She recovered with a brave smile, “But luckily I had good grades and a decent court lawyer. She got them to try me as a juvenile, and the judge was a woman who believed the story she made up for me about self-defense. So I got very, very lucky.”
She sighed and finished with, “And that’s why I’m here today, walking around Greece with you instead of rotting away in the penitentiary system, just like my father. And that’s why I started Ruth’s House, so no woman anywhere would ever be left alone with her abuser like my mother was. And that’s why I do things like teach yoga and mindfulness along with providing counseling services, to give women the tools they need to get out of bad relationships and stay out of them. But trust me…”
She forced herself to look directly at him now. “I’ve got baggage, too, but here’s what I’ve learned working at Ruth’s House: your past doesn’t matter. Only what you do today matters. What you continue to do tomorrow. If you want to be a good father to Pavel and to this baby, you can do it. I know you can. You just have to try.”
And there it was. Her long, sordid story laid out for him in full, so he could see she wasn’t some perfect parent, pre-made. That she was a human, who’d done some truly terrible things before getting to the place where she could properly mother a child.
She’d hoped her story would inspire him, but judging from his reaction it did the exact opposite. He glanced over her, opened his mouth… closed it again. Then he looked away. Just like Anthony had looked away from her when he’d been dumping her across a gray metal table.
His inability to speak, to so much as look at her, made Sam’s heart sink.
Why had she told him everything? He already knew most of it anyway from the court papers. So why hammer it home here and now? This was why she never told anyone about her past. Well, except Josie—and even then, that was after years of knowing her, after hearing Josie’s own tragic story. But she’d only known Nikolai for a few months, and the fact remained that she barely knew anything about him. Yet she’d told this huge Russian guy everything—all because he’d read a couple of parenting books.
She couldn’t have been more pissed at herself.
They walked the rest of the way back to the hotel in awkward silence.
35
If Sam had been looking for ways to kill the romantic mood Nikolai created before they got back to the hotel, she could not have picked a better tactic. By the time they returned to the room, their merry romantic comedy of a night had turned into a Swedish film. Sam could have sworn she heard the mournful strains of a funeral dirge as they entered the room they would be sharing.
Someone, probably a maid, must have come by while they were out. A couple of lamps now bathed the room in soft, flattering light, and there were dark rose petals scattered on the large square bed, along with chocolates on each pillow. The hot tub which stood encased in white stone about two feet away from the bed was bubbling. Even if there hadn’t been a standing ice bucket with a bottle of champagne and two flutes tucked inside, she would have been able to easily guess that the room had been specially prepared for romance.
Nikolai walked over to the tub. The pronounced beep of him hitting its off button cut through the room, and the bubbling sound came to an abrupt halt.
Sam took a seat gingerly on the sea blue couch and watched Nikolai take off his jacket, vest, shirt, shoes, and pants with stoic efficiency before giving them the closet treatment.
Then he walked over to the bed.
Sam held her breath…
For naught, as it turned out. Nikolai’s next action was simple enough. Pillows and petals went flying as he displaced the romantic detritus and climbed underneath the covers. By himself.
It was exactly what she’d wanted, exactly what she’d said she wanted. Him in the bed, her on the couch. No one on the floor, making her feel like she was keeping him from his creature comforts just because she didn’t want to confuse an already emotionally fraught situation with sex.
But for some odd reason, Sam’s heart sank as she watched him get into the bed.
“Sounds like a hot date.”
Eva’s words came back to her with a mocking twist as Sam reached behind herself and unbuttoned her own dress. After several minutes of button wrangling, she walked over to the closet where whoever had set up the room for romance had set their two suitcases, side by side on white luggage racks. His chrome-colored, large polycarbonate Tumi suitcase right next to the purple cloth one she’d gotten on sale at Target for thirty bucks before leaving Alabama.
Opposites in every single way, she thought to herself as she unzipped her bag… only to discover in her hasty packing job, she’d forgotten one very important item. Pajamas.
She silently cursed, going over her options. Jeans, a swimsuit, and a couple of t-shirts that would barely cover her bottom, if at all. Her eyes searched the blue bar above the racks. No hotel robes. In the end, she pulled out a t-shirt, thinking him seeing her bikini underwear probably didn’t matter now anyway. The mood was now deader than dead in their shared hotel room. Thanks to her.
As arguments for getting some went, this had been a doozy, and as Sam put on the t-shirt, she wondered who else but her would have felt compelled to share the ugliest piece of herself after one of the most romantic dates she’d ever been on. She remembered how Josie had quite wisely called her after getting in an ugly fight with Beau about her staying out all night.
“He triggered me, and I know it’s partly my fault because I haven’t told him about my past, but I can’t bring myself to tell him, because I guess some fucked up part of me would rather him think I’m sleeping with somebody else, than tell him the truth. But I don’t know how I can go on with him if I don’t tell him. It’s too unhealthy. So I need you—I need you to help me tell him. Can you do that for me, Sam?”
Of course she’d come through for Josie, even joked about it though she’d had a few reservations about getting involved. Usually people asked her to help them leave bad relationships, not start new ones.
Back then, she’d been a little baffled by and rather curious about Josie’s situation. But now she understood exactly where Josie had been coming from.
Right now, she’d rather Nikolai still thought of her as a hotheaded woman dead set on rejecting his sexual advances. Not some emotionally traumatized psycho with a sad backstory. As vain as it probably was, she liked the Sam she’d crafted out of her mother’s ashes and she now wished more than anything that she’d gone on letting him believe she really had killed her stepfather in self-defense, that she really was the perfect mom in every way.