A Saltwater Christmas (The Southern Isles #1)

Chapter Ten

A llie didn’t feel like talking. What was there to say? She didn’t owe Sam an explanation. He was her roommate, not her father. She walked past him on the front porch and went straight to her room. She didn’t even acknowledge Cuppie despite the happy wagging and nose nudge to her thigh. Her life was no one’s business but her own.

She shut the door to her room and locked it. A shower would be nice, but there was no way she would risk seeing Sam in the hallway. Sam with his fake look of worry, Sam with his never made a mistake in my life perfection. So, he had act-it-out nightmares. Whatever. At least he wasn’t getting drunk at his place of employment and hitting on his coworker.

Allie felt like calling her mother, but her phone was still somewhere at the winery. Usually, it was anger that stopped her from calling. Now she couldn’t call her even though she finally wanted to. Anyway, her mother was probably sound asleep with the random man she’d been dating. Truthfully, the late hour didn’t matter—all through college Allie called her mother whenever she needed her, and her mother always answered. It was the man part Allie struggled with. It was so disrespectful of her. Disrespectful of the family they’d had when her dad was alive. She sat on the edge of her bed, filled with regret and exhaustion. She might still be a little drunk too. It was all she could do to get her shoes off before the soft bed consumed her like a cottony cloud, and she promptly passed out.

Morning was not welcome. She didn’t know whether it was the smell of bacon or the loud clap of thunder that woke her up, but she wished it hadn’t. If only she could sleep for the rest of her life, she wouldn’t have to face the fact that she’d made an idiot of herself. But as hard as she tried to fall back into oblivion, there was no denying that she desperately had to pee or that she was still wearing the black and yellow bumblebee outfit from the day before. She opened her door as quietly as she could and tiptoed down the hall to the bathroom. Just as she got to the door, Sam walked around the corner.

“Hey, you want some breakfast? It’s gonna get nasty out there today. Thought I’d make something warm.”

Allie froze, her hand on the bathroom doorknob, one step away from privacy and much-needed relief. “No, thanks.”

“Well, I’ll save you some in case you change your mind.”

She practically dove into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. Why, why, why did her roommate have to keep including her? They were not friends. They were just two people who happened to share a house. They should be ignoring each other. She leaned against the door and looked around the tiny, functional space. First, she needed the toilet, which was the only thing that actually felt good that morning. Then she had to brush her disgusting teeth, and shower her scraped-up, filthy, dehydrated body. It was torture to be inside her brain at the moment. She’d never been so angry at herself.

She went to tap the faucet three times with her pinky finger before she turned it on. Screw that, she thought. Screw the taps. What were they saving her from? Nothing. If something bad was going to happen, let it. She wanted to scream out, LET IT! She turned the faucet on full blast, brushed her teeth, and got in the shower, denying herself the option to go back for the taps. Bring it on, universe. She didn’t even wait for the required two drips on her nose from the disengaged showerhead before she allowed herself to exit. She just got out of the shower, clean and pissed enough to let whatever was going to happen happen.

She’d forgotten to bring fresh clothes to the bathroom, so she sprinted in her towel to her bedroom. Whatever Sam was cooking smelled like heaven. Her stomach growled, and she was dying for some water. A loud clap of thunder shook the house. At least the weather matched her mood. She put her wet hair in a bun and slipped on her old sweatpants and Music City sweatshirt. You know what? She needed food, there was some freshly made in the kitchen, and dammit, she was going to eat it. She stomped to the kitchen like the leader of a marching band and took a glass from the cupboard. Sam was eating at the kitchen table, and Cuppie was watching her every move from in front of the fireplace. Without a word, Allie chugged a full glass of water.

“Does the breakfast offer still stand?” she asked, catching her breath.

“Of course. I made enough for both of us.” He was so engrossed in his phone that he barely paid attention to her, which was nice.

She filled her plate with bacon, sausage, and some sort of egg scramble made with bell peppers, onions, and cheese. High protein, just like she’d expect from someone with muscles like his. When she sat at the table with him, she noticed he had Christmas music softly playing. Adding Christmas music to her current mental state felt like gasoline on a fire. “Please turn that music off,” she said, trying to sound calm.

He laughed. “What do you have against Christmas?”

“I told you, I’m skipping the traditional stuff this year.” She stuffed a forkful of eggs into her mouth before a curse word came out. He didn’t deserve her anger. It should all be aimed at herself, and yet it was absolutely, 100 percent, about to come out sideways. “Thank you for the food.” She attempted to have the decency to feel bad about her attitude toward him. Or maybe it was her attitude toward her mother and all the expectations for Christmas. But there was no decency left in her.

Her thoughts were everywhere. Christmas. Big mistakes. Joey. Libby. Jessa. Dottie. Fred. Sam. She owed many apologies, but most would have to wait until Monday. She took another bite, watching Sam from the corner of her eye. He was leaving her alone, his dog now snoozing peacefully in front of the bright fire. The house felt cozy, and his food was beginning to help her feel human again. What had she learned from Fred the night before? People weren’t always what they seemed. The truth was, she had no idea who Sam was. She took a deep breath, and tried to recover her old sense of self.

“This is really good,” she said.

He briefly looked up from his phone. “Glad you like it.”

She ate some more. “So, do you have plans for Christmas?”

He put the phone down. “I was hoping to talk to you about that.”

Uh-oh. She braced herself. He was going to ask to have people over. She could sense it. Maybe he had a girlfriend?

“My old commanding officer is going to be in Charleston for the holidays. He’s older and kind of like a mentor to me. His wife died about ten years back, and he’s a really good guy. I’d like to have him over. If it’s okay with you, of course.”

Did he really think she’d say no to a widower? “Sure. I was planning to go someplace else anyway.”

“You don’t need to go anywhere,” he said. “You can join us.”

She had a date with the beach, a sandwich, and a nap. “No, thanks.” Christmas was exactly a week away. That meant that the three-year anniversary of her dad’s death was in just four days.

The way Sam kept looking at her felt like he had something else to say. It was almost like he could read her thoughts. An intense feeling of vulnerability washed over her like a flash flood. She pushed her plate away and got up from the table. She needed touch, affection, and connection, and she hated that. But some healthy part of her walked over to Cuppie, got down on the floor, and gently put her hands in the dog’s soft gray fur. Cuppie craned her neck to see who it was before plopping her head back where it’d been. Allie scratched and stroked from the dog’s head to her tail over and over until a flash of lightning struck nearby with a loud crack and the lights in the house went dark. The Christmas music stopped, and the sound of the wind competed with the crackling fire.

“Do you know where the fuse box is?” Sam asked calmly.

“No.” Her voice didn’t sound calm at all. “Maybe in the garage?”

Neither of them used the tiny one-car garage. It was filled with old woodworking equipment and boxes that belonged to their landlord. As soon as Sam scooted back from the table, Cuppie was on full alert. The two of them disappeared into the dark and came back a few minutes later.

“Found it,” he said. “But the power’s not coming back on.”

The storm had darkened the sky so much that most of the interior light was coming from the fireplace. “Do we have any candles?” Sam asked.

“I have a couple.”

“The outside woodpile’s gonna be wet, so as soon as we go through these logs, it might get cold.”

“How long do you think we have?”

“Three hours of heat. Maybe less.”

“The power will come on before then,” Allie said. That’s how it used to work in Nashville, anyway. The power always came back on within the hour.

A torrent of rain hit the roof like a tidal wave curled onto the house. Allie gasped and instinctively ducked like the roof was about to cave in.

“How much battery do you have on your phone?” Sam asked.

“Zero.” Allie hated admitting it. “I don’t have my phone here.”

Sam didn’t react. “We can use my car to charge my phone. I’ll monitor the radar.”

“For tornadoes?”

“For everything.”

Cuppie was back by the fire. Allie picked up her unfinished plate of food and sat on the hearth near her. “Our stove is electric, isn’t it?”

Sam nodded, taking a seat on the couch opposite her.

“So are our microwave, refrigerator, and freezer.” She groaned.

“Yep.”

“I don’t even have my car here.” The words came with a hefty burst of shame that she quickly worked to push aside. “But we have yours, so we could go somewhere if we had to.”

He chuckled. “This is absolutely not a life-and-death situation.”

“Right,” Allie agreed.

But it was a spending-time-with-Sam situation. A bonding situation. And a this cozy fireplace feels kind of romantic situation.