Chapter Five
She was right there with him, arching into him as he made love to her, and yet she was as disconnected from him, from their son, her family and friends as she’d been after the miscarriage she’d suffered almost a year ago.
He recognized the signs, knew them for what they were this time, and worried endlessly about her.
The Sam he knew and loved wouldn’t have initiated a visit to her office at the White House.
She didn’t clean and organize every square inch of their home.
She didn’t offer to babysit her sister’s children in the middle of a workweek.
She didn’t cook elaborate meals or make marinara from scratch.
She didn’t avoid making love with him for weeks, flinching every time he touched her.
And she didn’t fake orgasms. That she did so now told him things were worse than he’d thought. Son of a bitch. She gave one hell of a performance, moaning and squeezing her internal muscles around him until he couldn’t stop the inevitable conclusion.
After, he lay on top of her, breathing hard and trying to make sense of thoughts that refused to add up.
He’d experienced the real thing often enough to know a fake when he saw one.
But why? Did he say something or let it ride?
He opened his eyes and looked down at her.
With her eyes closed and her head turned to the side she was closed off to him in a way that frightened him.
They’d never made it to the loft. Scotty had struggled with homework and went to bed late. By the time Nick finished helping him, Sam was already in bed in their room.
He kissed her cheek, nuzzled her neck and waited to see what she would do.
Without opening her eyes, she smiled and wrapped her arms around him.
“Everything okay, babe?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
Though he wasn’t at all convinced, he withdrew from her and got out of bed. He went into the bathroom to clean up and stood there for a long time trying to figure out what to do. He was so rarely uncertain of himself with her that the feeling was concerning.
Splashing water on his face, he decided he’d call Harry in the morning.
He needed some advice from a qualified professional, and his doctor friend had training in PTSD from his own experiences in the military as well as his volunteer work with injured veterans.
When Nick returned to bed, Sam was already asleep or pretending to be.
Nick lay awake staring at the ceiling, his mind racing with worries about her, about Scotty’s struggles with math, about the president’s lack of interest in forging any sort of working relationship with him.
The insomnia had never been worse than it had been since Stahl abducted Sam.
Standing outside the Springer home that day, waiting for SWAT to go in after her, he’d been so sure they were too late this time.
How many lives could one sexy cop have after all? At some point, her luck would run out. Thinking about that, worrying about it, kept him awake night after night after night until the exhaustion was so ingrained in him he was like a zombie on autopilot during the day.
He’d lost his edge in the exhaustion. He’d lost his ability to read her. The irony wasn’t lost on him—he who worried endlessly for her safety on the job would give everything he had to see her back where she belonged, running the MPD’s Homicide Division with her usual intense focus.
This new post-Stahl Sam wasn’t the same person she’d been before she went into that house, planning to re-interview Marissa Springer and get on with her day. This new Sam was fragile and withdrawn, two words he’d never use to describe her under normal circumstances.
Something had to give and it had to happen soon before she slipped too far from him and the life she’d cherished before she was viciously attacked.
Nick never did sleep that night and forced his weary body out of bed to get Scotty up for school while Sam continued to sleep. After going to bed late, Scotty was unusually cranky and their morning was more contentious than usual.
“I don’t know why you’re pissed at me,” Scotty said over breakfast.
That he sounded so dejected went straight to Nick’s heart. “I’m sorry, buddy. I’m tired and stressed, and I shouldn’t take it out on you.”
“Are you stressed about Mom?”
“Yeah.” He glanced at the perceptive boy. “Are you?”
Scotty nodded. “She’s been weird since everything happened. She cleaned my room.”
“Someone’s gotta,” Nick said, going for a moment of levity.
“When has it ever been her? You’re the anal-retentive freakazoid neatnik, not her.”
Those words had come straight from his wife’s mouth to his son’s. “Hey, I resemble that remark.”
Scotty laughed, which made Nick feel slightly better. “What are you going to do about it?”
His natural inclination would be to shield Scotty from what was happening with Sam, but their son was too perceptive and too intelligent to get away with that. And at thirteen, he’d been maturing before their very eyes lately. “I’m going to talk to Harry today and see what he suggests we do.”
“Will you let me know what he says?”
“Yes, I will. Try not to worry too much. The most important thing to remember is that she’s alive. We can work with the rest.”
“That’s true. I wish she’d go back to work, though. She’d feel better if she were working. That’s what she loves to do.”
“I agree. When she’s ready, she’ll go back. Until then, we need to be supportive and let her do what she needs to do to work through what happened.” Nick checked his watch. “Go brush your teeth and grab your backpack. The detail will be leaving in five minutes.”
“Not without me they won’t,” Scotty said with a cheeky grin that Nick couldn’t help but return.
“Get going, smart mouth.”
After Scotty left with his detail, Nick went upstairs to shower and get ready for work. Seeing that Sam was still sleeping, he ducked into his office to call Harry. The sooner they got to the bottom of whatever was going on, the sooner they could get things back to normal around here.
“Is this the vice president of the United States calling?” Harry asked when he answered on the second ring.
Nick smiled at the predictable comment. His friends had been relentless since his promotion. “In the flesh.”
“To what do I owe this incredible honor?”
“I need a favor.”
“Sure thing, buddy,” Harry said, all joking forgotten. “Anything for you.”
“I need you to talk to Sam.”
“About?”
“Everything that happened with Stahl. Something’s not right with her, and damned if I can get her to talk to me about it. The department shrink isn’t having any luck either.”
Harry’s deep sigh came through the phone. “When you say something’s not right, what do you mean?”
“She’s cleaning everything and organizing things, which isn’t like her.
Yesterday, she voluntarily went to a meeting with her White House staff when a couple of weeks ago she was begging me to get her out of those meetings.
She’s in no particular rush to get back to work, and she’s faking things. Important things.”
“Oh yikes.”
“Yeah, exactly. Not like her at all. Does she think I can’t tell?”
“Um, uh, please tell me that was a rhetorical question.”
“What do I do, Harry? I’ve never seen her this way, even after she was nearly blown up, chased down by gangbangers, pistol-whipped in the face or any of the litany of other shit that’s happened. This time it’s like she’s punched out of reality or something.”
“How’s she sleeping?”
“Better than I am.”
“So the insomnia is back?”
“Worse than it’s ever been. I can’t recall the last time I slept.”
“Jesus, Nick. You gotta let me give you something for that.”
“It messes me up too bad the next day.”
“And how’s not sleeping been for your productivity?”
“I’m dealing with it. What I can’t deal with is seeing Sam struggling to cope with whatever is going on inside her on her own. That is killing me.”
Awakened by the sound of Nick’s voice, Sam stood outside the bedroom they’d converted into an office after the Secret Service took over the one downstairs. She listened to Nick air out his thoughts and learned for the first time that he hadn’t been sleeping because he was so concerned about her.
She cringed when she heard him tell Harry—she assumed and hoped he was talking to Harry—that she’d faked it with him. Of course he knew. Sometimes she suspected he knew her better than she knew herself.
Tears stung her eyes at the thought of him suffering because of her. Of course he would suffer, and of course he would suffer in silence. He’d never add to her burden.
God, how had it come to this? Listening to her strong, unflappable husband expressing his deepest concerns to his friend… It broke her to know she’d driven him to talk about things he rarely said out loud, except to her.
She took a deep breath and rounded the corner to the office.
He stopped speaking midsentence. “Hey, babe.”
“Tell Harry I’ll see him today if he has time.”
“You’ll, what…Oh, okay.” His gaze remained fixed on her when he said, “Sam is here and would like to know if you have any time today—” After a pause, he said to her, “Can you be at his office at ten?”
She nodded.
“She’ll see you then. Thanks, Harry.” He put down the phone and got up to come around the desk to her. “How much of that did you hear?”
“Enough.”
“I wasn’t talking about you in a bad way, Samantha.”
“I know. I’m sorry you’ve been so upset. I didn’t know you haven’t been sleeping, but now that I take a closer look, I can tell. I’m sorry that I was too self-absorbed to look closer.”
“Stop.” He put his arms around her and wrapped her up in the familiar scent of home. “Don’t apologize for any of it. It’s not your fault.”
“I’m going to fix it.”
“Babe, please, don’t do it on my account. Do it for you.”
“If I do it for you, it’ll also be for me because I can’t bear to know you’re losing sleep over me.”
“Isn’t the first time,” he said with the grin that had made him a national sex symbol since he became vice president.