17. Samson
SAMSON
Weakness.
The word stays with me all night.
Weakness.
Nate knew exactly what he was doing when he said it. He chose the word because it reaches farther than any accusation. It’s not about Delaney. Not really.
It’s about me.
About what she does to me.
What I let happen in her apartment.
My hands on her shoulders. Her back against the wall. The hot little catch in her breath when I took her mouth. The way she kept those lips shut like defiance could save her. The way her body gave her away anyway.
I should have walked out sooner.
I should have never gone there in the first place.
Instead I stood in her home and breathed her in like she was my oxygen.
That’s not weakness. That’s hunger.
I know the difference.
The trouble is that hunger can make a man do foolish things.
I head for the shower. Cold water. No steam. No comfort. I stand under it until my skin numbs, but it still doesn’t wash her away.
By dawn, I’ve stopped pretending I’m going to sleep.
I dress in dark clothes—black jeans and a black button-down. No suit. Not today. I take the ring from the dresser where I left it and slide it onto my finger. The black metal catches the pale morning light. The key cut into its face looks almost simple from a distance.
It isn’t.
Neither am I.
I leave before the sun fully comes up.
I tell myself I’m going to assess risk.
She found the contractor. Someone went into her apartment. Nate called her a weakness because he saw the line I crossed, not because he knows anything I don’t. This is about loose ends. Exposure. Knowing how much trouble she can still cause.
That’s the story I feed myself on the drive over. It would almost be convincing if I believed it.
Her building comes into view just as the sky starts to lighten for real. I park across the street and kill the engine.
A delivery truck idles at the curb. A jogger runs by. A man in a suit walks too fast, his coffee jostling.
I sit in the car and watch her window.
Her curtains are open but I see no movement.
I shouldn’t be here.
I stay anyway.
Weakness.
The word triggers something.
Not memory at first.
Instinct.
A tightening in my shoulders. A familiar readiness in my body, the kind that used to come when my father stepped into a room.
My father doesn’t believe in softness. Not in boys. Not in grown men. Not in himself. He believes in pressure. In finding the precise point where a person stops pretending and shows you what they really are.
I’m seventeen.
The room is concrete. Bright lights overhead. Too bright. A drain sits in the center of the floor. Its purpose? It makes the room easy to clean.
Nate stands just outside the ring, composed. Cain leans against the wall. He’s small yet, still waiting for puberty, but he watches everything with those dodgy gray eyes.
My father steps in front of me. “Don’t think,” he says. “Thinking comes before fear. Fear makes men hesitate.”
I don’t move.
Across from me, the other boy—I don’t know his name, and it doesn’t matter anyway—shifts his weight. He’s bigger than I am, well over six feet and he has more muscle.
My father doesn’t look at him. He looks at me. “Hesitation is where men lose.”
Then he nods at the other kid.
The first hit snaps my head back.
The second drives into my ribs.
Fuck, the pain. I taste blood.
I’m still trying to read my opponent. That’s my mistake. Another hit comes. Then another, harder.
The room tilts for a second.
Nate doesn’t move.
Cain doesn’t move.
Our father watches.
He’s waiting.
I tense up. And I move.
I don’t measure the next blow. I deliver it. Then another. Then another. The other boy stumbles. Falls to one knee. I don’t stop. I don’t slow. I don’t think.
I put him on his back.
And I keep going until—
“Enough.”
My father’s voice cuts through everything.
I stop.
I’m breathing hard, taste the iron of blood in my mouth. My hands are still curled into fists.
The other boy groans on the concrete floor, blood pouring from his nose.
My father steps into the ring, grabs my chin, and turns my face, inspecting.
“There.” He presses his thumb against my split lip.
I do not wince.
“Now you understand,” he says.
I come back to myself in the car with my hand clenched around the steering wheel.
Weakness.
Nate’s accusation was meant to provoke me because he knows exactly how I was made. He knows what our father built and called strength. He knows I hate the suggestion that some woman found a crack in it.
Some woman.
A humorless smile pulls at my mouth.
Delaney Cross is not some woman.
That’s the problem.
Movement at the building’s entrance catches my eye, but it’s only an older couple stepping out with a small white dog on a leash. I glance back up at Delaney’s window.
Still nothing.
I should leave before this becomes something even I can’t excuse.
Instead I get out of the car.
I walk to the building and stand near the entrance. To anyone interested, it looks like I’m waiting for a cab.
I’m not.
I’m waiting for her.
It irritates me that I know her so well already. The way she moves when she’s angry. The way she squares herself before stepping into something difficult. The way her mouth firms just before she says something she knows I don’t want to hear.
I know what her pulse looks like in her throat.
I know what her breath sounds like when I’m near her.
I know how her lips feel beneath mine.
I shouldn’t know any of that.
I stay still.
Delaney is in the path of something. That much is clear. What isn’t clear is whether I’m here to pull her out of it or drag her deeper in.
Except that’s all bullshit.
I know exactly why I’m here.
I’m here because Nate said weakness, and I needed to look at her again to decide whether I believe him.
I don’t.
I can’t.
Because weakness bends.
Delaney doesn’t bend.
She breaks toward. Pushes closer. Lifts her chin to danger.
Beauty walking straight into a beast’s house and asking to borrow two eggs and a cup of sugar.
The image should amuse me.
It doesn’t.
It makes something darker move in me instead. Something old. Possessive. Mean. The urge not just to warn her away from the house, but to shut the door behind her once she’s inside and make the whole world answer to me before it gets near her.
Not noble, then.
Not gentle.
I’m not the kind of man that women in stories are meant to trust.
The entrance opens.
This time it’s her.
Everything in me goes still.
She steps out in dark jeans, boots, and a black sweater over what looks like a filmy blouse. Her hair is down and she has her messenger bag over one shoulder and a fierce look on her face.
She pauses on the sidewalk and looks around.
A slow smile ghosts my mouth before I can stop it.
She feels me.
Or maybe not me specifically. But something. Enough to make her cautious. Enough to make her test the air. Then again, maybe she’s overcautious because of the break-in. Whatever it is, she’s hyperaware.
People pass between us. A woman with a stroller. A man talking into his headset. The ordinary world.
Delaney adjusts the strap on her shoulder.
And instead of turning away, she walks straight toward me. She stops a few feet away and tilts her face up to mine, blue eyes sharp and awake and too fucking beautiful.
“Were you planning to stand there all morning,” she asks, “or did you eventually mean to say hello?”
I look down at her and let the silence sit for a moment.
Then I say, “Good morning, Delaney.”