Chapter 25 Blythe
BLYTHE
I snuck down to the library last night, hoping that maybe Sam came back after everyone had gone to bed. Sarah had let me know that he and Colin parted before dinner on not-so-great terms. Having seen the two over the last week, it’s hard to imagine them not getting along, even for five minutes.
I spent dinner with my attention half on the conversations around me and half on the door, hoping to see a tall, broad man walk into the dining room. I stalled afterward until Maggi’s yawning reached the point of being every few seconds before I carried her up to bed.
By the time I went to bed, I convinced myself that there hadn’t actually been a connection between Sam and me.
He hadn’t actually invited me to go along with him on his secluded Highland trip.
Hell, half the guys joked that he probably already left and that’s why he hadn’t been at dinner.
And while they joked, I seethed, coming up with an alternate reality in my head.
Angry that he fucked off without saying bye.
Livid that another man left without a proper farewell.
That was silly, of course. Sam is in fact not a man who owes me anything.
The only thing a hookup owes you is consent, and we’d both given it time and time again.
If Sam did in fact leave without ever looking at me again, that would be fine.
I would be fine with it. Maggi, on the other hand, well, she’d be sad.
That is why when I see Sam sitting in the dining room in the morning, I march over, ready to confront him about leaving without saying goodbye.
“You can’t leave without saying bye to Maggi,” I snap, sitting across from him without an invitation.
He looks at me with a steady, almost distant gaze, no flirty smirk in sight, and it makes my skin crawl in an unpleasant way.
He’s looking at me like he hasn’t had his face between my legs.
He’s looking at me like I’m some random woman who sat down at his table, and it hits me that maybe he has in fact already said goodbye, in his head anyway.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he drawls, eyes flicking to where Maggi is sitting with Sarah and Colin.
It’s odd how I’ve been naked with this man, but I’ve never been uncomfortable with him until this moment, fully clothed in the middle of a posh dining room, surrounded by conversation and sixteen varieties of tea and scones.
Swallowing, I push away from the table. “Good.” I whirl around and head back to Maggi, unable to resist looking back at Sam, whose attention is already back on the bowl of muesli in front of him.
It’s the first time we’ve been in the same room that I haven’t felt his eyes on me. The first time I truly feel like a stranger to him, and while I know it’s for the best, there is something wrong about it.
“Everything okay?” Sarah asks when I sit down at the table and immediately start playing with a sugar packet. She watches me with narrowed eyes before finally slowly looking in Sam’s direction.
“It’s my fault,” Colin says quietly, spreading scrambled eggs around on his plate. “I pushed him last night, and I shouldn’t have. I should have left things alone.”
My attention moves to my new brother-in-law. “Left what alone?”
He shakes his head. “Not my business to share. Let’s just say I may have implied that I knew what was best for him, and he didn’t like that too much. Never has, if I’m being honest. He’s a stubborn bellend.”
“What’s a bellend?” Maggi pipes up, looking between the three of us.
Sarah grimaces at me before glaring at her husband.
“Nothing, Roo. It’s a big person word.”
I brace myself for the second degree, but she goes back to colouring the faerie in front of her.
My appetite seems to have taken the morning off, and my empty stomach doesn’t appreciate my attempts at drinking three cups of coffee, so I excuse myself under the guise of needing some fresh air.
Sarah and Colin insist that they want to spend some time with Maggi, so if I want to go on a solo walk, now would be a good time.
It’s chilly this morning. A cold front moved in during the night, chasing away the unusually warm summer weather, but it’s exactly what I need.
I’ve either been with Maggi or Sam since we got here, and it’s not until I’m halfway to the loch that I realize how nice it is to have a minute to myself outside.
Because of the weather, the other guests have remained indoors, and no one is out on the water. It feels like I have the entire place to myself for the first time ever.
There’s a bench tucked along the shore, engraved with a name that has long been rubbed away, and I sit, pulling my legs up and hugging my knees.
There’s an urge to cry, but I ignore it, and then a need to scream, but I push it down.
My emotions roil inside of me, pushing and pulling me in several directions all at once.
I haven’t felt this unsettled for two years, and I realize it’s the unknown that is causing the turbulence.
The unknown of what’s to come in every aspect of my life.
I lose track of how long I’ve been sitting on the bench, but when the first drop of rain falls, I feel both a sense of relief and annoyance that I’m going to get caught in it.
There is something about the rain over here.
It calls to me in a way that it doesn’t at home.
I hate the idea of my clothes being soaked through, but not the idea of stripping naked and standing under the heavy clouds with my face turned to the sky and my arms stretched wide.
Like somehow embracing the Scottish rain in that way will make me feel more at home, and I’m suddenly so desperate to feel at home.
I don’t give into the desire, though. Instead, I speedwalk back to the house, slipping through the front door right as the sky really opens and dumps a week’s worth of rain across the hills.
A soft din of conversation comes from nearly every common room on the main floor, interspersed with the sound of pool balls cracking into each other, and I wonder which room I’ll find my daughter in.
In the end, I find her curled up with a picture book about faeries right next to the man who looked at me like a stranger a couple hours earlier.
When he looks up at me now, it’s with the look of someone who knows me, and even more, who is pleased to see me. I’ve never experienced whiplash before, but I imagine it feels something like this.
I want to tell him to fuck off. Tell him to leave my daughter alone because I can already see her little mind working. She believes this man is going to be around when she wants to go hunting for faeries and Nessie on any random Sunday morning.
“Mommy,” Maggi says without even looking up at me. Sam must have noticed me when I walked in and told her I was here. “Sam says there are folk in British Clumby.”
“British Columbia,” I correct, refusing to look away as she runs her finger over a faerie with blue hair and brown wings.
“British Columbia,” she enunciates each letter. “British Columbia.”
“Perfect, princess,” Sam says, his eyes still on me, his smile peaceful as if he hadn’t looked at me with indifference two hours ago.
I shake my head, mouthing “don’t.” I cannot with him right now. If his moods change faster than the tides then it really is for the best that this is only a hookup we both claimed never to do. One we both justified because the wedding was over.
Sarah walks in, carrying a child-friendly glass with orange liquid, stopping when she sees me.
“Mom said Mags likes orange squash so I… I hope it’s okay,” she says, looking as if she’s been caught red-handed about to give my daughter a bag of sugar.
“She loves it,” I reply, plastering on a smile. “She had never had it until this week, and now she talks about it almost as much as she talks about the folk.”
Sarah snorts. “She suggested leaving glasses of it out in hopes of catching one. As if it were cheese and they were mice.”
It certainly sounds like something my daughter would come up with.
“Are you okay staying with her for a little while longer? I’m just going to shower and change. I am wetter than I thought.” I could kick myself for glancing at Sam when I add the last part to find his eyes on me.
“Of course, we’ve had a great morning, haven’t we, Mags?”
“Yep!” Maggi says, reaching for the glass with wide eyes and a big smile.
I’m not back in the room for a minute when I hear a soft knock, and I know exactly who it’s going to be.
“What?” I ask, without opening the door.
“Can we talk?” Sam’s voice is quiet and strained.
“Only talk?”
There’s a pause, and I prepare to tell him off for treating me the way he had and then showing up, expecting something from me.
“Yes. Only talk, I swear.”
I wait another minute before turning the knob and opening the door slowly.
Sam’s leaning against the doorframe, hands in his pockets, head bowed. When he looks up, it’s with more emotion than I expect. A man who had expected me to decline his request. A man who had already accepted defeat. A man who has clearly not slept in a while.
I tip my head, inviting him in, and he passes through the opening, bringing the warm scent of cinnamon and sandalwood with him.
“You’re going to have to wait.” I close the door and watch as he stands awkwardly in the middle of the room.
Good, I think. Feel weird about this.
“I should have waited to come up but…” He stops talking as I turn and walk away.
“Make yourself at home, Sam. I shouldn’t be too long.”
I take my sweet time in the shower, letting the entire room fill with steam as the heat replaces the chill that soaked into my bones. What I intend to be a quick warm up shower turns into an everything shower. It’s as if I want to get really clean and then deny us both like a psychopath.
After I step out, I wrap myself in one of the big fluffy towels and swipe my hand across the mirror. My skin is red from scrubbing and the heat, and my hair is plastered to my head, the strands dripping rapidly cooling drops onto my body.
I’ve been in here for at least forty minutes, doing everything I can to avoid the conversation that awaits beyond the solid oak door.
Ideally, I’d change in here but I’d been so desperate to put distance between us I walked straight into the bathroom without grabbing dry clothes.
I can’t very well go out in a towel. It may give him the wrong impression, but thankfully I miraculously hung the estate-branded robe on the heated towel rack this morning.
I tie the robe as tight as possible, making sure I’m not falling out of the top, take a deep breath, and swing the door open.
The room is silent, and I assume empty until I notice that Sam is in one of the swan-back chairs next to the fireplace, sound asleep, the copy of Emma that I’d left on the nightstand hanging limply from his hand.
I can’t decide if I should grab my book before it falls or if I should get dressed first. Another confusing choice I need to make on top of a mountain of actual confusing choices.
I opt to change. If the book falls, it falls, and maybe it will wake him up so I don’t have to.
Not because I like the way he looks when he wakes up but because I will feel bad based on how tired he looked earlier.
He does look good when he wakes up, though. It’s incredibly unfortunate.
Sam’s chest is still rising and falling slowly when I shut myself back in the bathroom that now feels uncomfortably hot, and I change quickly into a light knit sweater and jeans, suddenly desperate to not spend a second longer than necessary in the makeshift steam room.
When I exit for the second time, I find Sam still asleep, the book still in his hand, and I look around, wondering if he’ll wake up if I make a loud noise. I could slam the bathroom door or throw Maggi’s backup stuffie at him.
Or, you could wake him up like a normal person, I chastise myself.
I kneel in front of him and watch him sleep for a couple of minutes. A totally normal thing to do when about to wake up the man you’re mad at.
“Sam?” I rest my hand on his knee, the warmth of him seeping through his jeans, and give it a little shake. He doesn’t stir. I try again, doing the same to his other knees, and he groans, fighting wakefulness.
Then he’s scrambling from the chair, Emma still grasped in his hand, while he apologizes.