His fingers gave me a squeeze and his face got even closer when he whispered, “That, baby, that right there says you will never be on that list. I can tell you not a single woman I’ve been with even offered to pay for a drink. You are not them, I knew it before but I know it even more now.”
I lifted one of my hands to rest on his chest and whispered back, “Okay, I appreciate that, but I still want to pay.”
“You’re crossing that line, Kia,” he stated, his voice getting an edge.
“Sam, I have to,” I pushed.
“No,” he returned, his voice now hard, so hard I blinked. “Right now, this is what we are. Right now, this is working. Right now, there’s no chance this is gonna end and we’re gonna be over. So right now and for the foreseeable future, you… are… mine.”
His hands swayed me (and Memphis) gently with each of the last three words and my eyes were riveted to the intensity in his. He could be intense but this was something different, deeper, starker, profound.
He kept talking.
“And you’re under threat. I lived from the minute I could make a memory to the minute I tossed that ass**le outta my mother’s house not able to eliminate the threat that was livin’ in my own goddamned home, my mother in danger, my brother in danger, my family, including me, ruled by an iron fist, a fist that lashed out randomly and brutally. That is not happening again, sweetheart. Danger darkens my door and threatens what’s mine, I’ll handle it. This is me and you gotta know this about me. If you can’t see it my way, you gotta beat it back, keep your mouth shut and let me do this because we’re not having this conversation again, not after this shit is over for you and, if we go the distance, not in our future. I protect what’s mine how I gotta do it and with no discussion. Now, Kia, whether you’re with me or you’re not, right now, you say you’re with me.”
I stared up at him thinking, sometimes, what Sam said went too.
Therefore I did the only thing I could do, I whispered, “I’m with you.”
Sam held my eyes, body unmoving, the intensity didn’t shift from his gaze and I knew something had a hold on him and I suspected it didn’t all have to do with me.
Then he sucked breath into his nose, muttered, “Right,” pulled me up to him as his head tipped to me and he kissed my nose. His hands left my neck, he rubbed Memphis’s head and continued on another mutter, “Shower then I get this shit done.”
Then he turned and started down the hall.
“I’m not your mother.”
Yes. That was me.
I didn’t know where it came from but it came from somewhere and then it came right out.
Sam’s body locked for a half a second then, stiffly, he turned and looked at me.
“Come again?” he asked quietly.
I held his eyes then I pulled in a breath, bent slightly, dropped Memphis to her feet, straightened and looked at him again.
And when I did, I knew where it came from.
So I told Sam.
“What just happened there,” I said carefully, “was not about me. You don’t talk about you very much but I think you’re reliving what happened to you when you were a kid. I’m not your mother. I don’t know what happened with that but what happened to me is my responsibility, not my Dad’s, my Mom’s, Ozzie’s or anybody’s. And now I’m in this mess and that’s my responsibility too.” He opened his mouth but I lifted a hand quickly and whispered, “I said I was with you, I’m with you, I promise, honey. I’m not crossing that line. It means something to you so I won’t.”
He closed his mouth.
I kept going.
“But this is still my responsibility. I was young and stupid but I made the decision I made and it happened. Now it’s clean up time and this is different. This isn’t your Mom and your brother. I’m not alone. I never have been. If you’re sorting through past demons while going through this with me, you need to face that and I think we both need to know that isn’t clouding how you feel about what’s happening here.”
“Clouding how I feel about what’s happening here?” Sam repeated, his brows drawing together a little scarily.
That was when I gave it all to him.
“I’m not your mother, Sam, and if you’re attracted to me because you had to live under that threat without having any power to do anything about it and you want to relive that and make it come out a different way then… then…” I faltered and finished, “then we have more to talk about.”
I shut up and when I did I realized my heart was beating hard.
Sam stared at me.
Memphis yapped.
We both ignored her.
“I…” I began when he said not a word then ended simply with a prompt of, “Sam?”
“Remember Luci’s party?” he asked.
Like I’d ever forget.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Remember when I told you he took something precious from you?”
I nodded.
“I know, Kia, and I’ve known since the beginning, even before I knew he took his hands to you, that he’d broken something in you that, if I took the shot, I’d have to fix. And, baby, you sittin’ across from me, shy and cute and open and funny, I did not give one shit that he’d broken you. I knew the minute I saw you laugh, no…” he shook his head once, “before, that I wanted in there and I’d do anything to get what I wanted.”
I felt my lips part but just like Sam, he was not done but this time he was far from done.
“That didn’t have f**k all to do with my mother, my father and what happened to me as a kid. And you might not like hearin’ this but what it had to do with was watchin’ you walk across that dining room in those sexy as hell shoes and that hot, little dress with your long legs and your great tits and all that fantastic f**kin’ hair and mostly a face I knew I wanted to see starin’ up at me when my c**k was buried inside you. Straight up, you are one fine piece of tail but now you’re my piece of tail. When you sat across from me and ignored me and I saw that shit you carry in your eyes even when your mind is consumed with something else then you sat with me and I watched you laugh, I knew that shit would not deter me, no matter how deep it ran. And I can promise you that has not one thing to do with my mother. The precious thing he took from you is that you have no f**kin’ clue that it wasn’t only me in that room who watched you walk across it wishin’ he was a man who could be buried inside you. And that precious thing also includes the fact that you think for one second this bullshit is your responsibility. He saddled you with that too, Kia. This mess is his making, not yours. I don’t know how to get that outta your head. The only thing I know is it’s gonna be me who cleans up that mess and, like it or not, it partly has to do with you turning out in reality to be one seriously fine piece of ass. But also it has to do with you not likin’ euro-trash cars, not rappin’ with your posse about what I do for you in bed, you demonstrating you have my back and you bein’ able to make me laugh when I’m mildly pissed at you.”