“You should go.”
“Where?”
“Away from me.”
“Kia –”
I sucked in breath, lifted my head and looked at him. “I’m… you were right. He broke me and you need –”
“I know what I need, baby, you don’t. Don’t tell me what I need. Only I know.”
“Well I know it isn’t me.”
He held my eyes. Then he grinned.
Then he said gently, “Last night, I was pissed and losin’ it. That woman, rude. Takin’ our time then up in my space. She kept talkin’, I woulda said something that woulda made her kid not like me so f**kin’ much. You moved right in, sorted it out, got them what they wanted and us on our way. Been in that position too many times, Kia. Not one woman standing by my side has felt my patience go and stepped in for me. Not one woman… except you.”
I stared at him, stunned at this news. I mean, his hand got so tight in mine, how could his other women not know and, well, do something?
“Really?” I asked.
“Really,” he answered then went on quietly. “You wore those shoes you’re wearin’ now the first time I saw you.”
I felt my lips part.
He remembered.
Holy cow. He remembered my shoes.
Sam’s eyes went to my mouth and he muttered, “She gets it.”
“Sam –” I started but he immediately talked over me.
“Silver shoes the second time I saw you, blue dress.”
I closed my eyes.
I knew what he was saying.
He remembered everything about me.
“Gold when you went out with me.”
I opened my eyes and felt tears filling them again as he kept right on going.
“Your Lake Como bud, Kia, baby, she didn’t tell you about her kid because you remind her of her daughter. She told you about her kid because you remind her of her daughter and you are all she hoped her daughter would grow up to be. Beautiful, funny, friendly, classy. I know why Luci liked you at first, you looked good, pure class but effortless, not a wannabe; you looked like what she thinks would fit me. I don’t know what you did to take it beyond that but whatever it was, you did it. By the time I got to you with the champagne, you had Luci. Not one woman I’ve ever been with that she’s met has had her approval at all so definitely not that soon.”
“But –”
His arms gave me a tight squeeze and he shook his head.
“You did that, Kia, you. You talk about your family and your friends and they’re loyal to you, it’s obvious they love you and you inspire that. That f**kin’ asshole didn’t contaminate you. He was contaminated and I’ll bet he wanted to contaminate you but I know he worked hard at doin’ it. He looked at you, saw how gorgeous you are, how people care about you and he knew, you woke up, you’d see he was the piece of shit he was. So he had to drag you down so you’d never see him for what he was, leave him behind and find what you deserve.”
“But… you and me, when we’re, uh… intimate –”
His arms gave me another squeeze, pulling me up his chest so we were face to face and turning me deeper into him, tangling his long legs with mine.
Then he asked quietly, “All that you just gave me, you haven’t told any of your crew that shit, have you?”
I shook my head.
“Buried it.”
I pressed my lips together and nodded.
“Buried everything, didn’t deal, just thought you could move on.”
There it was yet again. He figured me out.
“Yeah,” I whispered.
One of his hands came up, his fingers gliding around my ear, tucking my hair behind it as he said, “Honey, shit like that, you can’t bury. You’ve gotta deal with it and part of what you gotta deal with is,” his arm went back around me and both closed tight, “that he stepped out on you and you gotta be strong enough to face another possible consequence of him bein’ a piece of shit. It’ll probably be nothing but you gotta face it, find out then put that behind you just like you need to face all this shit before you put it behind you. You can’t bury it, you gotta look right at it, see it for the shit it is, understand that completely and then put it behind you.”
I stared into his beautiful face knowing he was right. Knowing, as all this stuff came up and I couldn’t hold it back, that I had to deal with it. I wanted to bury it but that wasn’t working. So I had to face it.
And that sucked.
And I stared at his beautiful face and it came to me for the first time since we lay in bed at Luci’s house talking that this was Sampson Cooper.
And he could easily find a woman who was not a total mess, crying in his arms, running through sidewalk eateries like the fraught heroine of a romantic comedy, needing to get an AIDS test because her dead husband was a piece of shit.
And that was why I whispered, “You really should go.”
I watched his eyes flash before he muttered softly but impatiently, “For f**k’s sake, Kia.”
“Sam, you’re Sampson Cooper, you can find a woman who’s not a pain in the ass, easy.”
“Yeah?” he shot back. “Has it occurred to you that I’m thirty-five and I haven’t?”
Actually, no. It hadn’t occurred to me.
Sam kept talking.
“I got the bitches who are very, very aware I’m Sampson Cooper. Last night, you told me you like Sam Cooper better. Last night, I f**ked you, I ate you and you sucked my cock. Not them. They do not see Sam Cooper because they don’t want Sam Cooper. They do not suck my cock; they suck Sampson Cooper’s c**k and tell all their friends about it.”
Oh God. That stunk but I bet it was true.
He kept going.
“Then I got the bitches who look good, dress nice and think their shit don’t stink. They are not high maintenance. They are not divas. They define both. They get up and go to bed convinced the world revolves around them, even me. They knock themselves out to do one thing, lead me around by my dick like they have every other guy who’s taken a dip in their pu**y then they get pissed and seriously f**kin’ bitchy when they can’t do that.”
That stunk too but I bet it was also true.
Sam continued his litany of his experience with the not so fairer sex.
“Then I got the bitches who play cat and mouse, twistin’ themselves in knots to convince me I’m the cat when I’m always the f**kin’ mouse. I’m not a mouse, Kia, no f**kin’ way. That shit doesn’t fly with me.”