I did it all the time with you. There were times before, a lot of them, I’d look at you and feel your pull, so strong. I wanted to fight it, deny it but I couldn’t, you wouldn’t let me and I didn’t get it. But seein’ you standing in my kitchen, effortlessly beautiful, writing a f**kin’ grocery list after you made me laugh like that, I knew what it was. I got it. I knew it was more. I knew that wasn’t an offer. That was a promise. Even with all the shit goin’ down with you, shit that would wear any other woman down, it didn’t with you and you gave me that from the beginning. And it hit me then that was what my life would be like if I lived the whole of it with you. And I knew I couldn’t live without you.”
Oh. My. God.
He couldn’t live without me.
His face got close. “You cannot leave me. You can’t. I can’t live without you.”
He couldn’t live without me.
He was in hell, just like me.
And just like he did for me, I showed him heaven.
“Sam,” I whispered, melting into him, “I said okay.”
“Never,” he returned immediately.
“Sorry?”
“Promise you will never leave me.”
“Sam, honey, I love you.”
“But you left me.”
“Right, because you left me. But now you’re back and you just gave me all of you. I needed it; you came all the way to England and gave it to me so now that I have you, all of you, I promise you, honey, I will never leave you.”
He stared at me and I let him.
Then he said, “You went on a date.”
Oh man.
“It wasn’t a date,” I told him.
“Looked like a date,” he told me.
“Well, it wasn’t. We had coffee. I was only there fifteen minutes. That’s not a date.”
“So who was he?”
“Some guy I met at a museum. He was nice, friendly, asked me for coffee so he could tell me what parts of London I should see. He’s from here.”
“It was a date.”
I felt my eyes narrow and snapped, “Sam! He was just being friendly!”
“To you, because you’re clueless about bein’ beautiful. To him, he wanted in there.”
He was, of course, right.
But…
Seriously?
We just had a month of separation and an emotionally charged drama and we were here?
I took my hands from his neck and planted them on my hips.
“Honestly? I see you for the first time in a month, I think we’re over, my heart is broken, I cry myself to sleep every… single… freaking night knowing I’ll never have all of you, wanting all of you so much it hurts to breathe and knowing even what you gave me will be better than what I could get from anybody, worried that I made a huge mistake but knowing in my heart that I couldn’t live with the secrets. Then you come back, give me all of you then you give me shit about some stupid guy who means nothing to me, so much of nothing I didn’t even remember his name. A guy who I will never again see instead of, oh… I don’t know,” I said the last sarcastically, “maybe kissing me?”
Sam glared at me.
Then his gaze shifted over my features, his face went soft, his eyes went warm, his lips twitched and his hands slid back into my hair.
“You didn’t remember his name?” he asked.
“No,” I snapped.
His lips twitched again.
Seriously!
Then he whispered, “You want me to kiss you, baby?”
It was my turn to glare at him and I returned, “I did. Now I’m thinking, not so much.”
His lip twitch turned into a smile as his hands in my hair tilted my head one way, his head slanted the other and his lips muttered against mine, “Tough.”
Then he kissed me.
It was heaven.
* * * * *
Naked, lying next to a na**d Sam in his huge, posh hotel room, my cheek to his shoulder, I was drawing random patterns on his chest with my fingertips while my eyes watched.
Sam was drawing random patterns on my hip but I doubted his eyes were watching.
After Sam kissed me, he dragged me out of the house, down the street and he hailed a cab. Then he shoved me in it, told the driver his hotel and ordered me to text Celeste to let her know I wouldn’t be home until the next morning. Late the next morning. And when I went there, it was only to pick up my stuff.